About the Episode

UNSILENT Season 2, Ep 1 - "Surviving Triple Suicide Loss: Part 1" with Danielle. In Part 1 of this 3-part SPEAK, we get to know Danielle and her lived experience of being a survivor of three suicide losses in her family. She talks impact of these losses, her own mental health journey, and tackles the often-asked questions to survivors of "What should we say? What can we do? What could you have done?" We thank Danielle for her honestly, her heart, and her conviction to mental health advocacy.

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: Danielle Donelson danielledonelson.substack.com

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] Danielle: Were oftentimes looking to the very last events that took place, the very last conversations or moments of their lives to, to understand if I had just done this one thing different, um, if they would still be here, but that it's really to shortchange their experience, that there were many, many things that led up to that.

[00:00:21] Lance: Hi, my name is Lance, and this is UNS silent. I speak series by no stigmas that champions mental health advocacy, and challenges, stigmas that all too often prevent people from getting the help they need. We're so happy. You're here in today's first part of a three-part conversation. We get to know Danielle who personally is a triple suicide loss survivor, and professionally is a cultural reiteration and a professor of English and composition.

[00:00:45] So she really understands the importance and the power of storytelling and sharing lived experiences with one. Her in today's episode, we get to know more about Danielle and her history with mental health, as well as the experiences surrounding her loss. She also dives into the idea of survivor's guilt and this pressure we put on ourselves to say the right thing, or what could we have done?

[00:01:05] And she reminds us of the importance of saving space for one another's grief. We're so thankful to Danielle for sharing her story with us and being so honest and open and vulnerable. Thank you again for being with us. And remember to break these stigmas, we must be unsilent. 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.

[00:01:36] Danielle: I consider myself a mental health advocate because I am a survivor of, uh, two suicides in my immediate family, my father and my brother both completed suicide. My mother also she's passed now, but she's struggled, um, greatly with PTSD. With, uh, depression with her own struggles with mental illness. And I have also had my own, uh, journey with them as well.

[00:02:00] And because of those lived experiences and, um, also seeing my students struggle, I'm a professor and, and with the. With the experiences of, of the collective trauma and grief of, of, of COVID with the pandemic. I have seen a great need for us to continue to try to destigmatize mental illness and to try to great gain greater conversation and advocacy about.

[00:02:28] Issues of mental health, the issues of mental illness, um, what it means to have ongoing journeys of depression, anxiety, living with PTSD, living as a survivor of, of suicides. When someone you, you knows, you know, completes, uh, suicide in that way. So that's a little bit about, about my background and why I think it is so important.

[00:02:48] And so personal to me. I grew up in the family, a family that was quite dysfunctional. My father was, was an alcoholic. And I looking back, I think both of my parents had issues with, uh, PTSD and, and their own journeys of, um, mental illness that went undiagnosed. And because of that, we grew up in a very, I grew up in a very dysfunctional and volatile relationship, a volatile atmosphere.

[00:03:10] My, my background was very, um, dysfunctional. And because of that, I see that that had really. My own experiences with learning how to exist in a dysfunctional background, in a traumatic, a traumatic time space and what that's meant for me now. Um, so that was a little bit about how I, I, I grew up and it certainly with, with the experiences of my, my brother and my.

[00:03:37] Father completing suicide. Um, I needed to address some of the issues that were a part of my dysfunctional past that led them to that point, but also things that were part of my lived embodied experiences that were part of how I needed to cope with my own mental health and my own mental journey towards mental wellness.

[00:03:56] Um, so I don't believe that something like suicide or something like DYS. Family happens all at once, you know, as part of a continuous journey. And I see that, that, that now. And so I think you're, I think you're smart to, to kind of highlight, um, how people, uh, their backgrounds, you know, how they, how they grow up and how that plays a part in our, in our mental health and our, um, perhaps likelihood of having to address mental illness in ourselves and our family members.

[00:04:25] It became a moment for me, where I needed to take a really hard look at myself in the way that I was handling my mental health and, um, addressing some of the mental illnesses that I, you know, carried, as I said, like the depression and the PTSD and the anxiety. From some of the, you know, ways that I'd grown up.

[00:04:47] My coping mechanism, some of the genetic components that I had handed down for me and just what I had had to kind of endure with, with their dysfunction and, and their untreated mental illness for several years. But I got to a point where I needed to, to realize that they are all path now. Um, And that the accountability was really on, on me.

[00:05:09] Um, and that, that was a, that was a hard thing. And that is a hard thing. It's part of my, my journey and understanding that it's important for me to validate that I, that I was a, a victim to acknowledge that that was a hard thing to acknowledge that I was survivor that I moved past that, but that I didn't necessarily, as, as you, I think you're alluding to, I didn't want to be entirely defined.

