Happy Hearty and Safe Halloween

I found a lovely stock photo that encapsulated some of the magical qualities of Halloween for me.  It's not a scary illustration, but one that shows the warmth, radiance, and mystery of this time of year.  Who lives in that lonely house on the hill?  Will kids be able to go there for trick-or-treating?  Are those fairies flying off into the night sky to shine a bright path that will lead Halloween night owls to the house's door?  

One more day before my favourite day of the year!  It's Halloween everybody and instead of feeling frightened, my feet are restless in anticipation of a walk through my neighbourhood to see all the kiddies dressed up as miniature ghouls and storybook characters.  It's always lovely to watch the little tykes dragging their already full pillow cases of candy up the stairs of homes with gleaming jack-o-lanterns and dollar-store decor!  Even better when the doors open and I can take a peek into the warm light of a family home that's alive with laughter, music, and colourful bowls filled with the Mars bar series, and other assorted goodies.

I remember having had only ONE opportunity to go trick-or-treating.  I was in the 8th grade, and my best friend and I decided to dress up in Elizabethan dress for men.  We wore tights underneath these heavy, but very fancy, velvet with gold trimming tunics.  All we needed was the Henry VIII facial hair - well I already had some of that being a brown girl and all!  It was a cold night, as to be expected, but we were warm underneath our royal refinery.  We had pillow cases, too.  It was like a dream come true for me!  I remember years before when my sister and I used to pray that we'd be allowed to go trick-or-treating someday!  When our mom overheard us, she was dismayed by our desire to participate in such a superstitious Western custom, and told us it was rather sinful of us as Muslims to pay homage to ghosts and witches.  We weren't thinking of that, of course, we just wanted candy!  So, finally, I got my chance.  My mom had eased up a bit on her puritanism, and my dad wasn't around to keep me tethered on a leash.  I was actually FREE for the night and ready to roam!

When Jenn - my best gal friend at the time (she was awesome! and still is!) - met up, we went all around the Cole Harbour and Eastern Passage area of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.  I got a chance to see the long-haired red-head dude I was so obsessed with.  He even recognized me in my get-up but yawned when he saw me and then got into his gray camaro.  My eyes sprang out of their sockets when I saw him, and if it weren't for Jenn to pull me back to the mission at hand, namely to score as much kiddie sugar as possible, I would have spent the entire night chasing after my luscious-locks Romeo as he drove that 80s motor machine at his usual slow n' steady speed so he could check out all the "action" on his block.

Well, back to the present...

Since I live in an apartment, I can't really welcome any kids and give them treats, but I think this year, I'm going to step out for a moment to take in all the excitement, listen to the laughter all across the streets, and the screams too when scarecrows on porches suddenly become alive!  I'm going to walk through the smaller, cozy streets, see the candle flames dancing in the frame of small stained-glass windows, hear the creaks of heavy doors opening, and smell the sweet, beckoning fragrance of freshly-baked apple pie.  Maybe some folks might be enjoying a glass of wine as they sit on their porches, wrapped in woolen shawls, waiting for their neighbours' kids to come by, or maybe waiting for their own kids to come back!

I guess the best part is when the kids do come back and nearly rip those pillow cases to shreds as they pick through the loot to select those one or two delectable pieces that would be permitted as a snack before it's time to vigorously brush those candy-crusted teeth and get to bed.  School the next day would bring even more excitement as the kiddies think about what treats they could exchange, share with, or even just give as gifties to their classmates.  There needs to be more giving and sharing, I think :)

Halloween always rounds up so nicely, every year, and maybe one year, I'll spend it with my niece back in Vancouver as we explore her neighbourhood, collect some good treats and some not-so-good-seriously-unhealthy treats, and maybe create some sparkling, fairy-dust adventures along the way.  Here's wishing all of you, your families, and the kiddies in your lives a Happy Hearty and Safe Halloween!

The Note That Was Left Behind

PHOTO BY SI

Suicide notes.  They give loved ones an idea of what might have gone through the suicide victims' minds in their final hours.  Some of them are filled with sad goodbyes to all the people who brought them variations of joy and pleasure or recollections of happier times from a dream-like distant past.  But others are written with a heavy angry heart pointing fingers at all the individuals who made their lives miserable: the bullies who sought their demise, and succeeded.  Then there are the ones that are filled with regret over what could have been.  These notes are portals, a way inside the soul's distress, a way to understand the profound isolation a person living with severe mental health challenges, such as depressive mood disorder, is forced to suffer through, or someone who has experienced insurmountable bullying and alienation from their peers.  In their reality, there is no longer any trust in their thoughts, as their thoughts keep pushing them towards self-destruction.

