Providing Help & Hope to LGBTQ+ Elders Struggling With Suicide
This is National Suicide Prevention Week, which technically means that during this week we are to raise awareness for suicide prevention.
Next week is, among other things, National Child Passenger Safety Awareness Week, and the last week in September is International Deaf Awareness Week.Since I’m partially deaf, that week means something to me, but by the time we get to the week of October 9 and National Fire Prevention Week, will anyone remember the awareness raised a month before for suicide prevention?We’ve filled so many weeks up in the calendar that we skip from one issue to another to another and to yet another, and we forget about what we were supposed to remember from the previous month.
It mimics our short attention spans. We go from one shiny object to the next without much thought for the previous one.I guess what’s discomfiting in a way about these weeks-of is that we just pass right by something as deadly serious as suicide, which is a perfect metaphor for suicide.
It’s brushed off by those who hear about one with a flippant comment like “Oh, how horrible.” Or buried deep by those who contemplate it: “I don’t have anyone to talk to about the way I feel.”Many people don’t like to talk about suicide, because in most of our minds it’s so selfish and gruesome.
