(Re) written and published in honor of World Suicide Prevention Day, which is September 10th.
In honor of Cori, Nicholas, and all the other loves lost to that final choice.
Content note: suicide, parenting, recognition of suicide as a choice that people make.
Part I: Talking to My Kid About Suicide
I recall clearly the first time I thought about killing myself. I was fourteen and had been dealing with some run-of-the-mill, yet grating and persistent, health issues. They were pretty minor but were wearing me down. I remember waking up in pain for another day and thinking, “If it’s gonna be like this, I’m not sure I’ll stick around.”
I got better from the physical ailment that was, at that moment, riding me, but the suicidal thoughts are still around, nearly forty years later.
In my early thirties, I was–after a long period of multiple misdiagnoses–accurately diagnosed with bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, and PTSD. Shortly thereafter I was talking to my father, the bestower of the broken genes, about suicidal thoughts. His advice was, “Never mention it again. Never tell anyone you’re thinking about killing yourself.”
I know this was his way of staying safe. So many in his generation were locked up, shocked without consent, medicated into oblivion, and lobotomized. It was never safe for him to seek the help or resources he needed until much later in life, and that much guardedness and self-reliance-by-neccesity creates its own eddies and patterns.
While my father is miraculously still breathing, his method of staying alive doesn’t actually work for most; keeping quiet rarely keeps those suffering here. Years of intensive therapy later–and after far too many losses of loved ones to suicide–I know deeply that it’s better to talk about it.
The year I first wrote this article, I lost another friend to suicide. (I’d lost many before, and have lost many since.) Cori, adored by many, took her life on my birthday in 2016. I know it wasn’t because it was my birthday, but I’ll still remember her on that day going forward.
In her heartrending passing, Cori left me a gift. I was in the bathtub soaking, scrolling my fb feed while I let the salt-loaded water do its work, when I found out that Cori had killed herself. I saw the message from a loved one and wailed out loud with shock.
My kid checked on me. “Are you ok, mom?” they asked.
“My friend Cori killed herself,” I said through tears.
My kid came over and leaned down to give me a side hug, then stroked my back while I cried. And we talked about suicide.
When my child was thirteen, they told me they couldn’t stop thinking about how much easier it would be to be dead. To be “not here.” To cease. As a parent who is familiar with the impulse toward suicide, it felt like an imperative to talk with my 16-year-old, transgender, nonbinary child–who was also already intimate with the impulse toward suicide at that time–about choices we make.
I told my kid that I got it. I got that Cori didn’t feel like she had a better option. I don’t blame Cori. I know sometimes suicide is the best option for the person making the choice.
But it is undeniable that suicide doesn’t end the pain; it just passes it around. When Cori killed herself a whole community had to struggle with anger, guilt, and sadness. And, some of us had to also overcome the internal voice that some of us can never silence in our whole lives; the one saying, “See? It is a choice that people make.”
Days later, once I was through my shock and had worked my anger out to love, I had a chance to talk to Cori’s father, who’s Buddhist. He said he wished he could not blame her. That he believed in her agency. But that part of him was so angry.
“How could you take the gift I gave you and throw it away?” he asked Cori’s ghost as we all stood together in an old haunt–a place we had partied and chilled with Cori years before.
His heart was breaking out of his chest, eyes pained and damp.
On the day of her death, in the tub, talking to my kid, I felt this wave too. I was a sibling-mama-friend to Cori. I was a confidant, a touchstone. She sometimes called me Mama when asking for advice. So while I didn’t have the claim of blood or even fosterage, I had the heart-tug of a person losing someone who had once called me, “Mama.”
Sitting with my child, riding the waves of emotion stirred up by a semi-conscious choice toward death–I mean, as conscious as one can be about suicide, I hear myself say to my child, “Please don’t ever do it?”
Then, I caught myself. As someone who deals with suicidal ideation ongoingly, in conjunction with the mental health disorders I manage and live with, I know that sometimes thinking about killing myself is the only place I find relief.
I also know in my core that sometimes suicide is truly the best choice–the only choice left. Sometimes depression is terminal like cancer, and all one has to look forward to is endless waiting for some possible eventual cure, or opting out.
Please don’t ever do it is too big an ask.
