04/09/2026
It’s Su***de Prevention Month.
This past week, I got onto the squash court for the first time in my adult life. This, even after having everything I needed to get started: the shoes, the balls, the racket, the examples around me (thanks D and kids). But having the right equipment vs actually going, I realize, are two different things.
When I think back to just a couple of months ago, I was extremely overwhelmed and those same painful thoughts and impulses, came rushing in. I was embarrassed and angry.
I updated my status in a very vague way and 2 people reached out. One sent a WhatsApp and the other came to see me. Let’s call her a fairy. She walked straight up to me where I was working at the studio. She hugged me and simply whispered in my ear “there is no point”. Just Live.
In that moment, I felt a deep sense of liberation because it meant, if there was no point, of pleasing or succeeding, I was actually free. I admit that if someone told me the same statement a few years back, I would not have been able to receive it in the same way. As someone who has spent years orientating around others - attaching myself to imagined ideas of what I am supposed to be and do and say and uphold - learning to experience disappointment and judgment of others (essentially my own) has been the pain I have needed to feel all the way through (and sometimes still need to).
Through that one kind gesture I have also learned to accept that suicidal thoughts/ ideation will always be part of my greater inner landscape but I do not need to live there. I can accept that they are some of the older ways and ideas I believed one needs to ‘survive.’
This past week, I attended a fantastic Masterclass about the ‘father wound’ which just reiterated the idea that we are complex, deeply-feeling human beings. Our different experiences shape us -they inform how we move through the world-every struggle, every motivation, and every victory.
And again, I was reminded, with the right teachers and connections, we can grow through and grow around that which people can’t see - even the wounds we bring to the workplace.
If you are struggling with overwhelming feelings, painful thoughts and debilitating shame- reach out to a qualified, experienced professional for help.
SADAG 0800 567 567
***desurvivor ***de
