Out of the Darkness & I'm on TV!

Everything went beautifully with Chico's 5th Annual Out of the Darkness Walk for suicide prevention this past Saturday. Approximately 450 locals joined our fight to raise awareness about mental illness, depression, and suicide, and we raised close to $11,000.

Most important to me is the fact that many people who, like me, have been carrying deep, dark, burdensome, ugly pains related to suicide losses, had a place to go for healing, compassion, support, and to take a steps towards a world without suicide.

I'd been terribly nervous about all the speaking I was going to be doing. I don't know why, but I was relaxed when on stage. I guess I liked the power of wielding a cordless microphone. Today, I thought about how empowering it would feel to carry a microphone everywhere I go...but enough about me.

Photo by Jodi Rives

First, more about me. I'm on TV below. Channel 12's Local Action News reporter Vanessa Vasconcelos was kind enough to attend unsolicited. She filmed parts of the Walk, did a very nice job editing and commenting, and interviewed me. It's VERY BRIEF, if you decide to view it.

You can see me here, a tad after 1 minute.
http://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/out-of-the-darkness-walk-raises-awareness-for-suicide-prevention/

I'm (re)posting the poem I ended my speech with. I wrote this for the Out of the Darkness participants, and I'd posted it several months ago here.

Please Believe

You're Not Alone

Please believe

I know your pain

Your broken soul

That smile you feign

You say "I'm fine"

But it's a lie

You dare not share

Your urge to die

I know your rage

And hate

And shame

The burn that set your heart aflame

Consumed by grief

Your life a curse

Cold lonely days

Still nights are worse

Please believe me when I say

Keep holding tight

You'll be okay

Beastly ills, you cannot halt

Go gentle now

It's not your fault

Mental illness has no cure

You're human with a heart that's pure

I know not how

I know not when

But you'll reclaim your life again

Embrace a faith you never knew

You'll be so glad you wrestled through

Please believe

And hold on tight

As strands of pain fade into light

And tender hues transform your sight

You're not alone

Please know it's true

I'm right here

Holding tight 

with you.

Coming Out of the Darkness to Save Lives

            Photo taken out my car's back window, the morning of last year's Out of the Darkness Chico

I love to laugh and make people laugh. This wasn't always the case. I was terribly depressed as a child, due to heredity (depression runs in my family) and circumstances (neglectful parents, family traumas...). I've shared with you over the years about my mother's death by cancer when she was 49 and I was 18.

Two years ago, I wrote a semi-mysterious blogpost about the death of my ex-husband. I kept the circumstances dubious because...he died by suicide. There's so much shame, guilt, and stigma related to suicide, I didn't want to go that dark here. Losing my ex-husband, though, doesn't compare to a loss I experienced more than 25 years ago. It's one I've mostly kept in the dark all these years.  It's been wrapped up in layers of shame and guilt. Siblings are like our other-selves. This heavy dark truth is that my brother, Glenn-David (my parents couldn't decide between Glenn or David, so they used both names), was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1988. He died by suicide shortly thereafter. We'd had a tense relationship, fraught with animosity, and that's been the most painful aspect to grapple with.

I'm sharing this with you now because I'm coming out of the darkness in a big way these days -- in hopes of helping others. For the past several months, I've been organizing Chico's annual Out of the Darkness Community Walk for suicide prevention. I'm Event Chair, and it all happens this coming Saturday, 9/27. I've recently participated in local radio show interviews and worked on a newspaper segment on suicide. I'll be giving a speech on Saturday, during which I tell my story.

Here's the last paragraph of my speech, which summarizes my main points:
There's no singular way to respond to this tremendously complicated crisis of suicide. What we need to do, though, is exactly what we've gathered here to do today - to connect with compassion; to talk openly about our pains and losses related to mental illness, depression, and suicide; to chip away at the monstrous levels of stigma that poison our cause; to take care of ourselves and each other - which means not harboring the often suffocating force of guilt- so that we can continue this all-important mission of creating a world without suicide, one step at a time.

So I won't have much time or energy to devote to blogland this week, and you may've already noticed my scaling back a bit. Sorry. Thank you for understanding. Thanks, Alex, for your support and forgiveness of my dropping out of the Blogfest...This event is a biggie. We've already raised more money than we did in past years, and we hope to have 500 people join the fight. It's pretty exciting.

Sometimes along the edge of trauma, we find beauty. This event is truly beautiful and uplifting.

Life is worth living -- for the chocolate, for the laughter, 

and to help pull each other out of the darkness.

Have a great week.