It’s my “stay-versary”. In other words, the week, eight years ago, when two therapists in one day told me that my children would never recover if I took my own life.

And so I said “F*&k, I guess that means I have to live.”

If you haven’t heard this story before, you can catch up here.

I don’t actually know the date of my stay-versary, but I have enough context clues to identify the week.

I have decided it doesn’t necessarily serve me to have the date circled in my brain. I am certain that my body remembers and that is enough.

But this post isn’t about me. This post is about you. And the people you care about.

We all experience suffering. Otherwise known as “the darkness” for the purpose of this email.

We become overwhelmed and exhausted and wonder if we can keep going. We feel fractured and depleted and we don’t know how to put ourselves back together.

We feel disillusioned about the promises we chased–how success, accumulation, “goodness”, and accomplishments would assuage our fears and assure us of safety and belonging.

Some of us are overcome with hopelessness and cannot imagine that there will ever be light again.

Our brains play tricks on us in the darkness; spinning transient moments of pain and confusion into fear of unrelenting permanence.

We may not be able to see the way out right now.

When I decided to stay here, it was only because those therapists convinced me that taking my own life would cause the ultimate harm to my children.

And I had spent all of my years as a mother trying to break the chains of what had happened to me as a child.

I didn’t stay because I believed that I had the capacity to survive another day. I didn’t believe that at all.

And I didn’t know “how” either. There was no survival roadmap.

On the days the pain felt like it might just be too much, I would tell myself, “You can always die tomorrow. But not today.”

And that is the place from which I inched my way, on my hands and knees, out of the darkness.

Let’s be clear too that exiting the darkness once doesn’t mean that we are one and done. But it does serve as a reminder that what once seemed impossible is possible.

The light is still there.

And over time, our visits to the light become more frequent. More consistent. They last longer. And then, someday, we give ourselves permission to anticipate the light.

Now, when the darkness comes to visit, I am better equipped to seek support and “do no harm” while I gently tend to what hurts; trusting that what feels permanent is, in fact, impermanent.

If you are hurting right now, I want you to know that I see you.

If everything feels hopeless and impossible, I see you.

If you cannot imagine there ever being light again, I see you.

If you are baby stepping your way out of the darkness unable to see what comes next, I see you.

You are not alone.

I cannot remember exactly when my reason for being extended beyond living for my children. But it did.

Now I cannot imagine having missed the last eight years. Of their lives. And my own.

I am not arrogant about suffering though. It is real. And it is part of being human.

But some of my wounds are now scars. Some of my darkness has been
transmuted into light.

And the darkness that remains helps me remember to hold other people with gentleness, kindness, curiosity, and empathy. To remember that we are all doing this human thing together.

I hope you will share this message with anyone you think could benefit from reading it.

Much love,

Booth