From Suicide Prevention to Co-creating a Desirable World
v9 - Cath Hopkins' 9/24/2023 talk given at High Country UCC in Vilas, North Carolina: "Shifting focus from 'suicide prevention' as an individual issue, to a collective one: co-creating a world people WANT to show up for."
Good morning. I appreciate Jackie and Tamara introducing Suicide Prevention last week, as I know from personal experience it's a tough and complex topic. I want to preface my comments today by saying I will speak only in very general terms. Also, there’s a flyer in worship guide of collected resources - one side offers a more mainstream view, the other has a little more countercultural perspective.
Last week in worship, Tamara asked us to turn to our neighbor, offering each other understandings of what Generosity means. What arose for me was: “Showing Up”. Showing Up may sound like a low bar, but for many people it can be very difficult. I'm among a subset of folks who live with chronic suicidality of varying intensity. It is an ongoing effort for me choosing to keep Showing Up - staying alive - amidst a culture reliant on multiple and profound inequities alongside a disconnection from our sacred kinship with Earth and All Life.
Over 30 years ago now, while in college I lost my lover to suicide. She had very similar sensibilities about our culture, plus a super sensitive nervous system like mine. Her death nearly destroyed me because it was heartrending at so many levels. I could instinctively appreciate her difficult choice while at the same time deeply mourning her loss and the stigmas faced both in life and then in death, and such a deep sensitivity to oppressive culture. Like so many who lose a beloved to suicide, with hindsight, I and others who loved her pieced together some clues we'd missed in real time, but it's unknown if we could've ever coaxed her to stay.
Ironically now upon encountering mainstream “suicide prevention” efforts, I'm frequently disappointed more than hopeful. Of course, yes, I also want lives to be saved!! But — too often suicide is considered a ‘misguided choice’ by ‘sick or crazy individuals.’ It simplifies things if we attribute all pathology to individuals and avert our gaze from other factors impacting quality of life. But what about the impacts from our oppressive cultural norms and values — on our wellness — and our perceptions of whose lives are valued and so experienced as worth living? I am grateful to people & organizations that speak out on this subject, like ProjectLETS.org, which states:
Suicide is not just an individual issue. It is collective. It is political.* It is on all of us to create a world that people want to show up for. Where people feel safe and valued. Where people can get their basic needs met. A world where the conditions of our built environment aren't overwhelmed with isolation, loss, violence, emotional distress, and deep exhaustion.
(*from Fall 2020 ’Suicide is Political’ panel discussion, still available from ProjectLETS.teachable.com)
Carly Boyce of TinyLantern.net also has a website packed with resources. One of my favorites is a Zine she created, "Helping Your Friends Who Sometimes Wanna Die Maybe Not Die". She's made it free to access online, and I have printed off 10 copies and hand sewn them into booklets as gifts. If you struggle with w suicide like I do, or you are supporting a beloved who is, please take one of these with you today.
One of the most valuable tools for me in managing my own chronic suicidality is learning to harness life-preserving messages hidden within suicidal urges. Karla McLaren has a powerful video where she describes how people can speak to their suicidal urge, asking it what is threatening or "killing" them, and getting creative about shifting their life accordingly. At times, of course, it may be that housing or medicine is needed, or other tangibles - and those are priorities. Also, though, our very spirit too has needs.
Some of my suicidal urges arose out of feeling so at odds with a society that expects us to work harder and harder doing things that don't nurture us or Earth, to make or hoard money to enable buying more and more stuff — sometimes more and more houses — while harming our exquisitely beautiful and miraculous planet and other living beings. I internalized this paradigm and my persistent attempts to conform to these expectations yielded increasingly devastating consequences for my health.
For decades my body and spirit sent repeated messages about how toxic our culture is, but I was so conditioned to block such awareness that my messages had to get louder and louder — and finally became suicidal urges. Finally listening to those key messages has saved my life. I eventually accepted that my nervous system cannot conform to modernity, and that I am "disabled" according to capitalism. So I live more slowly and simply to center my relationship with Earth. I am also finding ways to process the deep despair I experience from my own ongoing complicity in so many entrenched aspects of our oppressive culture.
I am deeply grateful to have found mentors gifted with words and vision who are articulating what was killing me and so many others, and, offering up hints about what could lead to true thriving. Among these are Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ideas including Returning the Gift; Deb Dana’s ideas on Befriending Your Nervous System; Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s Hospicing Modernity; and Disability Justice as described by Sins Invalid. These are paradigms I want to ‘Show Up’ for, because I believe that they truly can/are: making life more worth living for everyone, and supporting rather than plundering the planet upon whose health we all depend.
The fact that this faith community creates space for people to share such difficult truths is why I continue to Show Up here too when I can. It was 10 years ago next month that HCUCC first incorporated a mental health theme into worship. I want to thank Tamara and Jackie for encouraging me to share about this difficult topic today. I'm grateful to all of you — especially if and when you too struggle to show up.
In closing, I invite you to read aloud with me the Jonathan Zeuss quote in the worship guide, from The Wisdom of Depression: “There is a way to make your life work. No matter what circumstances you’re facing, you can find a path that will help you grow, and ultimately enhance your life’s journey in ways you may never have thought of.”
Thank you for holding space for folks like me, struggling to Show Up. May we all co-create a world that all people will want to show up for, and that honors Earth too.
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CATH’s FLYER fr ‘Prevent Suicide’ / ‘create a world folks Want to Show Up for’
Cath Hopkins has verified all links below are active as of Sept 22, 2023
Zine on Suicide Intervention http://www.TinyLantern.net/suicide-intervention-resources
http://www.ProjectLETS.org: Suicide is not just an individual issue. It is collective. It is political.* It is on all of us to create a world that people want to show up for. Where people feel safe and valued. Where people can get their basic needs met. A world where the conditions of our built environment aren't overwhelmed with isolation, loss, violence, emotional distress, and deep exhaustion. (*from Fall 2020 ’Suicide is Political’ panel discussion http://www.ProjectLETS.teachable.com)
A video with Karla McLaren discussing important [survival] messages inside the suicidal urge that if harnessed, can identify what is killing us and ways to do our life differently going forward to survive and thrive:
www.karlamclaren.com/lets-talk-about-suicide/
Jonathan Zeuss quote from The Wisdom of Depression: “There is a way to make your life work. No matter what circumstances you’re facing, you can find a path that will help you grow, and ultimately enhance your life’s journey in ways you may never have thought of.”
Additional food for thought:
“Why Social Justice Matters: A context for suicide prevention efforts” from the International Journal for Equity in Health
Ayesha Khan https://wokescientist.substack.com/p/destigmatize-suicide-an-abolitionist [harm reduction approach...]
J. Krishnamurti https://kfoundation.org/it-is-no-measure-of-health-to-be- well-adjusted-to-a-profoundly-sick-society/
Robin Wall Kimmerer https://humansandnature.org/returning-the-gift-2021/
Additional info re what Cath discussed:
Robin Wall Kimmerer https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/the-serviceberry/
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and GTDF via https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/
"Disability Justice" as described by the organization Sins Invalid, and as I understand it here
Deb Dana's "Anchored: Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory" and her website
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Cath Hopkins - They or She (what's this?)
"Let us live in a way so that Earth will be grateful for us." - R.W.K.
