If this comment is too triggering, please delete: Years ago, I spoke with a friend of mine who has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide (and we are so thankful she failed). What she told me was that she felt like she was in a black box and she couldn’t see her way out—and that people “always thought they could help me, that there was something they could do to make things better. So many people tried. But there’s nothing they could have done. They didn’t have that kind of control over me.”
Hi Leslie, thank you for your compassionate response. You are right. If someone is truly intent on dying, you cannot save them. That was something I learned when my brother died. I keep reminding myself of this when it comes to my uncle David.
My brother, who died in 2023, lived with severe psychosis: psychopathy, schizophrenia, and bipolar II disorder. He was found unresponsive in a homeless encampment, and I learned of his passing on Easter 2024. While not suicide in a conventional sense, he abused his body for decades and didn't get the medical care (or mental health care) he needed. I'm still reckoning with the loss of someone who was exceedingly tormented and whose behaviors tormented those of us who loved him.
Give yourself space to grieve and know that complete healing may not be possible in such circumstances. I am striving simply to find a place of relative peace.
Hi Cynthia, I’m so sorry to hear that you lost a brother too. Sibling loss is like losing a limb. It sounds like your brother struggled mightily before his passing. As my friend Lynn Shattuck says, it’s a loss of a lifetime. I hope you find the peace you’re looking for. It took many years after my brother’s suicide to find mine, but peace is possible. It just takes time.
I think the optimism that we have to have about our own work, combined with our knowledge of how brutal the odds are of our work ever reaching an audience, causes a really toxic brew of hopeful despair. We know the odds are long, but we all know someone who beat the odds and got that big contract, that award, that multibook deal. So when it doesn't happen for us on our timeline, we get very, very dispirited and hopeless.
I find (for me) it’s not about my timeline with my success as a writer— but more to do with how that timeline intersects with everything else happening or not happening in life at the moment— and how that impacts my relationship with my own work.
Thanks for this, Lisa, and for all you do to make the world a gentler, more compassionate place.
As a writer (and human), one thing I wish I'd known earlier is that it's possible to re-traumatize ourselves as we write out our tough stories. Interestingly, as a result of finding myself in a highly dysregulated place while writing, I found the converse to also be true-- taking the time to write about positive, unique, often quieter moments allows me to stretch those moments out and savor them. I've found that to be a very helpful tool during difficult times.
First I want to express my condolences for this huge loss. What a multi-faceted uncle David was to you! My heart is holding yours with care and affection.
In times like these, with rocks and debris under our feet instead of solid ground, writers like me may slip into a what-difference-does-it-make? attitude about writing projects-in-progress. With so much chaos swirling around us, focus and stamina are also challenges writers like me may have. Self-talk and words of encouragement help. Also solitude in a calm setting conducive to concentrated writing energy.
I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your Uncle David. Your comment resonates with me on how a new grief can rekindle an old one. I've been feeling that way so much lately.
I'm so sorry that's happened. What I tell myself and others is that this is yet another opportunity to love them. It doesn't take the pain away, but it gives meaning to it.
Sorry to hear about your losses. I haven't had anyone I know die of suicide but I have had my share of losses. I'm recently divorced, have a diagnosis of Huntington's Disease, and am healing from betrayal trauma. Writing (journaling) and self-compassion practice have kept me alive. I have a desire to write a memoir, but am focusing on my physical and mental health first. I'm not sure how to start or when, so I started subscribing to your substack.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm so sorry you're struggling with these challenges. That's a lot to carry. I'm so glad you are here and that you're both writing and prioritizing your physical and mental health. That is so important. I look forward to continuing to connect through this newsletter.
Appreciate that you are discussing this topic openly. As someone who has spent the last 19 years of his 29 years often preoccupied with ending my life, I can give a pretty clear answer to your confusion here:
"I’m also flummoxed by how, despite increased awareness and support, the number of suicides continues to rise. In 1997, the year Joe died, approximately 34,447 Americans died by suicide. In 2022, that number increased to 49,476. Men over seventy-five have the highest suicide rate—a fact often overshadowed by the tragic teen and young adult suicides that make the news."
