Folks, this is what I bring to light when I teach mental health and general practice clinicians. I ask them to try to fight the conspiracy of denial that is so prevalent and so inscrutable – because it is born out of empathy and love. The conspiracy is a need to believe that our youth (or anyone else) are somehow protected from the pain of trauma simply because we cannot tolerate the helplessness we feel when we do not have any definitive answers for them. We try to make it tolerable or better and often times make it worse in doing so without realizing it. Suicidal ideation does not begin with lost relationships or any of those listed vulnerabilities in early, mid or late adolescence. In all my work and research the reality is that it begins in childhood. The paucity of research on this age population is the clarion of the conspiracy – because there is little to none since the 70’s and 80’s, when epidemiologic studies revealed that approximately 3 out of every 25 kidlets in elementary school admitted suicidal thought, plans and some had already attempted. That means if you translate that into a contemporary average elementary school, when you drive past the local primary school in your neighborhood, you could look out onto the recess yard and see 30 kids who are already contemplating suicide as an answer to untenable problems in their lives. And The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study of 17,000 participants showed that trauma in childhood is common in those who later attempt suicide. The realization  that suicide is a feasible option to alleviate those untenable problems comes early – usually the first time a youngster hears of someone (from their own family or someone they admire like Robin Williams who dies by suicide). That’s because, in a desire to assuage their pain, we tell children, “Robin is in a better place; he’s free of his pain now; he is in the arms of the Lord.”  When I heard that explanation at age 6 when my girlfriend’s father killed himself, I said to myself, “Wow, sign me up, I want to be free of pain and with Jesus.” And that sealed the deal. Do you think in anyone’s desire that they would have thought that they just incentivized suicide for me? Of course not. That is why I teach what I teach. We are so clueless about suicide. We do not listen and we study all the wrong people. One of my patients told me…no one listens to me when I tell them what I know because they think, “She’s mentally ill, what could she possibly know?” She is no more bipolar than the man and the moon but she has that label and she cannot find any credibility because it speaks before her and completely drowns out her brilliance and amazing insight. We unknowingly incentivize suicide in many ways. Teaching that and alternate ways of speaking the age-appropriate truth is one of my missions in my work with clinicians and the public. I go next week to teach a four hour “Community Response for Suicide Prevention” to the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe because they are willing to look at how they might be able to return to the village raising their children. They are willing to look at what they might be doing to incentivize suicide. This takes the strength the S’Klallam are known for. The Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA’s, and the PTA’s have yet to garner that much courage. Those doors are still closed to me, as hard as I try to spare their children from starting that “I don’t want to be here” neural pathway in second or third grade. I pray that someday we will all have the courage to look at what we might really be doing with all our best intentions. My colleague tells me I’m too hard on people. My message is too hard to take. For years we believed that bleeding people helped them get well. When we learned it did not. We quit doing it. We just needed to learn that we needed to quit. What would have happened if no one ever said that what we are doing is weakening and possibly killing people? We need to stop. We keep looking everywhere for answers. We need to look in the mirror. Like Pogo said most insightfully, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This morning I looked at Irene’s picture on the kitchen window sill and said to her, “Irene, I’m not going to give the Tupperware back.” The small 4 inch square container holds tuna for out sweet kitty, Missy. Each morning I see Irene’s sweet face smiling back at me from the kitchen window ledge. Each morning I take her container out of the fridge. Each morning I feed Missy from that Tupperware container. Each morning I am thankful for the 20 year friendship that surpassed the deepest friendship one could imagine. Irene was what is now commonly referred to as my “other mother”.  