Untold thousands, maybe even millions, of people embraced Amy Bleuel’s symbol of passionate resistance against suicide: a simple semicolon. Tattoos, jewelry, and art feature the period floating above a comma, not for punctuation, but for an expression of hope.
That delicate punctuation mark, Amy would tell people, meant that the writer still had more to say. And the same is true for suicidal people: “Your story isn’t over.”
Yet Amy’s story ended last week, at the age of 31. She died by suicide. My heart breaks for her and her loved ones. It also breaks for the many strangers whose lives she touched.
Once, she wrote in the mission statement for her organization Project Semicolon, “The vision is that people see the value in their story…The vision is that suicide is no longer an option to be considered…The vision is hope, and hope is alive….”
How do we reconcile those words when the writer not only considered suicide, but died by it?
Amy’s message was made all the more powerful by what she had overcome. Her father died by suicide when she was 18. It was only one of many traumas that she faced in her life, including physical and sexual abuse as a child, and multiple rapes in college. She had attempted suicide five times.
Still, she had said, “The vision is that suicide is no longer an option to be considered…The vision is hope, and hope is alive….”
The vision. Tragically, it was only a vision, a hope, a longing for her – as it is for so many others. Not a reality.
What Now?
I am afraid. I worry that, for some, Amy’s suicide will diminish the power of her message, that the legions who believed in her will now feel deflated, defeated, and perhaps even more suicidal.
Several years ago, a psychotherapist, Bob Bergeron, wrote a book titled, The Right Side of 40: The Complete Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond. It was a feel-good book, extolling the possibilities for happiness and growth even after the vibrancy of youth has faded.
Shortly before the book was supposed to go on sale, the author killed himself. He wrote a suicide note on the book’s title page. “It’s a lie …” he wrote, with an arrow pointing to the name of the book.
The book was never published. I imagine the publisher pulled it because the author lost credibility. If someone writes a guide to happiness and then dies by suicide, can the guide be trusted?
This question torments me. Does Amy Bleuel’s death cancel out the wisdom, solace, and inspiration that she imparted to so many?
The answer is NO.
Life is not all-or-nothing. Amy’s suicide does not cancel out all the inspirational and true things she said against suicide. Her death does not erase her tremendous wisdom. It does not taint the countless lives she touched.
If anything, her death makes her work all the more important. It shows the power of suicide – and the need to fight it. Nobody is immune, not even people who know so well that their story isn’t over.
If you’re suicidal, get help. Reach out. Talk to others. Call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Or check out the Resources page to learn of many other places where you can get help by phone, email, text, or online chat.
That’s the real message. Don’t be alone with your suicidal thoughts. Dese’Rae Lynn Stage, who is active in suicide prevention and created the website Live Through This, puts it especially well in her Facebook post about Amy. She writes:
“We lost a powerful advocate in Amy, and I know the rest of us who do this work are really feeling that loss today. If you’re one of these people, please don’t lose sight of yourself in the work. We need you—and we need you thriving, not just surviving—so that when you hold your breath and you dive deep, you pull two people ashore: yourself and the person you worked so hard to save. And then you send up a flare to let the rescue boat know where you are, and you wait and you rest and you breathe.”
The takeaway, then, is that Amy’s death brings even more meaning to her work, not less. It shows all the more that people need to fight hopelessness and despair, that people need to take care of themselves and each other, so that fewer people finish their story prematurely.
The message remains true, the message remains important, even though suicide took the messenger.
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Copyright 2017 Stacey Freedenthal. Written for Speaking of Suicide. All Rights Reserved.
What a wonderful service you are providing. I could say “if only” meaning if only my son had been more open about the pain he kept hidden and to himself. If we had talked about that pain and pointed him in a direction where he could get help. But he didn’t and we didn’t and so he chose to end his life last year in August, now a little over a year gone since that terrible day. A terrible day for me, his mother, a terrible day for his 3 brothers and 2 sisters, a terrible day for his 5 grandchildren, and a terrible day to twin grandchildren born after that terrible day and who will grow up not knowing their grandpa. Not knowing what a fun-loving, kind-hearted, highly intelligent, caring, compassionate, & emotionally troubled man. He was the family entertainer, planner of events, follower of political news, and a Christian. So, how could such a wonderful person think we would be better off without him? I don’t know why and am continually haunted by his smiling face and the question why son? Even as a baby he had that smile that touched my heart and I called him my “smiling boy”! That smile that hid the pain. I also knew, as his mom, that he was a sensitive soul and could be wounded easily even though he didn’t show it.
I’m so glad you are here to continue to help people not to leave us with the “why”? question always torturing us. Thank you for your book, your story, your help to those tender souls hurting to not leave us.
Shirley,
Thank you for sharing your story and also for your kind words. I’m very sorry for your loss. You described your son beautifully and powerfully. What a loss.
I list resources for people who have lost a loved one to suicide at speakingofsuicide.com/resources/#survivors. Maybe one will be useful to you.
what a hypocrite. she says not to die then she does. WTF
This, to me, is like saying an oncologist is a hypocrite for dying of cancer, or a cardiologist is a hypocrite for having a heart attack. Sometimes, a person’s pain or illness is so big that it overtakes them, despite the ways in which they’ve tried to help others with the same challenges.
I know there is help for many in this world. However, due to our country and others that worry more about addiction than people getting the medications that they need there is at a point I am faced with a choice do I buy drugs from a drug dealer or commit suicide when I run out of the pain medication that I take everyday. It is one of the few things that makes life worth living. Pain of not eating is nothing compaired to the pain from spinial stinosis, migranes, and chronic sinusitus. I am fine for now but to me it seems quite insane to limit people to a 30 day supply. I have never used heroin but I will have to choose that or suicide quite likely if not this year one close.
Shame we’ve both been forced to choose between buying illegal drugs to combat our pain — risking arrest and/or accidentally OD’ing because we’re not addicts & don’t know what we’re doing — and suicide. I don’t know if you’re still around, but if you are I hope you’ve legally received the pain meds that you need. I haven’t had mine for a year now & I can’t take the pain from the Degenerative Bone, Disk, and Joint Diseases, Migraines, and Fibromyalgia anymore. I made my decision, did my research, then somehow found myself here… I don’t know why…
I always knew I would die by my own hand; I hope it won’t take long or more suffering to end the suffering.