Speaking of Suicide
Trigger warning: This essay discusses suicide and sexual assault. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call the national suicide hotline: 988.
When I was about 17 years old, I was with a group of friends at my best friend’s house. I can’t remember why we had all gotten together. Maybe a birthday party. There was probably eight to ten of us, all juniors in high school. It wasn’t something we did very much. We watched a movie, and we talked. Somehow, the topic of suicide came up. I don’t remember who asked the question, but I remember the response.
Someone asked, “How many of you have ever thought about suicide?”
All of us raised our hands.
Every one of us.
I don’t think we ever had a more honest moment, before or after.
Years later, my friend remembered that, as we talked about his own suicide attempt in college. I think that collective confession may be part of the reason he is still alive today: because he knew he wasn’t alone.
I was going to write about something else this month. But the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I learned that three people connected with my Unitarian Universalist congregation had died, all within a week of each other, and all by their own hand.
Three.
I heard about the first person when we gathered for our Sunday morning discussion group. One of the elders of the group was absent, and someone shared that his 20-something grandson had killed himself.
We were still discussing what we could do for our friend, when another member of the group came in and announced that a newer member of the church, a veteran and mother of three, had killed herself too. She had just gotten engaged. My wife, who had just started to form a friendship with this person, left to get confirmation. A little while later, I found her in the stairwell sobbing.
Not long after that, a former member of the church, who had moved away years ago, came in the church door. She looked bereft, and my wife went to console her, assuming she had heard about the death of one of the others. But this person was grieving her own loss: her teenage daughter had died on Thanksgiving, by suicide as well.
Three deaths in all. All by suicide. All within a week.
For the rest of the day, I felt stunned. I felt like I had been concussed, like someone had hit me in the head, hard, three times in a row. I sat staring into space. I could barely form a coherent sentence. The best I could do was hold my wife and try to sing the songs and recite the liturgy without breaking down.
I’m not a stranger to suicide myself. My first close loss to suicide was my uncle. He was a younger uncle, and young at heart, so he was more like an older brother to me, and more like an uncle, than a great-uncle, to my own children. I’ve never known another adult who was able to get down on the level of children and really play with them like he did.
He killed himself 12 years ago, when my kids were 8 and 11. When I heard about it, I was inconsolable. I felt responsible. I had spoken with him not long before, and I remembered him being withdrawn, but I hadn’t asked him why. I was too wrapped up in my own life. I didn’t know how much he was struggling. And I should have known. I would have known if I had asked more.
And then, predictably, I got angry. He had abandoned us. He had abandoned my children, who had really loved him. There’s a handful of moments in my life which will haunt me, and one of them is the sound of my 8 year-old daughter’s voice cracking as she cried, “What?!”, when I had sat her and her brother down in the living room to tell them their uncle had died.
It took me about a year to find some peace about it. I went to his grave and poured a libation on his stone on the anniversary of his death. But I still feel it sometime, both the guilt and the anger.
And then a few years ago, my brother-in-law killed himself. He was someone I liked a lot–until I found out he was a sexual predator. He had been preying on girls for decades, family and friends, and committing varying degrees of sexual assault. He got away with it because of a culture of silence, and because his victims and the few witnesses felt isolated. No one had a complete picture of what he had been doing … that is, until his victims started talking to each other. He killed himself when he was outed. Needless to say, my feelings about it were … complicated. I can only imagine how his victims felt.
I mention his case here, because not every suicide is alike, and sometimes the emotional aftermath is complex. But I also mention it because of the pernicious way silence operates in both suicide and sexual assault. Silence enables sexual assailants. And in a similar way, it also fosters suicide. In both circumstances, silence causes people to feel isolated, and isolation breeds the feelings of powerlessness and despair.
I’ve been on the other side of it too. I had my own encounter with serious suicidal ideation not too long ago. I have thought about suicide with varying degrees of seriousness over the years, but I don’t think I ever needed intervention until recently. About four years ago, I started experiencing serious depression and anxiety. I had actual panic attacks, for the first time in my life.
At first, I didn’t talk to anyone about it. Not friends. Not family. I was too embarrassed about the circumstances which brought on my depression. I didn’t want anyone to know. Eventually, I got a therapist. But it wasn’t enough.
I started to think about suicide in a more serious way. One night in particular, I came closer than I ever had. I didn’t so much make a plan to kill myself, as I just felt a profound certainty that I was going to do it. I was resigned to it. I didn’t know exactly how or when, but I felt certain. And I was overwhelmed with sadness about it.
