suicide

Hope for Troubled Minds – Dreams Deferred by Mary DiNardi

Mary was born and raised in Boston. She moved to Florida in 2008, where she worked in the hospitality industry and as a Victim Advocate. In May of 2022, she and her husband retired, with lots of travel plans! She now volunteers as a Victim Advocate for a local Police Department. For the past several years, she has worked on obtaining Mental Health resources for her community and in raising awareness for the Suicide crisis. Mary wants you to know her son is more than his diagnoses. Justin is extremely bright, funny, and strong. She is blessed to be his mom. Dear Justin.. I recently found the journal I kept while I was pregnant with you. I cried reading it. I never would have imagined how hard your life, our lives, would be. Our journey is not the one I wrote about in that journal. The hopes and dreams [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds – Dreams Deferred by Mary DiNarditonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:21-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: To Dearest Dad, most lovingly from Helen

Dearest Dad, It has been twenty years since you took your own life. I have only just begun to openly talk about your life and death. Why? Maybe it was because we didn’t celebrate your life with family and friends in early February, 2001. Maybe it was because I didn’t fully understand the extend of your mental illness. Maybe it was because you and Mom moved to Florida in 1972 and there wasn’t much visitation between the families. Thanks for being my father. I am blessed to call you “Dad” and want to tell the world about our life together. I remember living in our small house when I was very young. I was unaware that most six-years didn’t go to bed while the sun was still shining brightly. Mother would fix supper for Nancy and me. She would not eat with us but ate with you when you came [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: To Dearest Dad, most lovingly from Helentonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:22-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: An Open Letter to a Fellow Traveler by Brandon A.

Dear Fellow Traveler, Did you think life was going to go like this? You had plans and dreams about work, life, accomplishments, where you wanted to live and with who. Then mental illness stepped in. Now what? I was 14 when the darkness fell on me. I had been a freshman: insecure, loud, loving, caring, smart, prideful, naïve, hopeful, occasionally hardworking, unfocused, etc. I played drums in bands, played goalie in soccer, and played risk with my friends, sometimes for days. Then I was nothing. I was a contaminant. I was walking anguish. I got home every day and carried myself upstairs to my room. I would turn on the radio, collapse into my comforter, and sob. The music drowned out the crying so no one else could hear. I was not alone. Kay Redfield Jameson had bipolar disorder, like I do, and she survived. She had become a clinical [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: An Open Letter to a Fellow Traveler by Brandon A.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:24-04:00

A Woman Among Lions, Fighting for Faith and Family by Kirsten Panachyda

My guest blogger today is Kirsten Panachyda. Kirsten writes and speaks to infuse courage into the soul-weary. Her book Among Lions: Fighting for Faith and Finding Your Rest while Parenting a Child with Mental Illness is available now. Kirsten blogs at kirstenp.com. She and her husband Dan have two sons, and they are a roller-coaster-riding, travel-loving, blue-hair-dying family. Once again my night devolved into nightmares, restless dozing, and eventually, sleeplessness. I stayed in bed until I felt like I would explode if I didn't cry and then I crept downstairs. I shuffled into the kitchen, thinking maybe I could make a cup of herbal tea to soothe my tight throat and aching chest. I got as far as the stove, picked up the battered red kettle, and slid down to the floor. My kitchen floor was not something nice to sit on. When we bought the house in 1997, [...]

A Woman Among Lions, Fighting for Faith and Family by Kirsten Panachydatonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:28-04:00

Out of the Darkness by Laura M.

I have a horrible confession, an unthinkable thought. At one point, I thought about ending my life. Why? Well, I’d just had a baby and my husband of thirteen years had been constantly on my case, during my whole pregnancy, about what a horrible person I was, what a failure as a mother I was, and how I cornered him with this pregnancy. What was the point of my being here then? It never occurred to me, until later, of course, that those feelings were a mix of sleep deprivation, of not having the medicine I needed to heal, of postpartum depression, and that my husband was abusive. I was breastfeeding our child and his tummy was not filling up. Plus, he was a newborn with his days and nights mixed up, and was busting out of his swaddles like Hulk Hogan. All I saw, instead of those logical [...]

