What are the chances . .?

Posted by kidsaregifts20

It was Tuesday, not my usual day to be working at St Thomas’ Hospital.
It was lunch-time and there was time enough for a proper break, which was extremely rare.
I was able to physically leave the Theatre complex for fifteen minutes, which was usually impossible.
I wanted to clear my head, so I went to the cafe, looking for a seat by a window. I was in my raspberry scrubs, wearing my most expensive necklace which is a green lanyard with my ID batch. The round table by the french doors had three chairs, of which one was occupied. I asked the older gentleman if I could share his table and he didn’t mind. As I sat down I noticed that his left arm was heavily bandaged. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked, ‘What brings you here?’
He looked straight at me and replied, “I tried to die.”
‘I am sorry you found yourself in that impossible place. Must have been terrible. Are you getting the support you need?’
“Yes. They’ve been very good here.”
‘I am glad.’ I paused to wonder if I should tell him but the words left without my permission.
‘You know, I lost my son to suicide a few years ago.’
His gaze connected with mine like a laser beam and his eyes moistened.
Softly, almost apologetically, he stated “When you are in that place, you can’t think about other people.”

Pause.

“Here comes my wife.”
Holding two paper-glasses and a brown paper bag, she joined us and placed one of the glasses in front of him. She took out a Jubilee cupcake from the bag to share.
“Have you traveled a long way today? I asked, shifting gear.
‘Sussex. Straight train. Not too bad.’
“Beautiful part of the world!”
‘Yes. But we lived in Australia for eighteen years which was really pretty. We came back to be with the children.’
“Nice. I wish you all the very best. I must get going now.”

‘Us too. Our appointment is in fifteen minutes.’ she said.
‘You take care’. He said, making that eye-connection with me again.
“You too.” I looked straight at him, nodded, smiled a polite smile and walked away.

(Resources for attempt survivors, their families and friends:

https://www.sprc.org/livedexperience/tool/resources-suicide-attempt-survivors-their-families-friends)

God bless America.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Following the Sandy Hook school shootings in 2012, the Conservative commentator Anne Coulter provocatively proclaimed that “Guns don’t kill people. The mentally ill do.”

“The United States sees an average of 32 000 handgun-related deaths per year (as per this paper published in 2015), and firearms are involved in 68% of homicides, 52% of suicides, 43% of robberies, and 21% of aggravated assaults. Far from the national glare, this everyday violence has a disproportionate impact on lower-income areas and communities of color, and is widely held to be the cause of widespread anxiety disorders and traumatic stress symptoms”… the stigma linked to guns and mental illness is complex, multifaceted, and itself politicized, in as much as the decisions about which crimes US culture diagnoses as “crazy” and which it deems “sane” are driven as much by the politics and racial anxieties of particular cultural moments as by the workings of individual disturbed brains. Beneath seemingly straightforward questions of whether particular assailants meet criteria for particular mental illnesses lay ever-changing categories of race, gender, violence, and, indeed, of diagnosis itself.”

“Persons in the United States live in an era that has seen an unprecedented proliferation of gun rights and gun crimes, and the data we cite show that many gun victims are exposed to violence in ways that are accidental, incidental, relational, or environmental. Yet this expansion has gone hand in hand with a narrowing of the rhetoric through which US culture talks about the role of guns and shootings. Insanity becomes the only politically sane place to discuss gun control. Meanwhile, a host of other narratives, such as displaced male anxiety about demographic change, the mass psychology of needing so many guns in the first place, or the symptoms created by being surrounded by them, remain unspoken.”

“Mass shootings represent national awakenings and moments when seeming political or social adversaries might come together to find common ground, whether guns are allowed, regulated, or banned. Doing so, however, means recognizing that gun crimes, mental illnesses, social networks, and gun access issues are complexly interrelated, and not reducible to simple cause and effect. Ultimately, the ways our society frames these connections reveal as much about our particular cultural politics, biases, and blind spots as it does about the acts of lone, and obviously troubled, individuals.”

Ref: American Journal of Public Health. 2015 February; 105(2): 240-49.

