Celebrate the Survivor

“Celebrate the Survivor” by M. Abeo

Context: This speech was first given as a Ted Talk in 2019. It details M’s career as an advocate for suicide prevention and their life experiences which led to this. It has a positive message, but viewers and listeners should be warned that the content is serious and heavy.

Purpose for Reading/Listening (First Time): Identify M’s main message or insights and how their life experiences influenced them.

Transcript:

It’s June 2007. I’m at the Atlanta Airport, and my layover that was three hours has just been delayed to six, so I need to get a book or a magazine, something to kill the time, right?

Actually, I could call Jimmy. He doesn’t live far from the airport. He could come for some coffee. It’s just been a lot lately. Do I really want to deal with all that before my trip? You know what, I’m gonna call him on the way home. He doesn’t even know I’m here. It’ll be easier this way. I just need to avoid an awkward conversation with him.

Ten hours later, my family and I arrive in another country. We get to our hotel, and I turn on my cell phone.

“Call home. Text us. Something’s wrong.”

I called my sister. “It’s Jimmy,” she said. “He’s gone.”

Our little brother, at just 26 years old, had jumped from the window of his office building in downtown Atlanta to his death.

My mind spun. I was just there. That was only a few hours ago. I could have called him. But I— and then an emotional fog rolled in, and all I could see was the intricate design of the hotel room carpet. And I could hear my daughter’s voice, “Mom? Mama? Are you okay?”

What happened before something like that cracks your entire foundation, it’s hard to believe that you’ll ever feel that kind of pain in your lifetime. But here’s the thing: my brother’s suicide immediately brought me back to the point in time that I also wanted to die, all because I was unable to have a painful and difficult conversation.

My little brother was 11 years old the day he saw my limp body carried into an ambulance. I was sexually assaulted that day, and I came home and took every pill I could find in the house. Imagine how scared he was, hearing words whispered like “stomach pump” and “epic hack.” He had no idea I was trying to die that day. He didn’t even know what suicide was.

Because there were no conversations with him about it. Not one word was uttered in my family about what happened that day.

Why didn’t I talk to him? Maybe if he would have known that I was also in that dark place, he would have thought twice before taking his life 15 years later. Just maybe, if he would have known that that conversation was safe to have with me.

Listen, there are so many questions around my brother’s suicide that we’re never gonna know the answers to. Why are there no safe spaces for us to talk about things like this right now? It’s all about how perfect your life looks on social media. Pretty much nothing is messy. No one wants to sit for very long in anything uncomfortable.

It’s time for us to figure out why that is, and more importantly, how we can change that.

Not having safe spaces to talk about loss and grief is killing us.

Listen, my story is not unique. In fact, I’m willing to bet that there’s someone listening to this right now with a story similar to mine. People in every corner of the world are touched by suicide and mental illness. If you look hard enough, it’s there. The global mental health crisis is at epidemic levels. People just need an outlet.

So one day, I took my self-portrait and I put it on the internet with my story, and it caught fire. People started coming out of the woodwork asking me to take their portraits and share their stories. And with every session I did, I learned that people process trauma and grief differently.

There is something very important in this space of conversation: loss survivors talking to attempt survivors, first responders talking to families of suicide loss.

Listen, pain — it’s like information. Think of it as a million points of data that, if analyzed properly, they can be the formula for your own healing.

Now listen, I know we have a problem here. Not everybody’s gonna want to share their grief or talk about their darkness. Why is that? Well, society doesn’t exactly make it easy for us right now. They tell us the right and the wrong way to deal with mental illness. “Here, take this medicine. Talk to this therapist. You should really eat this kind of food. You’re normal.”

But I’m sorry — how are we supposed to heal if we’re being judged around every corner?

Let’s change the cycle. Maybe it just starts with a space in your office break room or a living room where someone feels comfortable talking to you. Or maybe it’s not a physical place at all, but a place in your conversation because they trust you, or a place in your heart because they know that you’ve been through something similar.

In my sessions, people will often tell me things that they’ve only ever talked about on anonymous or suicide hotlines. In fact, on the day comedian Robin Williams took his life, the suicide hotlines across the United States had wait times of over two hours. People just needed a place to express their grief.

I recently photographed Zach Williams for my project to talk about the loss of his father. He talked to me about having to turn his grief outward and about how the world felt about his dad taking his life. Total strangers all over the globe were distraught at the loss of this beloved comedian, to the point of needing to call suicide hotlines.

