About the Episode

In today's episode of UNSILENT "Honoring Her Son's Life After Suicide: Part 1" we get to know Rafiah, the mother of son Jamal who at 19 years old tragically lost his life to suicide in May of 2020. Watch Part 1 on YouTube at youtu.be/cdyk2YOpP5s and stream wherever you listen to podcasts. 🍎 🎧 ➡️ bitly.ws/uMD8 ⬅️

Since the loss of Jamal, Rafiah has gone on to be an outspoken and passionate advocate for breaking mental health stigmas, especially in the BIPOC community. She chooses every day to honor the life and spirit of her son, Jamal, as she puts her advocacy in action with her own charity, Soul Survivors of Chicago [instagram.com/soulsurvivorschi]. In today's first part of our 3-part conversation with Rafiah, we start by getting to know more about her and her family's story, the loss of her son, and celebrate Jamal with love.

Be sure to visit nostigmas.org/unsilent to watch, listen to, and read all of our conversations this season. We are survivors, thrivers, advocates, and Allies. We see you. We love you.

BE UNSILENT 💚

Episode Notes

Thank you for being here. To go beyond the show, consider leaving us a positive review and sharing wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us and reach out on social media @nostigmas. We'd love to connect with you. To learn more about NoStigmas and how we can team up to fight stigmas, visit nostigmas.org.

Special Thanks To…

Guest: Rafiah Maxie

In honor of her son, Jamal

Learn more about Rafiah and her advocacy:

soulsurvivorsofchicago.com

Facebook - facebook.com/soulsurvivorschi

Instagram - instagram.com/soulsurvivorschi

YouTube - youtube.com/channel/UChpg7O4WL65M242daEFtR4Q

Helpful Links and Resources

NoStigmas Website: nostigmas.org

Meet the Team!

John Panicucci | Video Editor

Lance Bordelon | Marketing Coordinator

Maggie Seagraves | Marketing Assistant

Jacob Moore | NoStigmas Founder & Unsilent EP | @jacobmoore

Music

Another Day Of Moon by BatchBug | soundcloud.com/batchbug

Music promoted by free-stock-music.com

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Rafiah: We grew up with, and then to actually have it in your household where it was orchestrated by somebody that you really love is a nightmare. So we are not through it, we are going with it. And that's a different kind of feeling, um, because there's no end to this tunnel. It's a light, but I still have to walk.

[00:00:24] Lance: Hi, I'm Lance and this is UNSILENT, a S.P.E.A.K. series by NoStigmas that champions mental health advocacy and challenges the stigmas that all too often prevent people from getting the help they need. We're so glad you're here. In today's conversation, we get to know Rafia. Now. Rafia is the mother of Jamal, who at 19 years old tragically lost his life to suicide in May of 2020. Since then, Rafia has gone on to be an outspoken and passionate advocate for breaking mental health stigmas, especially in the BIPOC community. She chooses every day to honor the life and spirit of her son Jamal, by putting her advocacy in action with her own charity, Soul Survivors of Chicago, which donates the shoes of those who have died by suicide or other mental health challenges, or those that are donated in honor of someone who's passed to individuals who are coming out of incarceration. In today's first part of our three part conversation with Rafiah, we get to know more about her and her family's story and the loss of her son. We know these conversations are never easy to have, but we thank Rafia again so much for being so open and honest with us.

[00:01:23] TRIGGER WARNING: Today's episode contains in-depth conversations around suicide, suicidal ideation, and suicide loss. It's okay. If you need to skip this one, do what's right for you.

[00:01:38] Rafiah: My earliest recollection of my son in mental health challenges was, First noticing his isolation. Often time, oftentimes when it came to sometimes being around, uh, after school programs and just being okay with being by himself, you know, that kind of alarmed us and we wondered why he would be sitting down on the bench when everybody else will be playing or.

[00:02:09] When he would be a little isolated, when it was time for pickup, those kind of things. And that happened in about fourth grade. At sixth grade happened, he matured a lot and growed a lot of friends that he gravitated to. And were part of a academia of, you know, advanced placement and um, really involved in school.

[00:02:31] So I, I started to see him really gravitate more a lot to them, but at the same time still concerned because he was so quiet at times and we often thought he had something to say, but we're not necessarily said. And then of course, when the bullying situation occurred and we got notice of it by way of his actual attempt, it became like the pieces to the puzzle came together.

