Since I was a little girl, some of the hardest times I can remember were holidays. Normally, you wouldn’t expect that from a child but on March 8^th, 2002, my excitement for holidays came to an end.  It was that day that my emotional development took an unexpected turn.

I remember the night thoroughly –the night that changed my life forever. I sat on his lap as he was sitting at the kitchen table with his best friend. As I sat there tuning out the adult conversation I wasn’t invited to, I kept waiting for my dad to send me to bed. It was getting late, and as a kid, I always pushed the bedtime limit before my parents noticed. After a while, he finally said it was time to go lay down and get some sleep. I remember hugging and kissing him on his cheek, saying, I love you daddy, goodnight.

Later that night, I woke to my mom and brother, in my bedroom doorway, crying. I was told the gut-wrenching news and swiftly sent to sleep at my grandparents’ house with my sister. As a little girl, I was always hugging on my dad and wanting to spend extra time with him. Never, in my little life, did I think that was going to be the last time I would speak to him, alive.

At the age of 10, I lost my dad to suicide and from that point on, holidays were never the same. Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, it didn’t matter- thoughts of him always washed over me like a tidal wave – drowning me on the inside as I struggled to appear to be floating on the outside.

I remember pretending everything was alright, but it wasn’t, I wasn’t. I would spend years asking myself the same questions when my mind decided to go there.

Why would he choose to leave us? Why would he want to die? Was life so bad here with us? Why wasn’t I good enough for him to want to live?

That last one… that one always hit me the hardest, especially as a child. I always took it so personal that he decided to take his own life. I always pointed to myself and never understood that his choice to leave wasn’t because of me.

My dad was a deeply loved and a highly respected man. He was pretty cool too. He used to build motorcycles for a living and won many trophies for some of his own. Him and my mom loved each other so much, I remember many times waking up in the morning hearing them laughing in their bed until they were crying. That always made me smile. From the outside, my dad seemed like a happy man. Therefore, his decision to end his life made absolutely no sense to any of us.

It was far from easy going through the loss of someone you love and looked up to so much, especially losing them from self-destruct. So unaware of the hurt they were feeling inside. You just always wonder why and never get an honest answer… and as a little girl, it never made sense to me why he did it.

Why didn’t I just go back out there, maybe his mind would have changed. God, why didn’t you wake me up, I could have saved him. Why?!

I was at a constant tug of war with my thoughts of guilt, sadness and anger. None of them ever won, they just went back and forth, making me feel like I had some responsibility in my father’s death. I just didn’t understand. I continued to blame myself for years to come and the blame weighed on me like a backpack full of bricks.

I remember being a teenager, still struggling with the same thoughts and even though the sadness wasn’t as intense, the anger grew stronger and louder.

I blamed him. I blamed him for my break ups. I blamed him for the things I failed. I blamed him for feeling unlovable. I blamed him for feeling depressed and my outbursts. He was my go-to reason because it was the only thing that made sense. Even though I didn’t allow anyone to know these internal thoughts, I thought in so many ways I was broken, and he was the one to blame.

In my mid-twenties I started working at The SPARK Initiative and began to learn about how my experiences are created from my thinking in the moment. Through this education, I had a life changing realization.

I was doing my best with what I knew and so was my dad. No one, including me, knew my dad was hurting, but what I realized is that no one was to blame for it, not even him.

I was able to acknowledge the innocence in my resentment towards him when I was younger and in seeing that, I began to have so much compassion for my younger self that I didn’t have before.

You see, we don’t know how something works until we see it for ourselves. It wasn’t until I saw my own SPARK for me to realize I am ok, with or without my dad being here and I have been the entire time. I have all the same incredible things inside me that I had once before my dad left us. I just didn’t know. When I saw that, the blame I use to cast on myself, was me just doing the best I could with what I knew, so innocently. I immediately became aware of my dad doing the exact same thing before he died. He did the best he could with what he knew in that very moment, so innocently. His mental health was always there, he just didn’t know it. We don’t know that there is so much more to this life beyond the single thoughts we experience until we are shown that. Until we are aware of where our experience comes from, life can feel scary and our thoughts can feel like bricks. Once we truly understand that our experiences are just telling us about our thinking in the moment and not about who we are or what is wrong with us, those heavy, concrete thoughts start to disintegrate. It’s really that simple.

This insight broke many chains that made me prisoner in my own mind. Holidays began to feel less forced and pointing fingers no longer made sense. Discovering this freed me. Freed me from blame, freed me from brokenness and freed me from guilt. It was ok to let my dad’s decision to end his life be in the past and understand his hurt. It no longer weighed me down and defined who I was. The anger I had attached to his memory was lighter and replaced with love.

I love my dad and in his memory, I will SPARK Light around Suicide to help people who are misunderstanding their experience.

Everyone has the ability to get through hard times. Everyone is resilient. Everyone is capable of surviving in spite of their temporary emotions. Everyone has this SPARK inside of them and everyone deserves to see it. Once you do, a permanent solution to a temporary problem will no longer look like an option. There are so many people out there and people we love who are or could be silently hurting. If we continue to point to their SPARK inside, we can all help save lives. Everyone, everywhere deserves to know about their mental health.