Suicide Slights...

Death by a thousand paper cuts

A woman recently hired me to help her write a statement of her disabilities. She experienced a motor vehicle crash a few years back and needs to write a statement, to organize and document her pain and disabilities.

I am happy to help. And I sympathize with her, with the extreme amount of pain she is in.

However, in a draft of the statement, I wrote that her pain and anguish was so great that she had “contemplated suicide.”

She asked me to remove that statement because—

“I’m a God-fearing woman.”

I did not say anything; this woman has certainly endured enough.

But—

Statements such as these hit differently for those who have family who have completed suicide.

The insinuation is that one would not attempt or complete suicide if they weren’t a God-fearing person.

I call bullshit.

I recall many memories of my father saying, “I believe when it’s your time the good Lord will take you.”

Then, I consider my brother—a pastor, who held a M Div, who wanted to pursue a PhD in Biblical studies, someone whose faith—I often think—was far, far greater than my own.

Both took their own lives.

I do not think those who contemplate, attempt or complete suicide to be less faithful, less religious or devout, or that that makes you automatically a non-believer.

Such reasoning is fucked up. It further stigmatizes those who have experienced losses due to suicide.

It further shames us and casts judgments on our loved ones, those who were in such states of despair, in extreme depths of depression, that they made the decision to end their lives.

I don’t believe that their relationship with God has anything to do with it.

Nor do I believe that God instantaneously banishes to Hell those who take their own lives.

I know a God of love, not one of fear. One that understands the illness of depression culminating in suicide better than anyone on Earth ever can and ever will.

To know God, To fear God, and yet to also complete suicide are not mutually exclusive things.

Now, I get the reasoning here:

Certainly organized religions don’t want their followers off’ing themselves left and right. We don’t want to advocate for suicide.

So, instead there’s that whole bullshit notion that God never gives us more than we can handle, blah blah.

But statements such as these, said so easily off the cuff, by people who don’t know any better, who don’t think it through—because they never had to—

They cut.

A little bit, but they happen on a semi-regular basis.

They add to the stigma of suicide by casting judgment on those who are suicidal.

I implore you—be mindful of your own biases and assumptions of those who complete suicide. And those who are related to ones who do. Who share their bloodline, who are kin to them.

Consider those weighted assumptions. Think through those biases.

Then you can mindfully decide if you really believe all of these assumptions surrounding “those type” of people who would do it.

Then… just maybe—you’ll choose words more wisely in the future, and you’ll do less harm.

Let’s limit the shaming, the assumptions, the judgments, and the stigmatization of those involved with suicides.