Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

Suzanne’s Blog

Thank you for visiting my blog! I write on many topics and your comments are always welcome.

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Wait

A friend, who attended the memorial service for the boy who took his life last week, gave me this poem by Galway Kinnell. I wish that something or someone could have intervened in his young life, asked him to wait, to tell him, “it does get better.” Sometimes you don’t know or realize the depth of despair or pain that someone is harboring; they may seem engaged, active and outwardly joyful. And no matter how attuned we may be as parents, we can never fully know another’s inner realities. This is the agony and dark side of individuality, love isn’t always enough to shelter those we care most about.

You can also hear Galway reading his poem here.

Wait
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell

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Teen Suicide

LEARN graphic w-border

Teen suicide. The worst sort of death for any parent. As if there are good ones? Maybe just ones where we can say, “it was an illness or an accident.” These deaths may make the story have some sort of ending. A closure of sorts, though grief and the loss will be there as waves lapping our heart shores. It is very hard to find closure or understanding about a child taking their life. And it is likely, as parents, that we will spend time blaming ourselves. I imagine the guilt can be overwhelming for many parents. Beyond the guilt and blame though, is just a huge amount of grief.

Someone in my child’s school decided this was an option last week. So much pain. His and everyone else left behind. How do we feel, think, live through this with ourselves and our children?

I am grateful to the work being done by Forefront at the University of Washington in both suicide prevention and after-care.

Our young people face so many pressures these days, and though there is more talk and acknowledgement among them about stress, and anxiety, some people still hide their  thoughts about suicide; they hide their pain. Many teenagers think about suicide, it’s not unusual. But if you hear someone talking about it, take it seriously. Listen to what they are saying. We lose two youths to suicide every WEEK, in Washington state.

There have been programmatic presentations about suicide at our child’s school this year. They were helpful in the “how to observe who may be having suicidal thoughts.” They even suggest possible prevention and intervention methods. Though clearly, we can’t always know or prevent them, I feel that the more information we have about how to talk to teens, or anyone we think might be exhibiting “calls for help” (often called warning signs), the better.

Here are some things to look for.

Please contact someone if you know, or suspect someone needs help.

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Review of The Moth Eaten World

Thank you to Mindy Kronenberg for her thoughtful words in The Mom Egg Review of my chapbook, The Moth Eaten World. This is a good literary magazine for issues surrounding all aspects of mothering.

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Writing as a Righting Journey-Moving Forward

paper cut show-MFA BostonWhy write.

I’ve written about writing and healing often. Writing workshops are what I now offer to other parents as a way of containing and expressing our experiences living with a child(ren) who has a life threatening or chronic illness. I recently came across an article on this subject on the Foundation for Art and Healing website from last year. I was reminded about Dr. James Pennebaker’s research on this subject and I want to go back and reread his work, Writing to Heal, now. You may find it of interest also.

There are many powerful reasons to write, but HOW we write is as important as the writing itself. Being able to construct a narrative from our emotions, or use metaphoric language as a container for the hard to express feelings, allows us to gain some perspective on what may feel overwhelming. I think it allows us to move from feeling to cognition.

I structure writing exercises so that participants have the time to let down into their feelings and experiences, but also have the opportunity to create a meaningful story or poem that provides a container for feelings. This sort of writing engages the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brains where decision making and discernment reside. This capacity to feel and contain is necessary for making judgements about treatment plans, advocating for our child’s needs and for adherence to the treatment plan. It helps move us from despair or depression about our circumstances to resilience and repair.

There is a caveat. Most of us don’t move through our feelings of grief or loss, anger or depression once and then never feel them again. We come back again and again to these experiences as our children get better and grow or don’t. Hopefully, writing allows us a mechanism for continuing to better understand what we feel and what we need for our own self-care and for our children.