As someone on the inside of this condition, I'm as or more flummoxed by how non-suicidal people don't see how inadequate the awareness and support is.
For one, the awareness has really done nothing at all save for maybe reducing the amount of people who go around openly calling suicide "cowardice", but it has done nothing for people's empathy or compassion.
My being open and honest about my major depressive disorder has done nothing but drive my friends and family away, and completely destroyed any prospects of any woman ever loving me. Regardless of how openly or seriously I admit it to my friends & family, it is constantly dismissed, belittled, and deflected. In fact, it hasn't been two weeks since a woman angrily stormed out of a date after she interrogated me about my condition and told me I wasn't deserving of love as I am not a perfect human who loves themselves already - before insulting me saying: "In 10 minutes, I hadn't asked [her] one question about [herself],".
I'm now 30 and have never had any form of intimacy or relationship with a woman, despite how much I've tried to "self-improve" and work on myself. Thinking about the subject now causes me physical pain.
Male friends are completely incompetent at the subject and largely try to deflect. Men are simply not taught as children by men NOR women how to sit with others and provide compassion. Women are generally afraid of men and in my experience, outright cruel to men with these conditions, often accusing us of unjustly asking for "emotional labor" and insulting us as "weak".
As for support - I can tell you there is none. Friends & family are all too busy with their own more meaningful, optimistic lives and do not have time for a "debbie downer" suicidal friend. Our society hates nothing more than those who refuse to tow the line of simplistic unfailing optimism.
Therapy is economically gated to the upper middle/upper class and is gynocentric in the extreme, and after having had 12 or so therapists in my life, I can say entirely unhelpful. It is a cosmic cruelty of a sick society to offer a coin-operated facsimile of friendship because the notion of REAL friendship and community support are simply beyond us.
The 988 hotlines are the poor-man's alternative to therapy and like therapy, are beyond inadequate, staffed by yahoos with little understanding or empathy for sufferers, and are absolutely willing to screw over the caller by calling the police leading to the involuntarily detention of those seeking a kind ear.
Involuntary detainment is one of the worst things that ever happened to me and the humilitation, shame and debasement it inflicted on me may actually be the straw that breaks my back; I realized that my basic agency could be stripped away simply by committing a thought crime - for believing my own life is not worth living. The event was traumatic not just for what happened to me, but because I saw what a joke mental health institutions are and how they are little more than a sequestering zone for the dregs of society that our culture simply would rather bury under the dirt than try to provide actual meaningful familial & community support for.
I saw mostly minority men, whom society has jettisoned entirely, locked inside fortress jail cells and left to stew without medication for their various conditions, pounding loudly on the door more suitable for a bomb shelter than a medical facility, at half-past midnight, begging for access to a restroom, before finally defecating and urinating in a pool in place before being noticed by an attendant and excoriated for doing so.
I think you may be flummoxed because you are coming from the perspective of (I assume) being a woman, where intimacy, emotions, friendship & support systems are all welcoming. The reason why suicide rates are not even close between the genders, 4:1 or 5:1 in the US is partially due to this fact. If you're a guy, you become used to "being the threat" and deeply internalize that largely speaking, you are neither welcome nor wanted anywhere. I certainly have internalized this, and it is largely the reality. I can't tell you the last time someone in public complimented me or showed any interest in me for any reason, even amongst friends, I can't tell you the last time someone hugged me and meant it. Certainly, nobody has ever kissed me and meant it, or held my hand and meant it. I'm a ghost who is either invisible or a threat.
So if I'm already a ghost, what difference does it make if I chose to leave this dreadful experience behind permanently?
Our society has a million miles to go on listening & understanding the depressed/suicidal - if they did, it'd be obvious to them why so many more of us end our lives ever year.