The overall societal reaction to people who take their own lives is often revulsion, without any understanding of the mental, physical and emotional distress of the victims, because well-adjusted folks who neatly fit and succumb to the systematized matrix of modern society are supposed to be the norm. Do we even have a 'norm'?

People who commit suicide are called cowards, self-obsessed or narcissistic because they were selfish and did not consider the effects of their decision on their loved ones.  Another criticism is that the victims' suffering was not as bad as they thought because there are so many people out there who have gone through "far worse".  Therefore, these victims should have appreciated what they had in their lives instead of complaining about and focusing on what was not working.  Well, it's never as simplistic as that.  One person's response to their life circumstances is always different from another's.  The constant comparison of our lives makes an assumption that somehow we're all the same, similar temperaments and brain development, similar childhood histories and environments, and so, we should all be able to keep our chins up, march forward with hope and confidence. Yeah, right. 

The uniqueness of human suffering is exposed in all the different ways our spirits react to tragic life events.  It is no fault of someone who reacts in ways that bring her greater vulnerability and harm.  It is the body's chemistry, its millions of interactions among cells, and the external forces that complicate its nature that contribute to the soul's demise.  Even current scientific research can not completely explain the phenomenon of suicide and what goes on in the brain that might initiate self-destruction.  And certainly, my blog post here does not have all the answers as well.

In the book Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, Kay Redfield Jamison shares many case histories of clients whose mental health challenges became too unbearable that not even the treatment concoctions that Big Pharma mixed in its laboratories could prevent these people from taking their lives.  Redfield espouses a more compassionate approach to understanding suicide, and has struggled with suicidal tendencies throughout her professional life as a professor of psychiatry.  Staying alive is an everyday struggle for people who are "living with suicide", and normality is when the mind is only filled with thoughts of just self-harm like cutting or mixing booze and drugs rather than planning and visualizing their death with their own hands.

Of course, so many people who have gone through similar struggles do survive, but our biological affinities can not protect us from the sui generis of human behaviour and intellect.  Precisely why we need to nurture compassion for the ones we've lost and the ones we might lose.

Mental illness can comprise a broad spectrum of disorders with some of us possibly being at the cusp of a potential mental health issue, while others are already enmeshed in some of the more serious conditions that can precipitate self-harming behaviour.  Dealing with people who manifest some of their challenges in public spaces or at social gatherings can engender a confused range of emotions among family, friends, and colleagues.  Many of us do not have the patience to support someone who is experiencing a breakdown.  Instead, the tendency is to stand back, watch, and judge due to our ignorance of the person's issues.  Then some of us might explode ourselves at the person, which will aggravate the situation and add fuel to the rapidly spreading flames.  Without understanding the complexity of the human mind and its vulnerabilities, we question why this person is being so "problematic" and why they can't seem to just "suck it up" like the rest of us.  It is that very attitude that creates so much of the stigma around mental illness, and prevents people from seeking help. Alas! we are back full circle.

So next time we hear of someone who took their life - whether it be a celebrity or your neighbour or the community activist you rubbed shoulders with at a recent demonstration - let's show them compassion instead of berating them for making such a painful departure.  If we knew the impact of psychosis, we would be aware that it was not really a choice, but an act of compulsion and desperation to escape the ongoing thought cycles in their heads or the threats and oppression they faced from our societies that are bent on upholding restrictive and exclusionary norms and standards.  Please, let's honour their struggles, celebrate their achievements, value their goals and talents, and finally listen to their voices and the things they've been saying all along, things no one really paid much attention to while they were alive.

I dedicate this blog to a friend who lost his life to suicide.  May he rest in peace, and may the memory of his compassion, commitment, and care to the people who loved him serve as an example of leadership and resilience to all of us, and may his spirit live forever in the work we each do to lift others.

May we all develop the knowledge, insight, and compassion needed to help save lives from suicide. For more information on suicide prevention training and workshops, please contact the Canadian Mental Health Association at 416-789-9079 or visit their website.