Do you have a story you’d like to share about your experiences with suicidal thoughts, a suicide attempt, suicide loss — or about helping someone who’s had those experiences? My website Speaking of Suicide is now accepting guest posts, including personal stories and opinion pieces.
Personal Stories
Your personal stories could address experiences with:
- Coping with suicidal thoughts
- Surviving a suicide attempt
- Losing a loved one to suicide
- Being in a relationship (romantic, parenting, or otherwise) with someone with suicidal thoughts
- Working as a therapist, hotline counselor, or other helper for people with suicidal thoughts
- Other stories you’ve lived that it could help others – and you – to share. (In keeping with the site’s focus, your story should be related to suicide or suicidality in some way.)
Opinion Pieces
If you want to write an essay about your views related to suicide and its prevention, possible topics could include:
- Ways to help other people not only stay alive, but want to stay alive
- The pros and cons of suicide prevention efforts today (including involuntary hospitalization, therapists’ duty to protect, and more)
- The power of pets to help prevent suicide. Especially cats. (Just sayin’.) (OK, fine. Dogs, too.)
- Really, just about anything goes, as long as you abide by the Comments Policy. Which reminds me…
Speak of Suicide…within Limits
As I explained in a previous post, there are limits to what I’ll publish on this site. Before you submit something, whether a possible guest post or comment after others’ posts, please review the Comments Policy. You’ll also want to look at the site’s policy on guest articles.
In particular, it probably won’t surprise you to know that I also will turn down anything that advocates for suicide or gives instructions on how to kill oneself.
Also, I will not publish a post that serves as advertising, directly or indirectly, for a commercial venture or company. Marketing and public relations folks – please take note!
Oh, please just read the Comments Policy. There’s lots more I won’t publish, too.
Why Publish on Speaking of Suicide’s site?
Right now the site gets about 25,000-30,000 views a month. (Google changed its algorithm a while back, which seems to have affected traffic; there was a time when 100,000 people a month visited.)
If your guest post is published, I’ll share it on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I’ll share its Google Analytics data with you, so you can see how many people it’s reaching. You’re welcome, too, to respond to comments that people leave.
Why am I Accepting Guest Posts?
There’s so much to say and write about suicide, and I’m just one person with a to-do list longer than a cat’s tail – and that’s just for this afternoon. Right now, I’m writing a book (well, several, but one is due Jan. 1), working as an associate professor at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, and maintaining a small psychotherapy and consulting practice. I also need time to do other things. Like, you know, sleep. And pet cats.
But still, there’s so much that needs to be said and read about suicide. This site has become a fairly large platform, and I’m happy to share it with others who are passionate about helping people touched by suicide in any way.
The Site’s First Guest Post, by Shannon Parkin
The site’s first “official” guest post is Finding Hope After 30 Years of Depression and a Suicide Attempt, by Shannon Parkin. Even though I’ve read Shannon’s account several times already, I still shiver a little when I think about all she’s gone through, all she’s learned, and all she wants to share with others. I think her story will move you, too.
One More Thing
This new experiment with guest posts marks a convergence of my past and present selves. Many years ago, I was a journalist. While in college, I worked in various editing positions at The Daily Texan, the student newspaper for the University of Texas.
I always enjoyed editing, and I’m happy to get that hat out of my basement, dust it off, and put it on again. (Even if it does make my hair kinda look funny whenever I wear a hat.)
So, if you’re interested, send a query or a piece of your writing to me at speakingofsuicide@gmail.com, and we’ll take it from there. Thanks, all.
depressed
insomniac
anhedonia
dysphoria
hopelessness
misery
impaired ability
worthlessness
guilt
are all symptoms
Is there something wrong with me for wanting to live in mental anguish and keep living with my depression and suicidal thoughts? I’ve had them a while now and they have become normal for me, I just think there’s something wrong with me for wanting them to never leave.
Dr. Freedenthal, I have been researching about how to write a book/memoir about my suicide attempt. I want to reach others and give them hope that through my story the things I learned and how that I know that we are all hear for a reason. I often wonder is my story is different than someone else’s? Yes obviously it is different in the fact that it is my story, but everyone has a “sad story” to tell what makes mine more readable or appealing compared to someone else’s?
Tessa,
I’m glad you’re still here! Your question gets at the fundamental question of memoir, I think: Why do we tell our stories, and why do people read them voraciously? I think it gets at the human condition – yes, suffering is universal but it’s unique in the particulars. So, people like learning how others made it through, either to help them make it through, too, or to imagine what they’d do if a similar circumstance befell them. (There’s actually research on the evolutionary value of storytelling, and one thing that comes up is the ability to learn from others’ stories.)
There’s also great value for the person who tells their story. Zora Neale Hurston said (though it’s often misattributed to Maya Angelou): “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” In fact, the entire quote might well answer your question:
“If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself ‘Why?’ afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” (You can find the quote here, on the Quote Investigator’s site.)
I have personally spoken with people who said it gave them great hope to read others’ stories of their suicidal experiences, both because they saw the person survived, and because they felt less alone.
I hope you will tell your story! The more people tell their story about their suicidal experiences, the more others will feel free to do the same, and the more stigma and isolation will dissolve.