So I added to my request. “Can you promise me you'll never do it without talking to me first?” I asked this person who once dwelled in my womb. “Yes, Mama,” my child said. “I promise you I'll never do it without talking to you.”
I can't ask for more than that. I don’t think anyone really can. I can't find a place in myself where I feel justified or righteous in asking for a promise that this life of my life will never choose to leave by their own hand. Only rightness, or hope, in the idea that they’ll talk to me first. That I’ll never be caught by surprise in this.
“Thank you,” I said. “And I promise too. I’ll never kill myself without talking to you.”
This No-Suicide pact bears the memory of Cori, and of my other loves gone too soon. It rests in my heart, and in my fingers where I commemorated her choice, and our choices, in a semicolon and a heart. My older child inked them into me at our kitchen table.
Together, we continue. Generations linked by broken genes, hard conversations, and hard-won agreements. We look toward the future, and keep walking.
Edited, revised, and updated, based on an article I wrote originally for The Establishment in 2016.
Part II: 6 Ways to Talk to Your Kid About Suicide
1. Say something. Say anything.
It becomes a question of tactics and we arrive at, “Just say something.” Because saying something is better than nothing when nothing may stretch to infinity.
I ask my child, “How are you doing?”
“Meh.”
At least they are still here.
Anger is better than death. Sadness is better than death. Fighting is better than death. Crying is better than death. Laughing is so much better than death.
2. Share your skills in staying alive.
A balance between self-care and the never-ending job of engaged parenthood, I develop a language replete with nuanced silences; there is no need to hide the truth. In this house we all walk part-time in shadow worlds. Half hidden, half revealed, this is the art of staying alive.
Sometimes TV all day is a good choice. Sometimes sleeping piled in blankets is the only thing that works. Sometimes reaching out hurts too much and being alone is less painful. Sometimes talking is too hard and just sitting is better.
The art of staying alive is about making any choice except for death.
3. Offer a sense of safety in shared experience.
There are words for it. Suicidal ideation. Self-harm. Depression. Survival strategies. Para-suicidal behaviors. Let the words find purchase in your lexicon. Let the words grow roots and branches. Let them weave themselves, canopy-like, a dense, lush jungle of meaning.
These words can offer shelter in a storm, and can be used for prognostication.
Tell your child about the long nights spent staring down your own desire for the release of self-harming. Tell your child about the songs you learned to sing to quiet the internal monologue. Tell your child about the dreams and responsibilities that kept you tied to your body when the storms threatened to tear you in two.
4. Model good choice-making.
If you can, get out of bed. If you can, feed yourself. Even when everything tastes like tears and sand, still eat. Eat because your child is watching. Eat because you can’t afford not to show your child how to survive.
Sleep enough when you can. Be awake at the right times if you can bear it. Rouse yourself to conversation. Offer and ask for hugs.
5. Cultivate the humor of a Greek god.
Sisyphus was cursed with rolling a rock up a hill every day. We learn from Sisyphus. Keep choosing life.
6. Share the idea that when you don’t feel like staying alive for you, you can stay alive for others.
In that darkest moment, we forget our lives are a gift. A dark, tortured, bitter gift perhaps–but a gift all the same. When I don’t feel strong enough to stay alive I offer my life as a community endeavor of healing. We are all in this together.
At a ritual this spring I offered my choice to keep living as my sacrifice. “I love you, and this is why I am still living,” I said to my siblings, my mother, my community members.
In my darkest moments, I remember sacrifices others have made, and I choose to continue making mine. This life is my rock.
This piece was first written in 2016 as well.
If this is an emergency, or if you’re worried that you or someone you know may be at risk for suicide, please call your local crisis line (988), text BRAVE to 741741 for support, contact a mental health professional, or call and talk to someone at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
I’ve been having a really rough month as of recently. Due to some pretty intense stuff that has happened to me I’ve legitimately been on that edge, that fine line that people sometimes walk on. This essay was brilliant and I hope people read it. Being there for people and having suicide prevention as a verb, a doing, a constant doing is something that gives me comfort. My closest friends and my partners have been so kind as of recently about this whole thing and I couldn’t have asked for better people. Thank you again for this essay I’m reading with tears in my eyes ❤️