About the Episode

In today's episode of UNSILENT "Honoring Her Son's Life After Suicide: Part 2" we get to know more about Rafiah, the mother of son Jamal who at 19 years old tragically lost his life to suicide in May of 2020. 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 second part of our three-part conversation with Rafiah, she opens up about what she feels are the mental health stigmas within the BIPOC community, the need for post-intervention, barriers to seeking treatment, and the impact of the collective trauma and loss within the black community. Be sure to check out part one of our conversation with Rafiah here: youtu.be/cdyk2YOpP5s. 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.

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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

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: When my son passed away, May 27th, 2020, at 5:55 AM I was by myself. My world went split, and I was forced to be a caregiver to some people grieving a grieving person, and then understand what to do next with my son, who I was torn to see in a body bag. Go to a morgue .

[00:00:29] Lance: I'm Lance, and this is UNSILENT, a S.P.E.AK 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 Rafiah. Now, Rafiah 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. We know these conversations are never easy to have, but we thank Rafiah again so much for being so open and honest with us. In today's second part of our three-part conversation with Rafiah, she opens up about what she feels are the mental health stigmas within the BIPOC community, the need for post intervention, barriers to seeking treatment, and the impact of the collective trauma and loss within the black community. And be sure to check out part one of our conversation with Rafiah linked in the show notes. Now let's dive in. 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.

[00:01:57] Rafiah: The first barrier is the fact that mental health and access to it is not as accessible. Uh, the local liquor store or the local currency exchange. Um, we have a serious drought in our community of those resources. And when they did exist, they were not funded well to allow us to continue to exist. So it causes us to go out of our communities and to other, you know, places that we're not familiar with, if we're eligible to even be in that part of the segment.

[00:02:33] The whole reality of being so vulnerable to something that we're told to really and truly absorb and know that you can get through it on your own or, you know, um, pray about it. Or even just knowing that, you know, we're here for you and it's gonna be all right. Like a quick fix thing has caused us to be real stagnated.

[00:02:56] And, um, I just truly believe that, you know, it gets to a point where the cattle gets too. You know, and it is to the point where we see the behaviors acting out from the feelings. The feelings are now the behaviors. I'm, I'm now going to, you know, Rob a store. I'm gonna, you know, not finish school. I'm not gonna be able to have a healthy relationship with someone because it's just too much to handle.

[00:03:22] Absolutely. I'm actually walking the walk now I'm, I'm doing the services that I didn't have when it was time for me to receive them in post inter. , I started a, a support group for the Bipo community and those of who've been impacted by loss. And I opened it up for persons, not just suicide, but for those who trauma of gun violence, because when it was time for me to find it, I was on Google putting in any word that came to my head that was an additive to help me and it was just total silence and you know, not accessible things.

[00:03:58] So it was really challenging. So therefore, It becomes where, you know, if you have the strength and resolve to say, I know I need this, I gotta gotta find it, and it's not there, maybe I can start it and just, just take a leap of faith, you know, who's to say it will be and whatnot. But I, I just truly know that that was my journey and continues to be.

[00:04:22] And, and for those who say, you know, we don't have it, it makes me feel like. , we have to really start thinking about, is it because we don't seek it or because we are, you know, scared to start it, or are we waiting for someone else when we can do it? You know, it's, it's a leap of faith by all means. Uh, the anchor to help me.

[00:04:44] In my process of my grief a lot differently than I am at this point. Um, I do have the supports. I do have the networks, but I do have those days where if I could rewind the picture back and had that intervention, it would've made a little bit more easier tr uh, path for me versus what it is like for me now.

[00:05:06] I'll give you an example. When my son passed away, May 27th, 2020, at 5 55. I was by myself. My world went split, and I was forced to be a caregiver to some people grieving a grieving person, and then understand what to do next with my son, who I was torn to see in a body bag. Go to a mor. . Okay. So with that, you have to get that together and wrap your head.

[00:05:41] And then also the planning, the understanding of what supports what, what happened, the questions, the things that you say to people, say to people, say to you. There was nobody to intervene with me to say, Okay, this is a new life rafia, and this is what you can do. This is how you handle, this is what you can look forward to.

[00:06:00] That kind of thing. And to have a. Was a, a blessing and also felt so humbling because to be honest with you, nobody wants to ever in their grieving go through a internet and just search for, for help. It's, it's, if you've ever had to do that, it's only because your sink was broke or something like that. It wasn't because I'm out, I'm out to go crazy cuz my son just hung himself.

[00:06:29] I need to find somebody to talk. Who is there, where are you? You know, and luckily I had the, the strength to do that, being a social worker and knowing that there was something out there or thinking or praying for it. But I also think about people who don't have the ability to do that. I don't know what route.

[00:06:51] And that's what happens in post intervention. You get those supports right then and there so that it can carry you as you go through. You can take 'em or leave them, but you know that they. , and you don't have to be somebody out there fishing for something that you have to already, you know, that you should already have fish for, if that makes sense.

[00:07:10] You know? Um, so yeah, I just, I just en encouraged there's a lot of post intervention programs throughout the United States, the loss program, which is, um, An organization that I am, um, newly learning about, uh, definitely advocates for the post intervention model cuz post intervention is pre-intervention.