[00:05:33] My story by their experience with their choices and. Therefore I needed to undergo some intense self-reflection therapy and healing because otherwise cycles of trauma can just continue. You know, I, I can pinpoint various moments in my parents' lives, where, where they were also victims and survivors. Um, but that ultimately we need the, the, we haven't though, we're not in charge of our trauma.

[00:06:00] We're still in charge of healing from it and take accountability of that because. I am, uh, almost 40 years old and I am an adult now and my family members have, you know, have passed. So I need to make sure that I'm in charge of my own accountability and self autonomy and healing so that I don't continue to perpetuate intergenerational trauma and harm.

[00:06:27] So. Grappling with those interconnectedness, that, that inner relationship interrelatedness between my, my family member's influence on me, but also now, especially realizing I am the author of my story and what I choose to do now, how I choose to live and how I choose to cope with these things. It is truly my decision.

[00:06:49] And, and it's on me now. So trying to weigh both of those things, like. Influence them in ways that I would not have chosen. I would not have authored this story in this way, but I see it. This is this, I, I choose my words very, very carefully here. I, I see it as a, a potential blessing that I may choose to address.

[00:07:16] Cycles of dysfunction and intergenerational harm, intergenerational trauma from their choices and the fact that they've passed now. And if it hadn't been so bad, so many tragedies, so many, um, moments of grief and multiple suicides, I'm not sure I would've had to take a good, hard look at the choices that they made and maybe some of the, you.

[00:07:40] Choices that I was making to make some really, really concrete decisions about the ways in which I was gonna live my life differently and seeking out healing in multiple forms of therapy and support and lifestyle choice choices, and changes because it, it was the moment where I could no longer, um, blame somebody else.

[00:08:00] And I couldn't hide from myself that was scary and freeing at the same time. Um, both of those things are true, but. It has pushed me to, to try to, to heal and cope and find healthier ways of living that I don't think I would've done otherwise. Maybe I ought to have taken the very, very, um, depressive comments or desire to die more, more seriously.

[00:08:26] I think that that's part of, you know, the, the coping and the grieving. Ultimately though you have to, you have to move past that point and realize. It's not gonna serve you. It's not gonna change. Um, the outcome. You can make yourself very, very, um, unwell and be very, very unkind to yourself by having that continuous conversation in your head again.

[00:08:52] And then again and again, I have spent time in survivors support groups, where they talk about the cup that overflowed, and that's a very helpful metaphor in which case, you know, we, we, as people who. Aren't in a suicidal mindset, strive to understand how somebody could have done that and reached that point.

[00:09:10] And we're oftentimes looking to the very last events that took place, the very last conversations or moments of their lives to, to understand if I had just done this one thing different, um, if they would still be here, but that it's really to shortchange their experience, that there were many, many things that led up to that point.

[00:09:31] Um, One drop, well, one thing that caused the cup to overflow, but that there was a whole, the problem was they, they, it had been building for them. It had been building for them. So. I think validating your grief and your coping and, and your, the, the flux of emotions that you're gonna feel is important. I mean, that's true for, for anybody who's mourning and grieving any loss or any death, how much more for suicide, which we have a really hard time grappling with.

[00:10:02] It's very hard for the suicide, um, survivors, and that can be a family member that can be, you know, a partner, a colleague. A friend, just anyone within the community. Um, the very idea of suicide really shakes people because we have a very hard time understanding how somebody could be in that much pain and that sort of a mental place.

[00:10:22] And it all, especially not knowing what comes next. Right. We have faith, we have convictions, we have beliefs and, and hopes, but how could it be that that, that the unknown is, is, is preferable. And I think. It's also important to, to realize that,

[00:10:44] that whatever you're feeling, all of those emotions of, of, of anger, of sadness, of guilt. To validate them not to try to repress them, but then as they are emotions to understand that they are fleeting and that this is part of a very, very complex process of grief. I, I think it is extremely painful, no matter what the emotion and our tendency to try to grapple with that pain is to ignore it, repress it, self Medicaid, all of the things that.

[00:11:14] Um, but that the best and most healthiest thing is to find outlets for it and to allow them to flow and allow yourself to feel those things. That is how I have coped and how I have learned from other people's stories and experiences of, of coping. Um, Grief grief is, is intense. It comes in ways. It'll let you know when it's done with you, but it's also, I, I hesitate even to, to use that language because I think there's no true healing.

[00:11:50] There's no true. Um, when you get over something like this, it's all. New norm, it's all part of how you live with it. This is part of your story and your experience. You are changed forever more and it becomes better and more constructive. I think, to help your, to help you to think of it is this new stage, this new position in life after this experience, how am I going to carry it and cope with it?