[00:02:59] For example, you send a child to school with his uniform on nightly, nicely pressed and cleaned, and then he comes home as if he's been in a football game and you wonder why they're so dirty. Or you look at certain things as how they go straight to their room or not. And it was because he had been bullied that whole day and he could not express those feelings.

[00:03:23] And often, um, I wanna say he. Really describing to the thought, the thought that we would, um, I don't know, um, maybe be concerned to the point where we would be upset and, you know, it was a matter of some girls that were bullying him. So the whole impact of. Not being aggressive to women because he was taught that those kind of things played a part.

[00:03:52] And I think his decision making to be so silent, Jamal blossomed in high school. He was very much a sociable person, but very reserved. Um, he enjoyed, um, his core friends cause they all kind of gravitated to the next school, to the next school. Um, he enjoyed, um, Comic books and he enjoyed lots of reading. A Diary of a Wimp Kid was his favorite.

[00:04:22] Um, he was very much a, uh, animated person and enjoyed the comic book, uh, make, uh, Marvel comic movies and enjoyed going to those a lot. And he was one that I think a. Female friends felt good to have as a friend because he was so inviting in his spirit. When you look at the ratio of men and women, he had his friends.

[00:04:48] You know, I often think that um, a lot of the female friends really enjoyed his company cuz he was comforting just as much as being with some of the boys. Yeah. I get asked this question a lot and um, to make the, the biggest understanding of it. It's, it's pretty much like when you get up in the morning, you put a seatbelt on every day because it's part of you.

[00:05:20] Having to drive to a to a place, and you never anticipate in the accident. I think every day as a parent, we put a seatbelt on and we do the prayers, the meditations, We talk to our children, we do things to provide, and that's our seatbelt. But to actually forecast that my son would hang himself in our garage that day, I had absolutely no idea.

[00:05:47] I had suspicion of him not being feeling well because he was upset that day behind a situation, um, with a female friend. There was no red flags that I could see or pick up that that would be the last day he wanted to be here. And then he kept so quiet and so reserved, and when you would ask him, you had to take it for face value that he did feel the way he felt.

[00:06:15] Is what I went with. Um, so of course that made me feel, um, I don't know, uh, wanting to move with the move of what he was moving. But to be honest with you, there is no, no one way you can say this is, you know, the day, that kind of thing. So I had no, you know, running script. , we continue to go on. Um, many of us, um, are now coming to the understanding that we suffer from PTSD and the impact of trauma.

[00:06:58] Um, the vicarious trauma we experienced living here in the city of Chicago with the shootings and violence we grew up with. Then to actually have it in your household where it was orchestrated by somebody that you really love is a nightmare. So we are not through it. We're going with it. And that's a different kind of feeling.

[00:07:26] Um, because there's no end to this tunnel. It's a light. But I still have to walk. You know, I remember as a child seeing one of my first rainbow. And I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a place called Kill Award, and it was, um, off of 79th Street Auburn Gresham community, uh, full of gang um, affiliation and right in the height of crack cocaine.

[00:07:56] And when I saw that rainbow, I wanted to follow it to the end of wherever it was. And I remember walking as a child trying to get to that end of that rainbow. I never got to it because I never could find out where it was going. I just knew the colors. And it's like that in this grief and trauma process where you continue to follow it.

[00:08:19] But there's, there's no golden pot until, you know, way, way down the line. And just 26 months, it's just been 26 months. That's a year, two years now. And my life starts with May 27th when I wake up and it starts and ends with today. Everything else that we talk about later is like fragmented. So no, we, we, we are not at a point where we can honestly say get through it.

[00:08:49] We have continually to advocate and be a, a point of, um, putting meaning to his life. And that's how we kinda process. Tragedy. But as far as like seeing a finality, I don't know when that will come. Just like that. Rainbow. Well, we're indoctrinated to believe that we are strong. We come from a background of slavery, of, uh, institutional racism.

[00:09:25] We've come from many heights and many loads. One. Secondly, we've come to a faith belief that God and our higher power is the ultimate person who fixes and who is in indoctrinated to be a part of our next steps. Three, we've never seen and we don't have the greatest exposure to mental health, behavioral health, or supports that help you in the wellbeing of life.

[00:09:55] I gotta exposure to a nail. There's lots of liquor stores, there's lots of currency exchange. There are lots of, um, you know what I call them, Dock in the box and, and churches here and there. Food is everywhere. But something to help with my wellbeing. I never grew up going to a place that said, Come in, You are welcome.