But any common terminology does a disservice and is most unsuitable to describe this unbelievably wonderful and extraordinary woman. I remember the evening after one of our weekly dinners together, I told Irene about my suicidality. She reached over and placed her delicate little arthritic hand on top of mine, looked warmly into my eyes and asked softly, ”Honey, what can I do to help?” I had known Irene for many years and never told her my secret. But that particular evening I told her all about my 24 year history of fighting daily for my life. After age 32, I began to realize that my brain was actually operating in automatic and I began thinking about suicide even at the most trivial life challenge. This was not something I had control over initially. When I returned to university to study psychology, I began to understand my brain had been conditioned by the good feeling created when thinking about not being here on earth. My brain had been conditioned over time to relieve my emotional pain by releasing feel-good chemicals (endorphins and other neurochemicals) when I realized I felt hope at the possibility of getting out of pain. And every time I thought about being free of this pain, my brain was flooded with these chemicals and a neural pathway was forged stronger and stronger. Irene listened patiently as I explained this to her. This was all unfolding so new and so strangely to her. But she still could not understand why anyone would contemplate suicide. But she listened intently. In all of her difficulty in comprehension and admitting her incredulity, she still did not succumb to condescension or shaming me. She accepted my pain as real and she accepted me. And I loved her for it. She gave me the gift of acceptance I could get nowhere else from no one else. That was the basis of our friendship. When at the end of her life she asked if there was anything I wanted. I told her, I wanted to keep that Tupperware container. Irene instructed me to retrieve it and bring it to her before she died. I did so, whereupon she opened her delicate hand one more time and gave the container to me as if it was a coveted award. And then we laughed and laughed so much we found ourselves holding our sides. When she passed over, one of Irene’s heirs accused me of taking things from Irene’s apartment.  Yup, I did. And, guess what? I’m not giving the Tupperware back.

I’ve been hearing all the things I “should” do to promote my book and my new upcoming publications. Everybody seems to have their own ideas about how I should find the top marketer, a stellar agent, a glitzy webmaster, a renowned videographer, a world-wide distributor, etc. Unfortunately all of these wonderful suggestions cost money…our money (my husband’s and mine). We have no funders. We have no patrons. It’s just us. So we have been paying for book editing, proofreading, printing and publishing out of our everyday budget and it is causing great strain. I was stopped dead desperate to decide not when to go forward, but if to go forward. I just quit writing, planning, scheduling and all manner of future-oriented strategy. Instead I started paying attention to nothingness. I focused on simplicity, beginning in a most rudimentary way. I set aside complicated dinner menus that took a special trip to the grocery for intricate recipe ingredients.  I started concocting meals from whatever I had in the fridge, freezer and pantry. We had some really good meals that we’d love to replicate but can’t because we’ll likely never again have those same dibs and dabs of stuff. I watched only TV comedy and read only uplifting articles. At the culmination of this active meditation, I happened to be watching Ken Burn’s documentaries on the U.S. National Parks. I learned how John Muir tried to do speaking engagements and lobby congress to set aside these beautiful expanses for the use of our nation’s people, their children, and their children’s children. When that failed, he decided to “take it to the people”. He wrote books, magazine articles, and pamphlets extolling the grandeur and the spiritually regenerative power of Yosemite’s promontories and Yellowstone’s compelling vistas. Muir invited his readers to take part in the glory of promise, to make it their own. It dawned on me then that my message about saving lives from suicide requires that same people-oriented campaign. I don’t need fancy doodads, bells and whistles. I need to go directly to the people…to you and talk to you…invoke in you the desire to take action. My job is not to spend time creating the perfect marketing devise. My job is to spread the word, person to person, standing shoulder to shoulder with the readers and the livers of life. My words need to empower any average person to know what to say, how to act, and how to support and follow through with anyone they know or suspect might be suicidal. I need to give up the “fame game”. I need to quit clamoring for the ideal venue, to be like all the rest who vie for the perfect promotion. The way is right in front of me, at my very fingertips. I give the honor and duty to you. If you will keep reading, you will develop the ability to save lives with your words and your actions. You will understand that all the doctors and clinicians and hospitals and drugs in the world cannot accomplish what you can. With your words and your will you can teach someone how to save their own life. Keep coming back and I will teach you, one concept at a time, aspects that no one else knows and no one else has ever published. You have to live through this, like I did, to know how to deal with it. You can read ahead and learn them all in my book, “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy”, and on my website, htttp://www.jsp3.org. But I am here. Now I know to give up the fame game means to put the knowledge and the power in your hands directly…no middleman and no gimmicks.  And I intend to do just that. Between you and I, we can turn around the terrible tide that is suicidality. We can make the change that will halt the 65% increase in the world’s suicides in the last 45 years. We can do it…together.

