National Semi Colon Awareness Day
April 16th
Three years ago I did something that I never thought that I thought I do, that I swore I would never do—I got a tattoo.
My tattoo is that of a semi colon and it is placed on the inside of my middle finger on my right hand.
I got my tattoo after learning about project semi colon. After my brother and father’s suicides.
Its founder, Amy Bleuel, founded the project to raise attention for mental health advocacy and to do the necessary and important work of de-stigmatizing mental illness.
Amy started the project in 2013, after her father completed suicided.
Her efforts have created quite the movement. I have seen many people sporting these tattoos and I also have had many students and others recognize mine and either inquire about it. In which case, I’ll tell them. Or—they will say, “I know what that means!” or they will pull up some part of their clothing and show me theirs.
We never even have to say the word, “mental illness” or “Depression” or “suicide.”
It’s a silent symbol of solidarity, promoting mental health awareness and doing advocacy work to de-stigmatize mental illness, depression, suicide.
I feel a special kinship, however, with Amy because she also completed suicide in 2017.
It makes sense—the stats prove true—that those with a parent who completes suicide are four times more likely to complete suicide themselves.
Amy and my brother were the people with those stories and lived embodied experiences that support this statistic. They are why it’s true.
Both had a father who ended their own lives, and they mirrored them.
I have written at length about how people are more than how they die. There is more to their story, so much more, of how they lived.
But the horror and tragedy and shock of suicide often make it so we only remember them for how they died, which is unique and makes their story, remembrance of their lives, unlike other forms of death.
When it is self-inflicted then, unfortunately, that is usually all that we remember about them. It becomes the most defining and important part of their story.
So, I don’t want to end this post, in memorium, in that way—
Instead, I want to say that I am so, so thankful for her and that her work was incredible.
Her difference in this world profound. Her death does not diminish the work and her impact on this world; so, so many of us who have benefitted from awareness of project semi colon.
And it may even impact you even if not now, but in the future, when you see a semi colon and then you too will know what it means when you see it on another person.