I felt utterly alone that night. But I also know that I am very much not alone in this. Practically everyone I talk to about it has thought about killing themselves at one time or another. And yet, somehow, it’s always surprising when I hear other people, people who appear outwardly to be well-adjusted, admit to having contemplated suicide. And it’s always shocking when I hear that another person has, seemingly suddenly, killed themselves.
The next morning, I was shocked by how low I had gotten, how close I had come. It really scared me. And I was spurred to make some radical changes in how I was thinking about my circumstances. Not long after, I came across these words in a poem, and I came back to them many times in the weeks and months that followed:
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.— Rilke
No feeling is final. At least it need not be.
I’ve never believed in reincarnation or transmigration of the soul. I know this is a common belief among contemporary Pagans, but being “pagan” to me means looking to this world, and this world only, for all we hope for:
Not in Utopia, — subterranean fields, —
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, — the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!— Wordsworth
I do believe in the Wheel, the Wheel of Nature. I believe that we all go back to the place we came from, the Earth, and that the building blocks of our bodies and minds will eventually be reconstituted into other bodies and minds—human and other-than-human. And I think that is beautiful.
I think there is beauty in impermanence. We are each of us unique expressions of nature, like flowers that blossom only for a season and then return to the ground.
“every person is more than just themself; they also represent the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every person’s story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every person, as long as they live and fulfill the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration.”
— Hermann Hesse, Demian (1919)
Some of us last longer than others. And all we can do in the time we have is to appreciate our own and each other’s unique beauty, and not do anything to cut our own or anyone else’s time short.
Our lives are one great Wheel, and over the course of our lives, we experience wheels within wheels, cycles of ups and downs of various forms: physical, social, emotional, economic, spiritual, and so on. The challenge is to ride these wheels, to always remember that nothing is permanent. Goddess is Change. As Starhawk says, She is the Wheel, and together with the God, who is her sometimes-child/sometimes-lover, we ride the Wheel:
Waxing and waning, birth and death, take place within the human psyche and life cycle. Each is to be welcomed in its proper time and season, because life is a process of constant change. … The God is that force within us that chooses to surrender itself to the cycle, to ride the Wheel.”
— Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (1979)
To surrender to the Wheel means to resist the urge to cling to the fruits of fortune when we find ourselves at the top, at the apex, of the Wheel. And it also means resisting the pull of despair when we are at the bottom, at the nadir, of the Wheel. It means keeping hold of the Wheel always and not cutting ourselves off from it by suicide.
As we near the winter solstice, I tend to think a lot about darkness—both the literal darkness of lengthening nights, and the figurative darkness of my mood which accompanies shorter days. We Pagans know that the darkness is not something to fear. Sometimes we go to the dark and quiet place in our soul to find rest and rejuvenation. The place of darkness and silence can offer balance to a world of excessive light and noise.
But it is imperative that we not remain there. When we have rested and found comfort and been restored, we must return from the dark place to the world of light and new possibilities. That is the meaning of the winter solstice for me.
I have always felt strongly that people should be allowed to end their lives in cases of terminal illness, if that’s what they really want. In my mind, this is a sacred act, and one of the most fundamental rights we should have. And it’s for that reason I avoid using the phrase “commit suicide”, as if suicide is a crime which is “committed”.
But it’s also true that most cases of suicide are brought on by temporary feelings of depression or by mental illness. And it’s obvious that people should not make decisions with consequences which are final when they are in a state of mind which is temporary–whether it be depression or intoxication or rage.
When my uncle completed suicide, I gave the eulogy, and in my words I tried to honor his “choice”. Now, I think that was my way of coping, trying to make sense of what happened. But now I think it would have been more accurate and more honest to acknowledge the pain he must have been in and to recognize the ways we failed to show up for him.
It’s a myth—and a harmful one—that “When someone makes up their mind to kill themselves, no one can stop them.” That’s something we tell ourselves to relieve our guilt. The truth is that most people don’t want to die; they just want the pain to stop. The decision to kill oneself is borne of feelings which seem inescapable, but are in fact temporary. So any interruption or delay in someone’s process to suicide may make the difference.
The vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt are glad to have survived. It’s one thing for a person to choose how they want to die when near-term death is inevitable. It is another thing for a person who is in a pit of despair to end their life because they see no way out of that pit. The first should be enabled and honored. The second needs help climbing out of the pit, not left to die there.
After church on Sunday, while we were still gathered together, someone said to me something along the lines that other people are the tethers that keep us connected to the earth. There’s something profound about that. Sometimes another person—the feeing that they care—may be all there is keeping another person connected to life.
