Out of Hope it Will Help Someone Else

I didn't want to write this at first when I was asked to do so. It took me over a month to actually get it down and after talking with my boys they were okay with putting it out there. Many of you have asked about what has happened and I have been quiet as it has been a painful road we have been traveling for the past few months. It is my hope that by writing about what has happened in our family that a life will be. Here is the article I wrote for the New York Times:

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/a-fathers-suicide/

Comments

Gayle Carline said…

Such an awful thing to happen to you and your sons - and, indirectly, to the rest of your family. It's hard for people who don't suffer from depression to understand how someone could willingly leave their loved ones. I certainly don't understand it, although in theory, I understand that depression is a disease that strips you of your sense that anything matters.

All the survivors can do is work the steps, from grief to acceptance, in whatever order they appear. It sounds like you're doing everything you can do to help your family and yourself, and you have a community of friends and supporters ready to reach out with a hand to steady you or a shoulder to cry on when that's what you need.

March 5, 2011 at 9:00 PM

Guest Blogger Jessica Park and Chapter One of "Cook the Books."

I am very happy today to have my good friend Jessica Park share the first chapter of her next book, "Cook the Books," due out in March. If you haven't read a Gourmet Girl Mystery, you need to. They're everything a good mystery should be and more--They're funny, romantic, mysterious(duh) and just plain fun. Do yourself a favor and read the entire series. You won't be sorry! Without further ado... Chapter 1 I have a love-hate relationship with Craigslist. On the one hand, I adore poking through the online classifieds for items I don’t even want—Swedish bobbin winders, chicken coops, vintage Christmas ornaments—and for enviable extravagances that I can’t afford—like the services of someone to come to my house to change the cat litter. On the other hand, I hate getting sucked into the vortex of randomly searching for weird items and unaffordable services instead of looking for what I actually need. For example, at the moment, I absolutely had to find a part-time j...

Powerless and Pissy

(The kid and I wrote this blog yesterday, but I'm happy to say we now have power!) Oh. God. Killlll meeeeeee! It’s Friday night and we haven’t had power since just before midnight on Thursday. I’m a baby about this. People have gone without the comforts of electricity for much longer than this, but I am near the edge of insanity. I have zero coping skills. Thursday 12: 10 a.m.: Wind is atrocious. Howling, annoying, relentless. The last woman is about to skate her individual Olympic performance and the power cuts out. Not that I even really follow women’s ice-skating, but I was following it at the moment. The noise outside is enough to wake the dead and I’m hearing something suspicious going on with the deck. I could maybe tolerate noise and fear of exploding transformers, but I cannot sleep without my beloved white noise machine. Will pray that husband falls into some sort of rhythmic and soothing snoring pattern. 12:35 a.m.: Husband is indeed snoring, but sound is laced with a...

Mental Health Awareness Month

So May is Mental Health Awareness month. May has been observed as such since 1949 and was started by the Mental Health America Organization. I've gone back and forth on addressing this topic, which is quite personal to me and thus decided on the two days before the month's end to go ahead and relay my personal story in dealing with someone who was once very close to me and who suffered from mental illness. I'm sharing this in the hope that someone reading this recognizes any of it as being a piece in their life that they might be comforted, seek help or have some kind of positive result from it. I have shared some of this story almost a decade ago and to this day I receive a few e-mails each year from someone who themself is afflicted with deep depression and having suicidal thoughts, or from someone who has suffered a loss due to suicide. To find that original article, you can check it out here https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/a-fathers-suicide/ I'm not...

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