Suicide by Children and Preteens

Suicide is a hard issue to address, because there is not only social and religious judgment against it, but also because we can feel helpless when there’s someone whom we love who is ideating it (or if that person ends up going through with it, and we are left asking ‘why’). Some people may think it takes “courage” to actually end one’s own life… but I believe that courage or cowardice has less to do with this, than the feelings of desperation that leads one to believe that “there is no other way”.

What alarms me though is the increasing prevalence of children and teens who commit suicide in the western society today. Over this past weekend, I saw on the news that a 11 year old boy hung himself because he was being taunted by classmates who said he was gay. Or the infamous “MySpace hanging” case where a 13 year old girl hung herself after she was led to believe that everyone in her school hated her, by a perpetrator who ended up to be one of her classmate’s mother.

From an outsider perspective, we can almost not fathom how this can happen, and how a child could ‘get the courage’ to take a piece of wire or rope, set it up, place it around his or her neck, and end one’s own young life. As a parent, it makes us more determined than ever to cultivate emotional resilience in our children and at the same time, softening the desire to erect what walls human beings build around themselves when they genuinely feel like there is no more hope.

We often first kill ourselves in our psyche and in our minds, before we physically kill ourselves; this is what I believe. Because I have first hand experience that feeling of the intensity of despair, I have a sliver of a glimpse into what may lead someone who appears to have so many options to exercise the one that ends all future options.

Image by Glenda Otero

Lessons for an Authentic Life

Excerpts from 9 Month Journey through the Heart Mind by Jane Chin, Ph.D., a collection of meditations about living an Authentic Life.

Full Slide PDF Download (either right-click then ’save as’ / ’save target as’ or click on the link to open up the PDF slides)

tags: prophets false addiction approval mind heart generosity truth life purpose happiness authentic thinking

Heart Mind, Lessons from an Authentic Life