Mental Illness, Mass Shotings and the Politics of American Firearms by Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Kenneth T. MacLeish, PhD

PMCID: PMC4318286

PMID: 25496006

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/

The world is less beautiful without you.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

I am told it’s common for those at the end of their tether to believe that everyone would be better off without them. I don’t know if Saagar believed that but if he did, I want him to know that’s not true. They are far from ‘better off’. They hurt for as long as they live. They try to keep walking, with their painful unanswerable questions shouting in their ears. They make repeated futile attempts at forgiving themselves for their real and imagined, seemingly unforgivable mistakes. They try to uphold a light of hope for themselves and others, inside the well of their desperate darkness. They try to find purpose and meaning in their lives, when they can hardly move from one breath to the next.

Three years back I went traveling to the USA and Australia, as a Churchill Fellow, to find answers to a few of my unanswerable questions. I met some amazing people and learnt a lot, some of which I shared on this blog in October 2019. For the last two years, I have been compiling my findings with the aim of producing a report. It has been a challenging task and has taken a lot longer than I thought it would, thanks to the multiple distractions of the last couple of years.

The report has now been published and I am delighted to share it here with you. It is called ‘Bridging the Gaps in Suicide Prevention’ . I hope it will inspire compassionate ways of dealing with human fragility. I hope it will reach all those who can influence change from within – governments, communities, professions and hearts of individuals. I hope it will keep our hopes alive, for a well-connected, understanding world.

Report: https://www.churchillfellowship.org/ideas-experts/ideas-library/suicide-prevention-efficacy-of-multisectoral-approach-and-bereavement-support

Invitation to the Circle of Remembrance

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Towards the end of 2020, a series of phone calls with mums and dads from the USA, Australia and the UK resulted in the formation of an on-line peer support group that has met every other Saturday evening for an hour and a half. The first meeting was held in the middle of January 2021. We’ve recently had our 32^nd meeting. The group provides a warm space for sharing and offers non-judgemental listening and understanding. It provides a fertile ground for post-traumatic healing and growth. We call it CORe: Circle of Remembrance.

The loss of a child is different from other losses. The purpose of CORe is to honour our children, to create an opportunity for sharing our inner and outer experiences and to seek tools and mutual understanding for establishing a firmer ground of compassion, from which to live our new lives.

Over time, I have come to appreciate my need for a tribe to belong to. Other people who are also living through the loss of their child validate our experiences, witness our pain and help us feel less alone.

After many years of trying to make sense of something so treacherous, I now know that it is impossible to make any sense of it. However, I also know that it’s possible to create a new path for ourselves. A path of learning and peace.

It has been an honour for Si and me to facilitate the CORe group of roughly 20 friends and witness their journeys. The rich, life-sustaining conversations and friendships within the group are a delight to be a part of.

It therefore gives me great joy to invite bereaved parents to a new group that will meet on alternate Wednesdays from 7.00 – 8.30 pm (UK time). Please visit the website of CORe (link below) for more details and testimonials and sign up if you would like to join. In our experience with the Saturday group, the upper limit to attendees is 25. Once we have about 15 members, we’ll get started. The tentative start date is 4^th May 2022.

https://www.core-community.com/

Two lessons

Posted by kidsaregifts20

“He loved me in the purest sense and I loved him. That’s how he kept me alive.” says Marsha about Ted, a catholic priest.

This relationship taught her two important things that she applied to her work as a therapist for seriously suicidal people. She wrote about these things and taught them to her students, the future generation of therapists.

‘I was unable to say thank-you then. Now I can.’

If you’re giving unconditional love to help someone cope with the hell they are in, if you’re holding them emotionally and physically, don’t interpret their absence of ‘thanks’ as a sign that you are not giving them what they need. You probably are.

2. ‘Keep loving them.’

When someone sees no point in living, they are like someone walking in a mist. They don’t see the mist. They don’t see that they are getting wet. If you’re walking with them, you may not see it either. But if they have a pail of water, you can collect the water that was mist, in it. Each moment of love adds to the mist, which adds to the water in the pail. By itself, each moment of love may not be enough. But ultimately, the pail fills up and the person in hell can drink that water of love and be transformed.

Like Marsha, I know this to be true. I’ve been there and drunk from that pail.

(Inspired by Marsha M Linehans’s book: ‘Building a life worth living’.)