We recently were informed of the 2nd suicide in the family -- a 20 something nephew a couple of years ago and a 23 year old niece a month ago.
I had life circumstances when I was 40 and then again when I was 70 when I thought of suicide. The first time, I talked with someone and got the help that turned me around. The second time, I began to think about my partner or my child finding my body -- that shook me out of the thought that there was no way out. I began to take steps to get out of the situation that looked so bleak.
I'm so sorry to hear about the losses in your family, Leslie. That's just heartbreaking. I hope those affected find peace as they mourn these tragic losses. Thank you for sharing your experience with suicidal feelings. They are more common than people realize. I've experienced them too. When we talk about them, we erase the shame around them, and we lessen their power.
First off, my heart is touched by your words and I’m wishing you comfort, healing, and peace. Your Uncle David sounds like an awesome Uncle—sky diving, flying in fighter jets, sharing roller coaster journeys —adventurous and it sounds like a connection like no other!
It can never be said or heard too much—I am deeply grateful for YOUR presence in this world and in my life!
Personally, my biggest challenge with my mental health and writing is pacing—balancing the part of me that just wants it all out on the page and to be free from it being locked up vs. the part of me that
drowns in fear and shame. I am making progress. I’m better at listening to my inner guide, and being patient. One thing that’s helped me a lot is to focus on the current and near future only and my next right step in the process—thinking too far down the road, feeling I had to understand all the writing craft talks first—it was putting me in freeze state so now I just write what’s up for me in any given moment or week.
Thank you for your condolences. David truly was one of a kind. And thank you so much for your kind words. I'm grateful to know you and to spend so much time with your beautiful words.
The challenge you describe is one that so many writers face. I think most writers want to hurry up and get it all out and better yet published. When that doesn't happen within our timetables we get discouraged. Plus, working that hard is exhausting. I look forward to writing into this during this month's series.
Lisa, thank you for sharing about your experiences with suicide. It pains me to write that word in plural form. Joy V. recommended this post to me because she knows this is a heavy week for me. My little brother killed himself at the tender age of 14 on May 9, 2015. I can't believe it will have been a decade on Friday. My heart is still broken into pieces, but I've learned to pick up and carry some of those pieces and continue walking. I started writing about my grief and other life experiences on this platform last year and have found that I've been conflicted lately about the direction of my newsletter and whether or not to keep going. It is mentally very challenging and emotionally exhausting to be a writer--as you've acknowledged here and provided some good resources. I'm so sorry for your losses. And, I'm very grateful to have found you on Substack.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your brother, Katrina. Suicide is such a complex loss, and it hurts like no other. I don't know about you, but for me every anniversary stings, but those milestone anniversaries--the 5, 10, and for me the upcoming 30, sting all the more. I am sending you love, light and wishes for a sense of peace as you spend time with your grief and your memories on May 9th. That is so tough.
I'd love to know more about your experience with your newsletter and the struggle you face, because I think it might fit with this month's theme. If you're willing, please DM me and share a little more about your struggle. I think for many of us who write about deep losses that feeling of being overexposed can make the work unsustainable, especially if we're often or always writing into that pain. If this resonates, let me know. Again, I see you and I'm within you.
Lisa, you’ve had a lot of loss. I’m so sorry.
If this comment is too triggering, please delete: Years ago, I spoke with a friend of mine who has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide (and we are so thankful she failed). What she told me was that she felt like she was in a black box and she couldn’t see her way out—and that people “always thought they could help me, that there was something they could do to make things better. So many people tried. But there’s nothing they could have done. They didn’t have that kind of control over me.”
Hi Leslie, thank you for your compassionate response. You are right. If someone is truly intent on dying, you cannot save them. That was something I learned when my brother died. I keep reminding myself of this when it comes to my uncle David.
What a tough lesson to learn.
Lisa, loss from suicide is unimaginably painful.
