Recently I wrote a blog on suicide and mental health. In response to it I landed at a blog of an organization that supports people who are trying to end their lives. I’ve never tried to do that, but I do closely know people who have. It’s a sorrowful place to reside in. The absence of hope is sorrowful, even if the result is not suicide. Many of us walk this life in that abdication of what is rightfully ours. Hope belongs to us but sometimes we relinquish it. We relinquish it because it is so heavy when draped with fear….hope unmet may inflict another wound and we simply don’t have it in us to go there again.
The blog I landed at told a story of a girl who found hope again because of the wellspring of love showered over her by strangers. She found hope I believe because the strangers were able and willing to enter into her sorrowful place with her.
That’s no small task.
“Were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.”
(Quotes in my post today are from the other blog I read.)
To be a lover bold, to enter in sorrowful places with respect and hope, requires we extend ourselves beyond our natural inclinations. It means we’ve acknowledge some sorrow in our own lives…and I think that we’ve experienced a redeeming hope. That takes energy, courage and humility. Sorrow cannot be neatly packaged and distributed as we see fit and neither can love.
This applies to more than suicide. As someone who has observed both domestic and international poverty, I have entered into the crevices of deep lack and felt the desperation it sometimes causes. I used to educate children…have any of you tried to study when you are seriously hungry? I don’t mean like I had a light lunch and it’s six pm hungry. I mean haven’t eaten since last night and it was just a small sandwhich and now my teacher is saying something to me but I can’t listen cause my tummy is so loud hungry. Imagine doing that every day. Hunger can be a sorrowful space.
After my dad died five years ago, I had a season where I saw people in one of two ways. People I could talk about my dad with and people I could not. Since I am such an orator, a large part of my grief process is to share stories. Happy memories of getting ice cream with my dad or tearful recollections of things I wished I had done with or for him. I needed people who were able listen and not judge. People uncomfortable with grief would try to redirect me by telling me I didn’t need to be sad because he was in a better place or that it was time to move on.
Ya know, it is a precious gift we can give each other when we can grieve and hope and love and be hungry together. I find that even if you have never met my father, you can remember him with me by allowing me to give you a memory. Even if you have never been so poor that your electricity was cut off and all your food is gone, you can feel some of the harshness of this life if you come and sit with me in my dark house. If that ever happened to Z, would you come sit with her? And even if suicide has never occurred to you, if you speak to a loved one the phone while an attempt is being made, as I have, and try to understand why this is happening, perhaps you can start to share in that sorrowful space.
Those are hard things to do, I realize, but they are worth learning to do. I’ve had to learn myself. Still am. It’s not easy. It doesn’t take magic though. It takes being brave and being real and knowing yourself. Start with being real with yourself. And in the meantime, give what you can as you can. Ask somebody if you need help—someone who you know knows about these matters.
You see when we do this, we get to experience the very fullness of life. I have known the greatest of loves when I have walked through the greatest of pains.
“We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all the mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way.”
I just want to give a little shout out to all of you that listen to my stories–sometimes the same ones over and over. Thank you for entertaining Z’s reckonings, memories, hopes and fears. It gives me strength and wisdom…you see, even though I don’t view the world as black and white as I once did, it is still important for me to know when to keep and share my stories! The slideshow below captures some of the people who listen to Z, each in your own ways. Thank you.
Southern Z 
awww…you are such a good writer!!