I woke up this morning to a slow rain and faraway thunderstorm. It feels good after all this dry and heat. And there's also something melancholy about the rain and a dawn that is dark.
I am aware that there is a funeral in my small community this weekend. As has been reported in the news, a mother in our area, who'd apparently suffered from terrible depression, killed her children and herself.
We live in a world full of the unknown and the unknowable. Several people this week have asked me, as a grief therapist, "why?"
There are not simple answers. In this time that is so grievous to so many, I don't know how much room there is for hope. I think it is insensitive to ask people to 'hope' before they are ready. Yet, as a grief therapist, and someone who has been around death and dying for much of my professional life, as someone who has worked with survivors of a loved ones' suicide, or homicide, and even murder-suicide, what I hear again and again from survivors is that they wish there was more public knowledge, information and understanding about mental illness.
If you or someone you love has mental illness, please know that there are resources and help. The National Alliance on Mental Illness www.nami.org is a great place to start.
There are many kinds of mental illness. Some kinds feel terrible to the person who is suffering. Some, oddly enough may look like suffering to us on the outside, but the person with the mental illness, doesn't feel bad or they aren't aware that they're putting themselves in danger.
Sometimes, when we hear about or are touched by terrible and sad events in our communities and our world, we feel for an instant that it is an outrageous thing to hope. Yet, I must dream of a time where these types of tragedies, whether it is in my community or in Aurora, Colorado are, literally NOT. Hope can be found where there is love and understanding, where we all know that we are not alone, and that our suffering does not need to be a secret or a source of shame.
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