I asked and a room full of counselors proudly indicated they all knew cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). All of them knew how to resuscitate someone who had quit breathing and whose heart had quit beating. They all knew how to save a life.  I then asked them if they knew how to save a life before they learned CPR.  “No”, was their response. Next, a pall overtook the room when I asked if anyone knew how to save the life of someone who was suicidal. Faintly from the back of the room I heard one hesitant voice, “Call 9-1-1 and send them to the hospital?” That’s when I thought of writing “CPR for Suicidal People”.  This information is for loved ones of suicidal people. But moreso, it is for those who have been or still are living with suicidal thought. It is the suicidal person that needs to know how to keep themselves alive. ******************* When you got up the courage to reveal that you wanted to kill yourself…were you told that you need to “get outside of yourself” and “quit thinking so much about yourself”? Have you been told that you need to go out and do something for someone else so you can quit thinking of “me, me, me”? Join the crowd of suicidal people who no longer tell anyone that they have secretly held suicide as the ultimate “out” – exit from hopelessness and helplessness.  Join the rest who hear this repeated exhortation to release yourself from what is believed to be selfish suicidal thought patterns. Volunteerism is a wonderful thing and my guess is you’ve already tried it. When you volunteer to help someone, either for a cause or for a gesture of kindness, it does make you feel good and it does get you outside of yourself.  Question: What do you do for the rest of the time, when the thoughts return from nowhere, seemingly prompted by nothing?  Well, if you did what I did and what Veteran Clay Hunt (60 Minutes, 3/3/13) did to the nth degree, you know it does not solve the problem of hopelessness and certainly does not relieve you of suicidal thought.  What it does do is distract you and make you exhausted. I agree distraction is essential for suicidal people.  And doing things for others is an excellent way to generate those “feel good” neurochemicals called endorphins.  But distraction to distraction is exhausting.  And that is what happened to Clay. What Clay did not know is that his brain had been hijacked. His brain was returning uncontrollably to the default pattern of suicidal thinking that in turn drove him towards the need for more distraction. Clay could not have known. I did not know.  No one could have known.  Even those who have been on that slippery suicidal slope for years could not have known instinctively. You must learn what is going on inside your head to be able to take the necessary steps to stop it. “CPR for Suicidal People” is much more than just one thing.  It is a combination of things.  It works.  I know.  I figured it out by pure chance and a lot of divinely inspired insight and self-dedicated education. I was suicidal for 24 years.  From age eight to thirty-two I fought for my life and did not know why I was afflicted in this way.  It seemed to me that everyone else just lived their lives and I couldn’t.  I faked it a lot – so much so my life became a huge magnificent lie.  I laughed and made people laugh because I could not tell anyone the truth.  When I was flawless in performing my act, I could feel telltale chills of ingenuineness creep up my spine. I knew I was living a lie.  I knew there was something wrong with me to have this sucking black hole in my soul privately pulling me towards ending my life while I publicly displayed the opposite.  I did not understand it.  Now, I do. I’m going to tell you why you have been plagued with these self-destructive thoughts and actions for as long as you have. By the way, it does not make any difference if you have been thinking this way for months or years – it begins the same way and if you do not learn your “CPR for Suicidal People”, it could end in you killing yourself.  But worse than that – and what could be worse than that?  Well, it is living your life in some suicidal tunnel where you cannot see nor enjoy the wonders of the universe because you are always secretly planning to leave.  You never truly love without desperation or hesitation.  You never truly feel without fear or longing deja vu. You never truly talk to anyone without reservation or feeling a need to defend yourself.  Life becomes an exercise in futility.  You are never genuinely nor completely engaged in it. You live on the periphery, in secret. It started with you feeling like you were boxed in without a solution or escape from a seemingly insurmountable problem.  One of my clients remembers her first thought of escape was at four years old when she and her twin sister were being sexually molested by a family member.  