Having the conversation is hard, I know but death is forever...

How do you talk about suicide with your kids? This a great question for all ages- As parents we want to shield our children from every scary thing out there and it doesn’t get much scarier than suicide. When we lost Sara I had a hard time finding the words to explain to my children as to why she is no longer with us. Why she couldn’t come to their birthday parties? Why she had to leave? Why didn’t they get to say goodbye? Why? Lots of why’s and I had no answers. I saw their faces, their tears and all I could think was to tell them she was too sad and couldn’t continue on in this world and was now happy in Heaven. I knew they needed to hear more but I wasn’t ready just yet. Saying it out loud was just too much. It hurt bad enough for me to say it, there was no way I wanted them to feel that as well. However, as the days came and went the why’s stayed firmly in place and confusion crept in. At one point one of my children asked “so you can die when you are sad?” and I could see the worry. Still I was holding back. Then I began to read Allie’s blog every day, sometimes rereading and sharing them. I watched her begin her crusade to save other children and to encourage others to speak up. I realized at that moment that I was not speaking up, I was not honoring Sara. So I set out to have the hardest conversation I have yet to have with my children. I had to explain suicide. The thing is the words came a lot easier than I thought they would. I explained that sometimes people feel so sad and scared and lonely and they feel it well never get better. That life becomes painful and they just can’t continue on and they end their own pain by ending their life. I compared it to the filing of a water balloon. We are the balloons and the water is the challenges, pain and sadness that come our way. At first the balloon can contain the water. It stretches and grows, but eventually when that water keeps coming and doesn’t stop the balloon starts stretching too much. It becomes stressed and stretched too  tight until that balloon can no longer hold the water and breaks. That is what happens to people. We get sad, stressed and overwhelmed and it keeps coming and coming and coming and if there is no way for that water to get out we are overcome by it. I used this as a way to explain why it was so important for people to speak up. If that balloon had a tiny hole that the water could escape from then there would be a release of pressure and maybe it would not be overwhelmed. Sometimes when we are sad it’s hard to see the light. It is hard to know that there are better days ahead. But I emphasized that no matter what...there is a light…always a light and when we can’t find it ourselves we need to reach out to others because there is help out there. People get sad and that is ok, but that sadness should not consume us...and when it does we need to talk about it. We need to ask for help. And when we see others in the same place we need to reach out to them. We talked about how we are always saying leave a place better then you find it. Well that is true of people as well. We should always leave people better then we find them. The conversation continues on a daily basis. The questions keep coming, but I don’t dodge them. I answer them as honestly as I can, because we need to teach our kids that there is nothing wrong with being depressed, there is nothing wrong with needing help and there is nothing wrong with reaching out. There is no shame in depression, there is no shame in feeling like you can’t do it on your own. We need to make sure they know that. Because of these talks my daughter came forward about a situation with someone on facebook. It ended up not being what we thought but because of our talks, she felt like she could come to me. She felt like she could be honest and she reached out to someone else without fear or shame. She is sharing Sara’s story and not afraid to do so.

A personal story provided by a dear friend on behalf of Sara. To that person, thank you for speaking up and having those hard conversation and sharing them with the world.

From the JCMH Website www.save.org below

After children learn that the death was by suicide, one of their first questions might be, "What is suicide?"   Explain that people die in different ways - some die from cancer, from heart attacks, some from car accidents, and that suicide means that a person did it to him or herself. If they ask how, once again it will be difficult, but be honest.

Some examples of explaining why suicide happens might be:

"He had a illness in his brain (or mind) and he died."

"His brain got very sick and he died."

"The brain is an organ of the body just like the heart, liver and kidneys. Sometimes it can get sick, just like other organs."

"She had an illness called depression and it caused her to die."

(If someone the child knows, or the child herself, is being treated for depression, it's critical to stress that only some people die from depression, not everyone that has depression. And that there are many options for getting help, e.g. medication, psychotherapy or a combination of both.)

A more detailed explanation might be:

"Our thoughts and feelings come from our brain, and sometimes a person's brain can get very sick - the sickness can cause a person to feel very badly inside. It also makes a person's thoughts get all jumbled and mixed up, so he can't think clearly. Some people can't think of any other way of stopping the hurt they feel inside. They don't understand that they don't have to feel that way, that they can get help."

(It's important to note that there are people who were getting help for their depression and died anyway. Just as in other illnesses, a person can receive the best medical treatment and still not survive. This can also be the case with depression. If this is what occurred in your family, children and adolescents can usually understand the analogy above when it is explained to them.)

Children need to know that the person who died loved them, but that because of the illness, the person may have been unable to convey that to them or think about how the children would feel after the loved one's death. They need to know that the suicide was not their fault, and that nothing they said or did or didn't say or do, caused the death.

Some children might ask questions related to the morals of suicide - good/bad, right/wrong. It is best to steer clear of this, if possible. Suicide is none of these - it is something that happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with that pain.

Whatever approach is taken when explaining suicide to children, they need to know they can talk about it and ask questions whenever they feel the need, to know that there are people there who will listen. They need to know that they won't always feel the way they do now, that things will get better, and that they will be loved and taken care of no matter what.