Out of the Darkness by Laura M.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:32-04:00

Helping Each Other During the Chaos of COVID by Emma B.

This was written by Emma is a psychologist in New Zealand who works using the Solution Focused approach. She has worked in mental health, education, and suicide postvention and is currently employed by New Zealand Police within the family harm team. In her spare time, Emma delivers free suicide prevention workshops to the general public, as well as online learning via Zoom. Let me begin by acknowledging that 2020 has been a tough year for everyone. That said, let’s talk about how to help each other get through the changes brought by this virus….. Convey empathy People need to feel heard and understood. It is important that we acknowledge what the situation is like for them, without judgment, and communicate that we understand how things are for them. Examples of statements or questions that convey empathy include: It sounds like things have been really stressful for you? It must [...]

Helping Each Other During the Chaos of COVID by Emma B.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:32-04:00

from When Despair Meets Delight – a spiritual encounter

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. ~ Edgar Allan Poe Share with the LORD’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (Romans 12.13) chapter five - spiritual encounter I had a good friend in college, Steve Franz, who used to say, I drink and smoke because they are the best ways I know to commit suicide in a manner deemed acceptable by society. I’m convinced no one really wants to kill themselves. We just want to stop the pain. We want to silence the voices. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 9.2 [...]

from When Despair Meets Delight – a spiritual encountertonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:33-04:00

from When Despair Meets Delight: Denise on a Mission (TRIGGER ALERT)

"Look to the living, love them, and hold on." ~ Kay Redfield Jamison. "O God, who gave us birth, you are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray. You know our needs before we ask, and our ignorance in asking. Show us now your grace, that as we face the mystery of death we may see the light of eternity. Speak to us once more your solemn message of life and of death. Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live,so that living or dying, our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen LORD. Amen." ~ Book of Common Worship Daily Prayer from CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: denise on a mission The best opportunities I had to serve in ministry together with youth and adults [...]

from When Despair Meets Delight: Denise on a Mission (TRIGGER ALERT)tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:34-04:00

Mental Health Ministry with a Faithful Friend

Something HUGE is happening for me this weekend and the only thing better than its magnitude is that my good friend will share it with me. This Saturday from 10:15 - 11 am I will be participating in a Zoom dialogue with my partner in mental health ministry, Eric Riddle. Eric and I first met in 2014, when an article about me and my first book came out in the local newspaper. Eric and I share similar diagnoses and also had experienced a measure of healing from both prayer and pills, worship and psychotherapy, Bible studies and support groups. We met weekly for nine months with no agenda but to walk around Eric's neighborhood, talk about what was in our hearts, and listen for God's guidance. Over that period we conceived of a faith-based mental health support group called Faithful Friends that has touched the lives of dozens of men [...]

Mental Health Ministry with a Faithful Friendtonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:34-04:00

I am ; even me.

I’m writing this on September 11, 2019. World Suicide Prevention Day. About an hour ago I read the tragic news about Pastor & Mental Health Advocate Jarrid Wilson, who died two days ago by suicide. Here is how Christianity Today described Wilson — His wife, Julianne Wilson posted a photo tribute of her husband on Instagram. The photo slideshow shows him fishing “in his happy place.” She described her husband as “loving, giving, kind-hearted, encouraging, handsome, hilarious.”... “Tragically, Jarred took his own life,” [ ] Eaton said. ”Over the years, I have found that people speak out about what they struggle with the most.” I did not know Jarrid Wilson, but I know his story well. His story is the story of far too many persons who try so hard to care for others yet are unable to receive care for themselves; not so much out of stubborn [...]

I am ; even me.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:54-04:00