Even at four years old, she knew what was being done to her and her sister was wrong in some way.  But she had no out, no way to defend herself or leave.  Her resourceful brain did a remarkable and wonderful thing.  It provided her with pain-relieving endorphins when she thought about “not being here”. Just the thought of “not being here” gave her the pain relief and the ability to stay alive.  Did you get that?  The thoughts that took her out of her pain also kept her alive. Those thoughts of “not being here” were reinforced by pain-relieving endorphins and it was a brilliant, ingenious, and successful life-saving coping mechanism.  She remembered that relief.  She remembered that those thoughts were integral to that relief.  She subconsciously observed that she could keep herself able to operate in the world by continuing to think those thoughts. What she did not know is that her brain was building and reinforcing a neural pathway each and every time she thought about “not being here”. That neural pathway became the default thought pattern any time she felt she had an unsolvable problem.  She went there and began feeling relief without needing to consider any other problem solving technique. Unfortunately this process works so well in the beginning that it also becomes the favored way of feeling better.  In addition, when it establishes itself as the automatic remedy, it also blocks all other methods of problem solving. Other methods might be obviously lacking in the production of “feel good, pain-relieving” endorphins, but not this one. It works every time. Well, let’s qualify that.  Not EVERY time. At some point, those thoughts alone do not provide the same level of pain relief.  There is a stage where the thought pattern must intensify in order to supply required pain relief.  The thoughts go from “not being here” to “not being somewhere” to “not being anywhere at all”. Let’s make one more thing perfectly clear.  No one realizes this is going on in their brain.  No one I know has ever awakened one day and said to themselves out of the blue, “Today, I am going to think about how to kill myself.”  It just does not happen that way.  It is subconscious, surreptitious and much more insidious.  What you must remember is no one is in charge here. No conscious effort can be made to stop this process because it is undetectable to the uneducated and completely covert.  You do not perceive any of this happening. It is completely automatic. I can make this easier to understand if I compare it to something we have all seen and some have experienced.  It is easily compared to addiction and the pattern of neurochemical tolerance to a psychoactive substance (alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, opioid pain medication, etc). We perhaps have noticed someone’s progression in their use of alcohol. We notice that a person often begins using regularly to relieve some kind of pain, maybe psychological or physical pain.  In any case, they continue drinking but soon you notice that even though they used to drink only 2 beers and seem buzzed and out of any perceived pain, they are now drinking 8 – 10 beers to get the same perceived effect. They are building a tolerance to the effect of the alcohol.  It no longer works at the same intensity as it did previously. The person drinking the beers may or may not take note of that. Regardless, they are not initially aware of the biological process in their brain that creates the need for a higher level of relief. In the case of suicide, the unconscious biological mechanism of tolerance intensifies the thought patterns driving the progression from thinking about it to acting on it. It isn’t long before the wonderful and effective coping mechanism that kept you alive is now the mechanism that is compelling you to plan your demise.  How could this have happened when it worked so well initially? Let’s go back to the addiction analogy.  No drug addict or alcoholic I know, including me, ever said, “I’m going to have this drink knowing it will someday kill me.” We did not know the wonderful thing we chose to kill our pain was going to turn on us.  People who take doctor-prescribed pain killers are absolutely amazed that those same effective, wonder drugs could kill them. The point is, someone who is desperately suffering cannot be blamed for using whatever works, especially if their coping mechanism was born shortly after they were. Pain of any kind makes you very desperate. And our bodies naturally eschew pain.  Why do we instinctively cower and pull back from painful experiences? Why else would we have naturally built-in pain killers that work without us consciously beckoning them? Why do studies show that expecting pain relief brings pain relief? Why does meditating on the pleasant bring pain relief? When something works well to relieve pain, we are naturally going to refer to it repeatedly.  