My brother, who died in 2023, lived with severe psychosis: psychopathy, schizophrenia, and bipolar II disorder. He was found unresponsive in a homeless encampment, and I learned of his passing on Easter 2024. While not suicide in a conventional sense, he abused his body for decades and didn't get the medical care (or mental health care) he needed. I'm still reckoning with the loss of someone who was exceedingly tormented and whose behaviors tormented those of us who loved him.
Give yourself space to grieve and know that complete healing may not be possible in such circumstances. I am striving simply to find a place of relative peace.
Hi Cynthia, I’m so sorry to hear that you lost a brother too. Sibling loss is like losing a limb. It sounds like your brother struggled mightily before his passing. As my friend Lynn Shattuck says, it’s a loss of a lifetime. I hope you find the peace you’re looking for. It took many years after my brother’s suicide to find mine, but peace is possible. It just takes time.
I think the optimism that we have to have about our own work, combined with our knowledge of how brutal the odds are of our work ever reaching an audience, causes a really toxic brew of hopeful despair. We know the odds are long, but we all know someone who beat the odds and got that big contract, that award, that multibook deal. So when it doesn't happen for us on our timeline, we get very, very dispirited and hopeless.
I find (for me) it’s not about my timeline with my success as a writer— but more to do with how that timeline intersects with everything else happening or not happening in life at the moment— and how that impacts my relationship with my own work.
That’s a great point, Melissa!
Thank you for sharing this, Julie. I was talking about this with a friend this morning. “A toxic brew of hopeful despair” is an apt name for it.
Thank you for writing through your grief and using your story to reach out and help others.
Thank you for reading this post, Ginni. 🙏🏻
Thank you for this beautiful piece. Uncle David sounds amazing. I love the swapping of awkward naked David stories.
Thank you for helping me celebrate Uncle David, Elizabeth! He was quite a character. I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like him.
Beautifully expressed, Lisa. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Deborah. 🙏🏻
All that loss must weigh really heavy on your heart. I'm so sorry. ❤️
Thank you, Marisa. Most days it’s bearable, but each death reignited the old grief I carry. I hope one day suicide isn’t as common.
me too.
Thanks for this, Lisa, and for all you do to make the world a gentler, more compassionate place.
As a writer (and human), one thing I wish I'd known earlier is that it's possible to re-traumatize ourselves as we write out our tough stories. Interestingly, as a result of finding myself in a highly dysregulated place while writing, I found the converse to also be true-- taking the time to write about positive, unique, often quieter moments allows me to stretch those moments out and savor them. I've found that to be a very helpful tool during difficult times.
Thank you for sharing this Lynn! It was an eye opener for me too.
Thank you for writing this, Lisa. An issue I know all too well.
Hugs to you, Joy, as a fellow survivor. I don’t wish this grief on anyone.
Lisa,
First I want to express my condolences for this huge loss. What a multi-faceted uncle David was to you! My heart is holding yours with care and affection.
In times like these, with rocks and debris under our feet instead of solid ground, writers like me may slip into a what-difference-does-it-make? attitude about writing projects-in-progress. With so much chaos swirling around us, focus and stamina are also challenges writers like me may have. Self-talk and words of encouragement help. Also solitude in a calm setting conducive to concentrated writing energy.
Thanks for sharing your strategies and condolences, Stephanie. As a fellow survivor, I know you’re very familiar with this grief. ❤️
I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your Uncle David. Your comment resonates with me on how a new grief can rekindle an old one. I've been feeling that way so much lately.
I'm so sorry that's happened. What I tell myself and others is that this is yet another opportunity to love them. It doesn't take the pain away, but it gives meaning to it.
Yes it does.
Hi Lisa,
Sorry to hear about your losses. I haven't had anyone I know die of suicide but I have had my share of losses. I'm recently divorced, have a diagnosis of Huntington's Disease, and am healing from betrayal trauma. Writing (journaling) and self-compassion practice have kept me alive. I have a desire to write a memoir, but am focusing on my physical and mental health first. I'm not sure how to start or when, so I started subscribing to your substack.