They called those hotlines for three reasons.

One: they knew the person on the other end was holding a space for them with no time limit.
Two: they knew the person on the other end was not scared to talk about suicide.
And three: they knew that person could truly listen to them.

Now listen, I don’t have the market cornered here on safe spaces. There’s no outline. There’s no perfect way to do it. Yours is gonna look different than mine.

I can show you an example. I recently published this photo of Jess, a behavioral therapist. They have struggled in the past with depression, and unfortunately they lost their father to suicide five years ago. With Jess’s portrait, I posted a quote from them about their experience with suicide and loss.

The next day, I received a private message from a man who had been a follower for quite some time. He was a father of two little girls, had had severe suicidal ideation, and his wife had tried to get him to go to therapy — and he refused.

That day, he happened to read Jess’s post and got a glimpse of what his daughters could experience if he ever decided to take his life. And because of that perspective, he told me he was going to counseling for the first time the very next day.

And that is what that space can look like. That is what sharing your story and starting a conversation can do.

Now, people tell me, “Mariangela, your project is heavy. Sometimes I can’t look at it. Sometimes I can’t read it.” Listen — yes, I can’t argue with you. Suicide is heavy. Imagine living it. It’s sad. It’s tragic. And mental illness is very scary if you’re not educated about it.

But my question is: does it have to stay sad and scary?

I was recently doing a talk in San Diego where I got caught up in that sad and scary moment, and I had to get myself out of it quickly. I was standing on stage very similar to this. My voice was all warmed up. I had my talking points memorized. My hair and nails looked amazing, and I had awesome shoes on. I was ready, right?

I go to click my first slide — a slide I had seen a hundred times. But because I knew what I was about to talk about was very heavy, I looked at my first slide and it was a photo of my brother with my daughter riding on his back. It stopped me in my tracks, and I started to cry on stage.

Now when I cry at a time where it’s just not convenient, I have a very unique way of getting myself out of it. I’m not a sports fan, jockey — I know. And I think baseball is the most boring sport in the world. I am so sorry if I offended anybody here with that.

So I think of baseball to stop myself from crying. My local team is the Mariners. So in that moment, my lip quivered, I had a tear in my eye, and I said to myself, “Mariners.”

It stopped me from crying. It made me smile. And I got my place back.

So yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s heavy. But it doesn’t have to stay that way forever. We can move through those moments and process the heavy sadness and fear by finding ways that are safe for us — whether it’s talking to a friend on the phone, listening to your favorite jazz song, or a distraction like baseball.

The important part is moving through that moment and getting to the other side, knowing that we can survive that moment of fear and pain.

My project can be seen as a mini-universe for this idea. I’ve photographed over 150 people and counting. Each has been touched by suicide in some way. It’s a celebration of grief and trauma.

I know “celebrates” is a weird word, but we are celebrating bravery. Some people I photograph are smiling through their tears. Some are finding light again after hitting rock bottom. And some are finding their first glimmer of hope after a traumatic loss.

We are acknowledging the win of sharing something brave and vulnerable. So that’s why the word “celebrate” — it’s perfect.

So my challenge to you today is this: I want you to have a difficult conversation every day, if you can. If you hear someone near you being brave and vulnerable, don’t move the conversation along quickly because you’re uncomfortable. Instead, I want you to sit in it. Feel it. Have the conversation. And let it breathe.

It’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be difficult. And you’re going to be a little stronger for it on the other side.

Please don’t try to fix them. Don’t try to advise them. Just listen.

Create a small world in that space that you would want to live — a world where your story is met with honesty, sympathy, validation, and most importantly, someone who truly knows how to listen to you.

I want you to picture a sad and vulnerable 17-year-old girl who sits with her 11-year-old brother. It works. It’s in that very moment that we’ve created a safe space and an opportunity to turn hurt into healing, one story at a time.

Thank you.

Questions:

1) A great rule of storytelling is “Show, Don’t Tell” which can mean providing specific and often sensory details even if they aren’t directly relevant to the main point. For example, M could have just said “I remember getting the call about Jimmy and being devastated” but instead they mention specific details like being in the Atlanta airport. What are other examples of “Show, Don’t Tell” in M’s speech?

2) M uses a lot of juxtapositions of unexpected words being placed next to each other. One example is “smiling through tears”. Find two more examples and consider how these juxtapositions enhance M’s argument.