There is nothing shameful, guilty or heinous about that.  So if you find yourself blaming someone or yourself for suicidal thoughts, listen up.  You are in need of some serious education.  You need “CPR for Suicidal People.” “CPR for Suicidal People” is only significant when someone realizes this is going on in their brain and chooses to do something about it.  Now that I have explained to you how you got this way and that it is most certainly not your fault and that you are not inherently flawed, let’s get to the rest of the CPR. Let’s learn how to save your own life.  Because, believe me, I know how desperate you are to find relief.  You are tired of living or half-living this way. You would not be in such torment if you did not want to live.  You just can’t figure out how things got this way and how to get out of it.  Listen up. “I’ve asked for help before and they just slapped me in a hospital and I came out the same way I went in.” Here’s the truth about asking for help.  You’re going to ask the wrong people like you have in the past.  You’ve asked the ones who you think should be able to help, like your parents or family members or spouses.  They may have blamed you, shamed you, and guilted you into saying no more about it. You scared them to death. If they were anything like my parents they accepted the blame for what they determined was my “mental illness” and did not want anyone to know that I was “unbalanced”. Let me say something about the myriad of clinicians and lay people who commonly and firmly believe that suicidal thought is mental illness and/or emotional instability. I understand why they say that and treat suicidal people like they are mentally ill. It has been that way since we first knew that people killed themselves. But it is time to look at things differently. It is time to see things the way they really are. Not everyone in the world who is suicidal is Bipolar, or suffering from Major Depression, or has Borderline Personality Disorder. I personally believe that just about any behavior can be pathologized, given a label and found to respond to some prescription drug.  And sometimes when you have been suicidal for so long, you do become clinically depressed and could use an antidepressant to help you think more clearly. But for the most part what the uneducated public doesn’t realize is that there is a plethora of suicidal people out in the world who hold successful jobs, support families and pay taxes. They are not emotionally unstable or mentally ill.  They have developed a maladaptive coping skill.  They have no idea their brain (and their problem solving skill) has been hijacked by an initially very effective but now default and inherently dangerous neural pathway. And like I stated previously, a combination of actions need to be taken judiciously in order to provide recovery from the default use of suicide as a coping mechanism. My parents told me to shut up about it and go out and volunteer. That’s how I know volunteering until the cows come home will not, in itself, solve the problem. My doctors labeled me as Bipolar and gave me a boatload of meds.  That’s how I know medication might help, but also might do a great deal of harm. My hospital clinicians told me I had to cognitively raise my self-esteem and learn how to appreciate life. That’s how I know bibliotherapy and writing down how many ways I should be grateful for my life can be very damning, shaming, and ultimately painful. So, what do you do? You ask your trusted peers to help you retrain your brain in very specific and prescribed ways. You learn to ask the people who actually have helped you in the past – not the ones who you think should.  Past experience predicts future success. The difficulty comes in the fact that people you confide in often panic and call “9-1-1” and you do end up in the hospital.  That’s why you tell them now when you are not in crisis or in the attempt or post-attempt stage.  The sooner the better. Talk to them now. “What do I tell them? How do I tell them I’ve been suicidal for so long?” Here is what many have told me they did after they read my book, “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy: The Psychobiology of Suicide.” They handed the book to the people they wanted to support them in their recovery.  They said, “I need your help. This is me. If you are willing to help me in my recovery from suicidal thought, I want you to read this book.  It will tell you what is going on with me, then, we can talk.” They described giving them the book as easier than trying to explain the whole magilla to someone.  When their peers had the words in front of them they could reread them and understand them better. After they finish reading it, sit them down and ask them if they think they could help you. If they hesitate, take it as that – not refusal, but hesitation.  