Dear Jay,
Thank you so much for the kind words, for opening yourself up and for being so real. I believe we make it easier for ourselves to heal as a whole when we see how much alike our journeys actually are. You're right, behaviors and attitudes do change a lot, and yet I feel that the source of our collective distress is a lack of awareness of and connection to our own emotional life. Perhaps most of us just don't know what to do.
In any case, either extreme of this spectrum - not allowing any emotions to surface (filtering everything out) OR having no filter whatsoever, just seems like a huge waste of opportunity to really be present for ourselves. Of course, it's not anyone's fault to never having learned it. And that's the reason why we must share our journeys - and happily watch as the old paradigm just falls off.
In a nutshell, what I've learned from my father's death (he has also taken his own life) is that I was still waiting for him to offer my heart the safe space it needed in order to feel seen, accepted and loved.
And that in reality, I am the one that's perfect for the job. I was the one my heart was waiting for the whole time, while I was waiting for somebody else.
No more, no more :) <3