I don’t have any statistical evidence for this, but I suspect that Pagans are more at risk for suicide than the average population. We Pagans tend to be more isolated than mainstream religious people. Maybe our Pagan beliefs or practices are the cause of our being rejected by family or friends. Or maybe we come to Paganism because we were rejected for not conforming in other ways. Either way, we are at risk of feeling alone in the world.
The Pagan community is great in a lot of ways, especially in the way it gives people the freedom and the space to be their genuine selves. But we don’t do a very good job of taking care of each other. For whatever reason, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the liberalness of a religion, and the ability of a religious community to take care of its members.
But there is one thing Pagans and other liberal religious people do better than conservative religions: We talk about the taboo. And that can be a powerful magic—one which has the power to break the spell of silence and maybe even save a life.
The progression from the first thought of suicide through making a plan to carrying it out and completing suicide is a process. And that process can be interrupted. We can begin interrupting that process by asking the uncomfortable question, “Have you been thinking about killing yourself?”
The second of the three people who I mentioned above was a veteran and a social worker who specialized in working with veterans. She had started a blog about two years ago and actually wrote about suicide. As I perused it, part of one post stood out to me:
“One of the most difficult questions for anyone to ask is, ‘Have you had thoughts of ending your life?’
“This is a hard question; we may feel overbearing asking someone something so personal; we may find it awkward to sit with them while they talk of their struggles.
“But doing so is courage.
“Talking in a space of non-judgment is healing, and it helps people to move toward healing.
“We can all do this for each other, if we could all get comfortable with asking the uncomfortable vulnerable questions
“Asking is a tourniquet. A tourniquet for a wound that may not be visibly seen, but that is there. Once the question is asked, the tourniquet is applied. We see that we aren’t alone.
“You can help a person who may be struggling with an emotional crisis. Help them find and schedule a meeting with a psychotherapist. Call the Suicide Crisis Line with them.”
I think this may be the single best piece of advice on this topic I have ever heard. And also, possibly, the hardest to implement, emotionally speaking.
My wife, who is a therapist herself, does this constantly. And whenever I tell her about someone I know who is struggling, she always asks me if I assessed them for risk of suicide, if I asked them if they are thinking about killing themselves and if they have a specific plan for doing so. In spite of her encouragement, I’ve never made a practice of this. But I have started to do it now.
I think there’s a lot of reasons why we don’t ask. I don’t ask because, somehow, it seems too personal to ask someone if they are thinking about suicide. But I wouldn’t ask unless they were already telling me about something very personal, about feelings of depression or despair. We’re already talking very personally, so why not go ahead and ask?
Sometimes I don’t ask because there’s a fear that I might put the idea in their head. But that is about as ridiculous as the reasoning behind abstinence-only sex education. They have assuredly already thought about it. I can be confident of that, because everybody has already thought about it at some time.
And I don’t ask because it’s awkward and I don’t know how to go about it. But what is a little social awkwardness weighed against the possibility that no one else has asked them the question? What is a little awkwardness weighed against the likelihood that they have thought about it or are thinking about it? What is a little awkwardness weighed against the certainty that my asking will communicate to them that I care about them and that they are important to me?
So this is my vow: I’m going to make a practice of asking. I’m going to lean into the awkward. I’m going to speak into the silence. I’m going to say: “Hey, I see what you’re going through, and I care about you, so I want to ask, have you been thinking at all about suicide?”*
* What to do after asking the question: Start by listening, then express compassion in a non-reactive, non-judgmental way. Keep the focus on the other person; don’t make it about you. Acknowledge the reality of their pain, and then offer them hope that things will change for the better. Without trying to take the choice away from them, ask them to promise they will not attempt suicide until they talk to a professional. Refer them to professional help, and then sit with them while they call a mental health provider or the suicide hotline 988.
Some of the information and advice in this essay was obtained through the QPR Institute, which provides trainings on suicide prevention. QPR stands for Question, Persuade, and Refer.
JOHN HALSTEAD
John Halstead is the author of Another End of the World is Possible, in which he explores what it would really mean for our relationship with the natural world if we were to admit that we are doomed. John is a native of the southern Laurentian bioregion and lives in Northwest Indiana, near Chicago. He is a co-founder of 350 Indiana-Calumet, which worked to organize resistance to the fossil fuel industry in the Region. John was the principal facilitator of “A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment.” He strives to live up to the challenge posed by the Statement through his writing and activism. John has written for numerous online platforms, including Patheos, Huffington Post, and Gods & Radicals. He is Editor-at-Large of NaturalisticPaganism.com. John also edited the anthology, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans and authored Neo-Paganism: Historical Inspiration & Contemporary Creativity. He is also a Shaper of the Earthseed community, more about which can be found at GodisChange.org.