Remember you will be asking help to form an advisory group called your “JSP3©” (Jensen Suicide Prevention Peer Protocol©).  This is new.  This is different. This could be really scary for them for any number of reasons. The JSP3© is a coalition of individuals who are agreed to do certain things to help keep you alive until you can trust you’ve learned how to keep yourself alive.  It is a reciprocal group whose members act as a problem-solving alliance for each other.  You are not the only one who benefits, I assure you. If one person says they cannot do it or they’re afraid, let them go and take no umbrage.  They are being honest with you and you with them.  This honesty thing will be new to you because, like I had, you have probably been living a magnificent lie.  You want people who are nonjudgmental and open-minded. Remind them it is not forever. (I will tell you though, my JSP3© has been in support of each other for forty years now.  These alliances can forge fierce, lifelong friendships.) “What do I do if they still have questions about the JSP3©?” The difficult thing is that there is no information out there that is not generated by me right now.  I am doing seminal work on treatment of suicide.  I liken it to Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous fame.  When they started AA in the 1930’s, no one was doing exactly what they were doing.  The Oxford Group was trying their best to provide an alternative to insane asylums and hospitals for seemingly hopeless alcoholics.  But no one but Bill W. and Dr. Bob were building a coalition of drunks to help other drunks stay sober.  They just knew it took peers to help – not hospitals and asylums.  (Although, they knew some medications were needed to help people think and operate on a healthy level, they recruited regularly from asylums and hospitals also knowing it took their peers to support each other.) Like Bill W. and Dr. Bob’s grassroots efforts, the JSP3© survives not by research grants and journal articles touting it – but by lives saved. One by one, a life is saved because someone reached out and others answered.  They got the education they needed about the psychobiology of suicide, they learned how to help a friend problem-solve, and they followed the tenets of the JSP3©. If they need more information, ask them to go to my website, http://www.jsp3.org. There they can read more and email me to ask any question they may have. “What are the tenets of the JSP3©?” It is easy to remember: “4-C HOPE” The Four C’s: Commitment, Communication, Cooperation, Confidentiality Commitment – following a specified plan Communication – talking and conferring with each other Cooperation – agreement in proactive action Confidentiality – maintaining trust and boundaries Retraining the brain and building new neural pathways is achieved through LEARNING, which, in a JSP3©, is based on the following principles of H – O – P – E: Honesty – absolute and mutual truthfulness Open for Reciprocity – mutual help between the members of a JSP3© which increases self-efficacy, hope and reduces isolation Problem-Solving – working out solutions together and proactive efforts to increase endorphins through enjoyable activities Education – learning and explaining the psychobiology of suicide – understanding the mechanism involved with a default neural pathway These as well as the full instructions for forming your JSP3© are further explained in the book, “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy: The Psychobiology of Suicide.” (downloadable at  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209400. You can also order paperbacks online at  http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/just-because-youre-suicidal-doesnt-mean-youre-crazy-randi-j-jensen-ma-lmhc-ccdc) “What can I do to help get the word out about “CPR for Suicidal People”? Just like Bill W and Dr. Bob asked, reach out to others who need help and let them know how you recovered. Give them the strength to form their own JSP3. Give them the resource of the book and the website (http:www.jsp3.org). And each time you hear something familiar from your past coming out of someone else’s mouth, don’t turn away. Turn towards them and take the precious time to share your recovery. Give them hope. Give them the answer to life. Show them the way. Then email me and tell me about it. I need strength, too. I’m not an endless font of energy. This is ground zero, my friends. Recovery starts here, now. Don’t give up and don’t let others give up either. Keep trying. Keep reaching out. Keep sharing your recovery. God bless you all.  You deserve the very best life has to offer. Reach out and embrace it with a new knowledge and a new fervor. You know what to do. Now go do it. We need you.

