Volunteering: Healing Conversations and Long-Term Loss

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Greater San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

Blog submission by Pat Madden 

My name is Pat Madden and I’ve been volunteering with AFSP’s program Healing Conversations for about three years.  When people reach out for a Healing Conversations visit (in-person, phone, or zoom) our volunteers provide a one-time contact with the goal of letting them see they are not alone, provide empathy and resources.  I was encouraged to volunteer by another AFSP member, Georgia*, who served as a board member and treasurer for the Greater SF Bay Area Chapter for many years.  She, like me, lost a son to suicide.  She was the only Healing Conversations volunteer with a child loss and I think she wanted another person to help out with people with that same type of loss when she wasn’t available. 

Georgia invited me to a coffee shop.  She was ten years out from her loss.  I asked, “What can I expect to feel ten years from now?” I was very grateful for Georgia’s time and wisdom. I knew I wasn’t alone, she knew how I felt, and through her I learned more about AFSP and the benefits of helping others.  

I’m now eleven years out from my loss, and I recently attended AFSP’s Long-Term Survivors of Suicide Loss Summit. In the first several years I went to many, many grief support groups and other grief activities.  I’ve been in rooms where someone is sobbing for the entire meeting.  That’s not what I wanted now.  I wanted to talk to people who had lived with their loss for some years and see and hear how they were coping, how they were surviving their pain and heartache.  How were they managing to live their lives. I wanted to learn from others and share what had worked for me with anyone who might care to listen.   

The opening keynote speaker, Stacey Freedenthal, was great.  She focused on self-blame – why people who grieve engage in it and how to look at things differently. She was followed by another speaker, Amy Grosso, addressing holistic wellness. Both speakers connected with the audience and had us laughing – yes, laughing and looking at healing.  

On Saturday night, we were serenaded by a band whose members had addressed us earlier that day about how they do volunteer work related to suicide. Here’s something I didn’t expect:  As the band moved on from their own songs they played “I Can See Clearly Now” by Johnny Nash.  I had grown up on Jimmy Cliff’s version and it was always a simple but movingly joyful, happy song that made me tap my feet and clap my hands. It was a song I had turned off the radio too many times after my son died.  It was too painful to sing. But at the summit, after just two days of interacting, I actually got up and danced.  A group of about 20 of us women at the stage felt positive enough to dance. 

When Georgia met me for coffee and we shared about our sons’ lives and their particular manner of deaths, I could see she was making it.  Pain? Yes, she assured me it was still there.  She told me she can cry ten years later but also finds joy in her golf game.  It is possible to have both the pain and to live on in this world. 

This was not a forum for newbies.  It was for those of us who have lived this experience for some time and seek reassurance we are on the right path in our grief journeys. I needed to feel, as Jimmy Cliff sang, “Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.” If I wasn’t there yet, I could imagine I might be in the not too, too distant future. 

*Name changed for privacy