Hi Kat,
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm so sorry you're struggling with these challenges. That's a lot to carry. I'm so glad you are here and that you're both writing and prioritizing your physical and mental health. That is so important. I look forward to continuing to connect through this newsletter.
Thanks!
Hi Lisa,
Appreciate that you are discussing this topic openly. As someone who has spent the last 19 years of his 29 years often preoccupied with ending my life, I can give a pretty clear answer to your confusion here:
"I’m also flummoxed by how, despite increased awareness and support, the number of suicides continues to rise. In 1997, the year Joe died, approximately 34,447 Americans died by suicide. In 2022, that number increased to 49,476. Men over seventy-five have the highest suicide rate—a fact often overshadowed by the tragic teen and young adult suicides that make the news."
As someone on the inside of this condition, I'm as or more flummoxed by how non-suicidal people don't see how inadequate the awareness and support is.
For one, the awareness has really done nothing at all save for maybe reducing the amount of people who go around openly calling suicide "cowardice", but it has done nothing for people's empathy or compassion.
My being open and honest about my major depressive disorder has done nothing but drive my friends and family away, and completely destroyed any prospects of any woman ever loving me. Regardless of how openly or seriously I admit it to my friends & family, it is constantly dismissed, belittled, and deflected. In fact, it hasn't been two weeks since a woman angrily stormed out of a date after she interrogated me about my condition and told me I wasn't deserving of love as I am not a perfect human who loves themselves already - before insulting me saying: "In 10 minutes, I hadn't asked [her] one question about [herself],".
I'm now 30 and have never had any form of intimacy or relationship with a woman, despite how much I've tried to "self-improve" and work on myself. Thinking about the subject now causes me physical pain.
Male friends are completely incompetent at the subject and largely try to deflect. Men are simply not taught as children by men NOR women how to sit with others and provide compassion. Women are generally afraid of men and in my experience, outright cruel to men with these conditions, often accusing us of unjustly asking for "emotional labor" and insulting us as "weak".
As for support - I can tell you there is none. Friends & family are all too busy with their own more meaningful, optimistic lives and do not have time for a "debbie downer" suicidal friend. Our society hates nothing more than those who refuse to tow the line of simplistic unfailing optimism.
Therapy is economically gated to the upper middle/upper class and is gynocentric in the extreme, and after having had 12 or so therapists in my life, I can say entirely unhelpful. It is a cosmic cruelty of a sick society to offer a coin-operated facsimile of friendship because the notion of REAL friendship and community support are simply beyond us.
The 988 hotlines are the poor-man's alternative to therapy and like therapy, are beyond inadequate, staffed by yahoos with little understanding or empathy for sufferers, and are absolutely willing to screw over the caller by calling the police leading to the involuntarily detention of those seeking a kind ear.
Involuntary detainment is one of the worst things that ever happened to me and the humilitation, shame and debasement it inflicted on me may actually be the straw that breaks my back; I realized that my basic agency could be stripped away simply by committing a thought crime - for believing my own life is not worth living. The event was traumatic not just for what happened to me, but because I saw what a joke mental health institutions are and how they are little more than a sequestering zone for the dregs of society that our culture simply would rather bury under the dirt than try to provide actual meaningful familial & community support for.
I saw mostly minority men, whom society has jettisoned entirely, locked inside fortress jail cells and left to stew without medication for their various conditions, pounding loudly on the door more suitable for a bomb shelter than a medical facility, at half-past midnight, begging for access to a restroom, before finally defecating and urinating in a pool in place before being noticed by an attendant and excoriated for doing so.