The following interchange exemplifies what I mean by expressing yourself to individuals in your life who know intimately what you know or how, at times, you may feel because they may have felt likewise. They can gently remind you of principles you actually know to be true but have perhaps lost somewhere in your efforts to effect change in the world. This woman and I are both crusaders for suicide prevention. Both of us work with the military. Both of us are therapists and educators. Both of us are God-directed. Both of us have been tested by limitations placed on us by an often resistant, unenlightened and intractable institutional atmosphere of varying degrees. We have commiserated about it and the taxing effect it has had on our resolve, which has been sorely tested but never wavered. We have never met in person. I often address military battalions and squadrons on the subject of suicidality and talk about exactly what to do on a daily basis in order to actively help a battle buddy who might be struggling. I refer to my booklet “Suicide Prevention for Battle Buddies and their Families” available soon for free download at my website (http://www.jsp3.org). I speak honestly about my own 24 years of suicidality and how I came to successfully understand its origins and to manage it with the help of my dedicated and goal-directed friends. The intention of this cadre of friends for years was to carefully and insightfully keep me alive until I learned how to keep myself alive. This was a message that I sent my east coast buddy on the eve before 2014 convened. L, you are truly one of God’s gifts. Keeping going is one of the hardest things to do especially when it is difficult to see any changes happening and people suffering in the meantime. I addressed a very young Stryker battalion this November where the mean age was 24 and two was the average number of deployments. I spoke earnestly and from the heart using as many examples that I thought they would find meaningful. Later on I overheard my husband telling one of the sergeants that he was miffed at the guys in the top rows laughing and giggling, although quietly, during my talk. I tried to suck it up. Originally I thought I did a good job until we were at dinner that night and I realized how many “kids” in that battalion were goofing off, maybe making fun of me, but maybe (hopefully) deflecting the austerity and reality of the message. However, while I was paying attention as I always do during my suicidality talks, I was astonished at the number of heads that were bowed and NOT making fun, but unable to look up and engage my eyes. Later on I looked at husband John across the dinner table, and said, “I didn’t reach them. As much as I prayed I would and as hard as I worked on my talk, I did not reach them.” And then the tears began to flow. I couldn’t stem them and I knew the only thing to do was cry it out.  I decided to go out to the car and wait for John to pay the bill. As I left the restaurant, three kind young men opened the door for me. I had my head down but raised it just long enough to hide my tears while thanking them. One of the guys said, “Hey, you’re the lady that spoke to our battalion today. You were great. You were the best speaker we’ve ever had and we really heard what you had to say.” Huge tears rolled down my cheeks. I looked up and said, “Thank you, but I was convinced of just the opposite.” They asked if they could help me out to the car and I agreed realizing I needed some guidance. They put my walker in the backseat and asked what else they could do for me.  With tears still pooling, I replied, “Take care of yourself, but most of all, listen and take care of each other.” Then I gave them each a hug and we went on our way. I cried all the way home. I still don’t know what to think about that day. I don’t know if I am too old to talk to and be heard by the majority of young people today or am I asking too much of them? I know I must do what I can and if it helps one person I need to be able to endure the derision of a hundred in order to make that one miracle happen. And ego be damned, eh? So you keep going. We’ll all keep going. You are blessed. And you’re a precious child of God.  Everything we do to reach out to help someone anywhere, anytime is important. Love, Randi J. This was her enlightened response. Dear wonderful Randi, You touch people so much more than you know, and though your awareness of your effect on others didn’t seem helpful – it absolutely was.  The military culture as you know better than me is one of stolid fortitude and resistance to vulnerability.  Many learned as children that being vulnerable meant they gave others a “weapon” to hurt them.  The walls they build up, you pulled down.  Those chuckling in the top rows were listening, even as they felt they were conveying their machismo and barriers.  Do not doubt this; He is well pleased with you. There isn’t a service member or vet alive that hasn’t been affected by someone (or themselves) who wants to end their own life.  I can say with assurance that you reached many more than those three young men at the door.  We’ve never met in person, but we already know more about each other than we imagine.  Your talk was a gift to them, and my belief is that your words come back to many of them at the oddest times; your words don’t just dissipate into the ether; they stick with people. God brings people together for a reason, and He doesn’t make mistakes.  You’re right, keeping going when we don’t want to do so is what makes us different.  But I don’t think I know how to not help people, and neither do you; it’s why we live every day.  I have never been in the emotional space you have, but I’ve been mightily challenged.  We wounded healers are the sustainers of His will, and we bow to that will, knowing He will give us what we need, even when we sigh and weep and wonder.  It’s what we DO. With great care and His love, peace, my friend, in 2014, L. That’s what I mean by knowing who to talk to and who to keep close to you in days of questioning and times of challenge. We cannot be afraid to have tender underbellies. There is no one who does not have one. If we are wise in whom we confide, we could know that vulnerability can be expressed without fear of exploitation. The question to ask yourself is, are you someone who can be confided in? Or more expressly, are you someone who can be fearless enough to be the one confiding?