[00:12:20] Because there's, there's just no going back. There's you it's forever. D. And accepting that rather than trying to, to change that. And that can be very hard. Um, we don't necessarily do a really great job. I don't think in this culture talking about in dealing with death and grief, as I said, that's even with, um, you know, deaths of people who are no less painful, but terminally ill expected again, when someone takes their own life, we it's, it's a specific category of.

[00:12:52] How in the world could that happen and how can we process it? But we don't do a very good job of holding space for that and having a really good language in which to, to offer support. Um, we use oftentimes trait platitudes and things, and, and I think people don't know what to say and they try, um, but people can be very, very uncomfortable and, and also addressing that.

[00:13:16] People care, but people don't necessarily know what to say. And so also kind of being aware of that and having your own ways of, of, of addressing that and, and talking about it with yourself. Once the inevitable, you know, thing is said that that can be harmful and hurtful find your people that will hold space for you, allow you to process and share your story without the need to impart some sort.

[00:13:45] Wisdom or, you know, religious commentary on where they are now, they're in a better place. Everything happens for a reason. God never gives you more than you can handle. All of those things are very, very, um, harmful and, and hurtful for people who have experienced any loss in any depth, but especially so with, with, with self, you know, completion of, of, of suicide, I think, I think I.

[00:14:13] Encourage us to take a step back and interrogate the whole concept of what do I say? Why do we have to say anything? Why do we think that our words will be especially useful or fix the situation? Because it's not going to, it's not going to take away the hurt. It's not gonna bring the person back. I think more often when people are grieving, whether it's from suicide loss or a death of, of, of a family member or friend in another way, we're, we're looking for someone to hold space for us.

[00:14:44] We're looking for somebody to, to listen to us and be present with us in our, in our, in our pain and the experience that we're enduring to be able to, to offer that. With extreme compassion, empathy, openness to listen. And to try to understand from their own ex from their experience is I believe the best gift that you can give somebody in that situation precisely because however well intentioned and I do believe a lot of us are well intentioned, but I also believe a lot of us are uncomfortable with not being able to do anything or say anything.

[00:15:29] But the truth of the matter is you can't. And, and to try to remove that factor, that, that, that emphasis, and just G with somebody, um, it takes your own ego out of it. And. If you feel which isn't to say that acts, you know, helpful acts. Aren't a nice thing to offer somebody, but giving them that choice, what sometimes offering to do something for somebody.

[00:15:59] Or if you know the person and have a good relationship and logistical things. I mean, there's a reason why we bring food. There's a reason, you know, and all those things are wonderful things. Um, logistical things, picking up kids, meal, trains, all, you know, all those things. They're, they're wonderful. Um, and they're needed.

[00:16:16] People need to, to go on, you know, they have things to do. But to, to fully accept that there are no words and nothing you can do, that's going to fix it. And you're also not gonna understand their experience either. And I think we're so conditioned to try to offer words that, get that we understand. And I think it's, I think it's shortsighted.

[00:16:43] I think it's kind of heartbreaking because even people will share with me. I'm I'm suffering because of the loss of a mother. I know that's nothing compared to what you went through. How is that useful? You, your loss is still important. It's still, you know, part of your experience. It's still painful, painful for you.

[00:17:01] And we don't have to compare. I can hold space for what you have endured without trying to one up you or compete against. That my loss is greater. I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind too, because that doesn't really serve anybody. I, I think we all have our own journey and our own losses that we have to, to address.

[00:17:26] And certainly, you know, we might not necessarily always be in the emotional capacity to, to carry that for somebody. And I'm not suggesting that we do there's importance for therapy and, and, you know, and, and grief work. Um, But I think that that's one of the best things, um, is even to say, I don't really understand your experience.

[00:17:49] I can't really understand your experience is it can be a really powerful thing to just validate that what they're going through, whatever loss that is, is incredibly unique to their story and their experience. You don't have to understand it, get over it. and I even about myself, It's not always a bad pace.

[00:18:09] We PLA bad place. We are seeking to make connections in our relationships from our experiences to other people's experiences. But can you hold that truth and the competing, contradictory truth, the contradict like the paradox, right? That. That that it, it, it, there are comparisons between, you know, lived embodied experiences of, of grief and loss.

[00:18:32] And yet there are distinctions. And can we hold both of those at the same time, without trying to completely homogenize everybody's experiences? That's, that's the balance. So I understand why, where it comes from, and it, and it's actually a great thing in, in some ways, relationship building and building connections, but can it be both and rather than either, or.

[00:18:57] Lance: We say thank you again to Danielle for sharing her story with us and being so open and honest and vulnerable, and to go beyond the show, you can always connect with us at no stigmas on all social media platforms and@nostigmas.org. Thank you again so much for joining us today and remember be UNSILENT.

[00:19:14] We'll see you next time.

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