[00:07:33] It's definitely a pre-intervention. There's not one black woman that hasn't had that feeling of, I gotta pull it together in a sense of a crisis because we have so many that we en we encounter every single day that it just becomes a. , whether you lose your job or your child is su su suspended from school, or you end up with a car issue, you've gotta fix, you've gotta pull it together, get the big girl panties on and make it work.

[00:08:01] And, and these situations we become and I became, um, Really traumatized and still trying to work through the pros. The, the fact that I had to go to a funeral home and I had to get a what? A gravestone, What is that? Where you go, uh, you know, people coming by and how to, how to, how to talk to people about something that, you know, have certain language that I'm learning that you say and don't say.

[00:08:29] You know, it was like a a, a fast college course on grief and. in a matter of minutes. And so therefore we all come with that first, you know how to do that. That is just and built and built in us. You know how we move when you meet someone from your hometown, when you're in a new city, it's almost like, um, when you go out of the country and you meet someone who speaks English and you've been in a place you've never been before and.

[00:09:04] It's those feelings of a commonality and some kind of connection to some extent of what you are experiencing without going through a definition of it or you being asked to defend it. And it alleviates that ability, uh, for a person to feel, um, like they are stigmatized going into something. So for therapy and for us in the black community, we have to tell a story and a narrative.

[00:09:32] We might have to shift with a therapist who's seen the news and never met a black person in real life, or never had a conversation or even a relationship or a therapist who probably did know a black family but did not know this kind of black family or this kind of black individual's experience. So it is like, like a fruit tree, meeting another fruit tree and being able to grow together, if that makes sense.

[00:10:00] Authenticity is the. . And for me, I can only present as I am and with some understanding that, um, I can read really good, um, you know, overt behaviors or I feel like I'm a really emotionally intelligent person. So oftentimes when I'm in conversation or with other persons of different cultures and I feel that my message isn't being heard, I, I try to circle around.

[00:10:32] because I really, I really do think the importance is that, you know, you keep an eye, not only the therapists on you, but you with the therapists because it's, it's something they're gaining and, um, they come with their own biases and their own understandings and so forth. So I'm, I'm a hundred percent with authenticity, with being very real.

[00:10:55] Um, I, I often. Sometimes use, um, jargons that I have to sometimes clarify. And then at the same time, I also want it to be clear about, you know, where I stand on certain issues and stuff, because it could be a perception of other things based on my background and where I came from, my experiences and things like.

[00:11:18] So, you know, it's not just the norm kind of thing, you know, it's not just because I'm a black woman, I'm a single black woman, or I am someone who never went to college or didn't finish college, stuff like that. And it comes up in such small ways. I'll give you an example that had a conversation with someone.

[00:11:39] And I had a ponytail in my hair. I had a ponytail. And, um, long story short, uh, the person made a comment about that ponytail being as silky and straight as her hair. And, um, I did not initially get it until after a conversation with another black woman who was on the call and asked me what my feelings were.

[00:11:58] And so those, those, those little sentiments of, of racism, you know, comes in and you, you count, you don't even catch them. And so there are times, and I brought that up to say, you know, there are times when you can miss the mark. And you might have to circle back on that. And I think as a culture, we're really getting a little bit more stronger in doing that, although it's very scary too because of authoritative feelings.

[00:12:20] But yeah, you know, trauma and loss is so common within the black community. I don't even think we have a grips of it. Um, I have not met in my lifetime and I haven't met every black person, but I'm pretty sure the population I've met is a great example of. That they have not experienced some vicarious trauma or trauma within their family or in their own life, mainly because of the socioeconomic issues that we deal with, the biases and barriers we have to go through.

[00:12:54] And definitely, um, the outcomes of, uh, what that struggle looks like. And because it's so big and it's so vast, a lot of us have not even got a chance to sit down and think about that. I hear stories all the time that make me feel like, Wow, and you're still going to work? Or am, Oh my goodness, how do you even breathe?

[00:13:18] You know, because it's, it's just, it's just a movie script waiting to happen. So essentially, What happens with that? Like I said before, you see a lot of those behaviors come out because of that feeling, and that feeling just resonates so much that it can carry down to different messages in that person's spirit and body and, and where they move around.

[00:13:42] And, um, it's a hurtful thing. It's a very hurtful thing to the point where we're so traumatized. We're traumatized by our own culture. There are many black people who can't go in certain communities that are black because they've been traumatized by the expectations of what that community is about or what will happen in that community.

[00:14:04] So your own, you're fearful of your own people and imagine that. So it, it just kind of just snowballs for sure. I definitely would empathize with that cycle, and I understand it feels like you're just in this circle that never has a opening. I definitely believe that it's been normalized and we've been, you know, um, indoctrinated to believe that's just gonna be your life.

[00:14:35] And at the same time, to get out of it feels like there's no, no out in it. It's if, if you know, this is it, this is it. There's no other bigger projection. But there is, there is, and it takes a lot of courage. It is not warm and fuzzy all the time, and it opens up some doors and some, some windows that you never wanted to see.

[00:15:04] But at the end of the day, with a lot of work and courage with it, it does transform you. So getting past the stigma is not just the, you know, destination, it's the journey. It's the real journey, and it pays off.

[00:15:24] 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.

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