[00:10:20] So all those factors coming into play make a stigma. That is so embedded in you to when you hear somebody speak about things like mental illness, it becomes like, Give me five feet cancer. We can deal with a tragedy of a gun violence, But mental illness is like really a true pivotal change for many of us.

[00:10:47] And so in this, speaking about speaking to someone about something you've never spoke to yourself about, . It's difficult. I mean, I can remember many times when after this happened, my suicidal ideations growing up as a child who, you know, lost my mother and my father due to the elements of, you know, the epidemic or crack.

[00:11:14] Okay. And what that was like to be a motherless child, you know, to say that to someone and then hope that they can kind of relate. , that's a scary piece. And so we come with understanding that, you know, you're just soft or you can do it or, you know, just, just pray on it or you know, it will all pass. You know, write a journal, read a book.

[00:11:41] You know, something that's self indulged. But it does take help to process that because to hear it come outta your mouth is a different thing for it to live in your. When the first attempt occurred, and I was surprised about them even hospitalizing him for those two days. The one thing they asked me is what you do, and when I said, I'm a social worker and told him I'm a licensed clinical social worker.

[00:12:09] It was almost like a easy breezy, okay, he can come out of this because he's with somebody who's like me kind of thing. So all the procedures, the exit, the discharge, all that kind of stuff I was familiar with. Not only that, I wanted to make sure to let them know that I know what you're doing, so we're not gonna play this game of, tell me some fluffy Duffy stuff and then go on.

[00:12:33] I know diagnosis just as much as you. So that was the first premise of understanding with the thing. But I often think about families who don't have that wisdom, knowledge, and understanding when they go through this process because at the same time, I still faced a lot of the stigmas. And in particular, I remember the SAS Worst Girl, which is the crisis intervention model we have here in Illinois where they evaluate within 24 hours of suicide ideation or.

[00:13:05] Within a hospital, she's telling me, Well, I'm gonna be honest with you. Uh, we're gonna ho we, we, we hospitalize kids like this, but I have to see if we have a bed. And that was the most crushing thing to me because one, you're telling me my son is eligible for mental health services, but if they don't have a bed, he's coming home with me.

[00:13:32] and it's my responsibility. Imagine having a headache. You go to the doctor, you get a a prescription, but then the headache turns into a migraine that continues to go on and on and on, and then you set an appointment with a doctor or somebody to help you, and then you go back. You get a little bit of dose, but you continue have to wait to that day of that appointment.

[00:13:56] That's exactly what happens in mental health. Search situ. , you get the service, and then there's the aftercare that needs to happen, which is a total mess, total mess, especially in Covid. But at the same time, you still deal with this headache that I want you to address at some point. So cultural competency is so,

[00:14:20] is so, so important and relevant to, to how we bond and move forward when it comes to working with a person. When it comes to psychotherapy, and particularly with mental illness, because you don't have to wear my shoe, but you might know that we might like the same brand or, or fit in the same size and that kind of thing.

[00:14:44] So being aware of what your glasses and your lenses are looking. And being able to kind of dissect it in a lot of ways based on history and based on what we've experienced is imperative. For example, living in certain regions of the United States, there is a culture, a culture that will eat your policy up for lunch.

[00:15:08] If you are not aware of the culture, I don't care what laws you have, I don't care what situation go on, my culture runs. We can think of Mardi Gra. Mardi Gra and the carnival season continued during pandemic, despite the fact that there was a big episode of infection despite this and that that culture ran strong.

[00:15:34] So being aware and in the best sense authentically about understanding that culture is vital in my situation for my son. He is an African American male, but he is from a middle class family. He didn't grow up with a gold spoon in his mouth, but it wasn't plastic either. So he came from the background of many people who had to work blue collar and.

[00:16:02] No education and, and we leaned on the back of others. So his understanding of achievement was one, because he had been led to it. But secondly, there was some things that were no-nos that society told him, I have no idea why my son wouldn't feel inclined to tell me he was being pushed in the ground by women outside of thinking maybe he did not want.

[00:16:29] Be aggressive to women because that was a bad thing, Things like that. So we grew up with understandings and try to move forward with those as well.

[00:16:41] Lance: To go beyond the show, be sure to connect with us on all social media platforms @nostigmas, and you can always reach out at nostigmas.org to connect with us and see how we can team up together to champion mental health equity for all. Remember to break these stigmas, we must be UNSILENT. We'll see you next time.

Comment