I think you may be flummoxed because you are coming from the perspective of (I assume) being a woman, where intimacy, emotions, friendship & support systems are all welcoming. The reason why suicide rates are not even close between the genders, 4:1 or 5:1 in the US is partially due to this fact. If you're a guy, you become used to "being the threat" and deeply internalize that largely speaking, you are neither welcome nor wanted anywhere. I certainly have internalized this, and it is largely the reality. I can't tell you the last time someone in public complimented me or showed any interest in me for any reason, even amongst friends, I can't tell you the last time someone hugged me and meant it. Certainly, nobody has ever kissed me and meant it, or held my hand and meant it. I'm a ghost who is either invisible or a threat.
So if I'm already a ghost, what difference does it make if I chose to leave this dreadful experience behind permanently?
Our society has a million miles to go on listening & understanding the depressed/suicidal - if they did, it'd be obvious to them why so many more of us end our lives ever year.
Thank you for sharing your experience with all of us. I see your pain, and I'm sorry you experience so much of it.
We recently were informed of the 2nd suicide in the family -- a 20 something nephew a couple of years ago and a 23 year old niece a month ago.
I had life circumstances when I was 40 and then again when I was 70 when I thought of suicide. The first time, I talked with someone and got the help that turned me around. The second time, I began to think about my partner or my child finding my body -- that shook me out of the thought that there was no way out. I began to take steps to get out of the situation that looked so bleak.
I'm so sorry to hear about the losses in your family, Leslie. That's just heartbreaking. I hope those affected find peace as they mourn these tragic losses. Thank you for sharing your experience with suicidal feelings. They are more common than people realize. I've experienced them too. When we talk about them, we erase the shame around them, and we lessen their power.
First off, my heart is touched by your words and I’m wishing you comfort, healing, and peace. Your Uncle David sounds like an awesome Uncle—sky diving, flying in fighter jets, sharing roller coaster journeys —adventurous and it sounds like a connection like no other!
It can never be said or heard too much—I am deeply grateful for YOUR presence in this world and in my life!
Personally, my biggest challenge with my mental health and writing is pacing—balancing the part of me that just wants it all out on the page and to be free from it being locked up vs. the part of me that
drowns in fear and shame. I am making progress. I’m better at listening to my inner guide, and being patient. One thing that’s helped me a lot is to focus on the current and near future only and my next right step in the process—thinking too far down the road, feeling I had to understand all the writing craft talks first—it was putting me in freeze state so now I just write what’s up for me in any given moment or week.
Thank you for your condolences. David truly was one of a kind. And thank you so much for your kind words. I'm grateful to know you and to spend so much time with your beautiful words.
The challenge you describe is one that so many writers face. I think most writers want to hurry up and get it all out and better yet published. When that doesn't happen within our timetables we get discouraged. Plus, working that hard is exhausting. I look forward to writing into this during this month's series.
Lisa, thank you for sharing about your experiences with suicide. It pains me to write that word in plural form. Joy V. recommended this post to me because she knows this is a heavy week for me. My little brother killed himself at the tender age of 14 on May 9, 2015. I can't believe it will have been a decade on Friday. My heart is still broken into pieces, but I've learned to pick up and carry some of those pieces and continue walking. I started writing about my grief and other life experiences on this platform last year and have found that I've been conflicted lately about the direction of my newsletter and whether or not to keep going. It is mentally very challenging and emotionally exhausting to be a writer--as you've acknowledged here and provided some good resources. I'm so sorry for your losses. And, I'm very grateful to have found you on Substack.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your brother, Katrina. Suicide is such a complex loss, and it hurts like no other. I don't know about you, but for me every anniversary stings, but those milestone anniversaries--the 5, 10, and for me the upcoming 30, sting all the more. I am sending you love, light and wishes for a sense of peace as you spend time with your grief and your memories on May 9th. That is so tough.
I'd love to know more about your experience with your newsletter and the struggle you face, because I think it might fit with this month's theme. If you're willing, please DM me and share a little more about your struggle. I think for many of us who write about deep losses that feeling of being overexposed can make the work unsustainable, especially if we're often or always writing into that pain. If this resonates, let me know. Again, I see you and I'm within you.