My boy. . .forever 16. . .stuck in time. . .never moving forward on this earthly plane. I see your brothers, cousins, friends and classmates moving forward onto the next phase of life, but you will be forever a teenager on the brink of manhood. The concept of time for a mother whose child has left this earth is filled with emotions that can be difficult to understand. I want time to stop—how dare life continue without you. Yet, I want it to move quickly forward for the days without you rip through my broken heart. With each passing year, the missing gets worse, different, it is now part of my core. The memories become harder to hold onto and I’m just so tired. Tired in a bone weary way that
Today marks day one of Suicide Prevention Week 2017. Having lost my precious 16-year-old son T.J. to suicide almost 7 years ago, suicide prevention has become my life’s work. The more involved I become in mental health advocacy and suicide prevention, the more I understand the need for awareness and education. Each year over 40,000 people die by suicide in this country. These people aren’t just numbers. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and friends. They are not cowards or selfish. They are people who battled an illness that robbed them of the ability to think of anything more than escaping a pain so intense it defies description. They are people whose minds are h
