Latest / Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews / The Lie Depression Tells and What Sam Eaton Did to Fight Back
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Life Audio.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Hey Sam, thanks for joining me my pleasure.
- 0:07Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Sam Eaton, speaker, author and mental health advocate, founder of
- 0:12Speaker 2: Recklessly Alive, an organization debted to suicide prevention, author of
- 0:16Speaker 2: the new book. Also, the book's name is you Can
- 0:20Speaker 2: Do This Daily affirmations to live Recklessly Alive. Recklessly Alive
- 0:25Speaker 2: dot com as the website. Sam, You've been an advocate
- 0:28Speaker 2: for mental health for years now. You didn't always want
- 0:31Speaker 2: to talk about it, of course, what changed for you
- 0:35Speaker 2: and why did you want to write this new book
- 0:37Speaker 2: You Can Do This.
- 0:39Speaker 1: I started my career as a public school teacher. I
- 0:41Speaker 1: taught music, and while I was teaching, we actually lost
- 0:44Speaker 1: four people in our community to suicide. We had two students,
- 0:47Speaker 1: a teacher, and a principal who all took their own
- 0:49Speaker 1: life back in twenty sixteen. And this is something that
- 0:52Speaker 1: I had struggled with personally. I had never talked about
- 0:55Speaker 1: or told anyone about. But with each of those losses,
- 0:58Speaker 1: I just felt like this push in my like I
- 1:00Speaker 1: had to do something to help, and I didn't know
- 1:02Speaker 1: what that would be. And over the last ten years,
- 1:04Speaker 1: I've learned how much help and support is needed in
- 1:07Speaker 1: the mental health space. Whether you struggle with your mental
- 1:10Speaker 1: health or not, there's tools and trips, tools and tricks
- 1:13Speaker 1: that we can all learn and implement into our daily lives.
- 1:16Speaker 1: And so that's what I wrote the new book for,
- 1:18Speaker 1: to help everybody with those little practices every day that
- 1:21Speaker 1: I've learned to feel better and to feel fully alive.
- 1:26Speaker 2: Amen to that. Let me read some data here. More
- 1:28Speaker 2: than one billion people worldwide live with mental health disorders,
- 1:31Speaker 2: according to the World Health Organization. Many of them, of course,
- 1:34Speaker 2: have considered suicide. Sam, you've spoken in more than two
- 1:37Speaker 2: hundred and fifty events across the country about depression, about
- 1:40Speaker 2: suicide prevention. What are you hearing from this generation that
- 1:44Speaker 2: perhaps older generations still fully understand about mental health struggles Today?
- 1:49Speaker 1: We've made a lot of really good progress in talking
- 1:52Speaker 1: about mental health and the awareness space, and now we
- 1:55Speaker 1: need to take steps into giving practical tools on what
- 1:59Speaker 1: that looks like. We hear all the time it's okay
- 2:01Speaker 1: not to be okay, and absolutely it is, But what
- 2:04Speaker 1: does that look like? How does someone take those daily
- 2:07Speaker 1: practices and move their way through it. I think the pressure,
- 2:10Speaker 1: especially on our younger generations, is so different than even
- 2:14Speaker 1: I understand. I'm in my thirties. Facebook didn't come out
- 2:17Speaker 1: until I was a senior in high school. Even just
- 2:20Speaker 1: the simple, the simple fact that when we were in school,
- 2:23Speaker 1: when you went home at three o'clock, nobody could find
- 2:26Speaker 1: you or reach you until the next day. And now
- 2:28Speaker 1: these kids, it's twenty four to seven, that they're seeing
- 2:30Speaker 1: these messages that they're not enough, that their bodies aren't enough,
- 2:33Speaker 1: that whatever they're doing in their life isn't enough, and
- 2:36Speaker 1: people are out there are better than them. So we're
- 2:39Speaker 1: fighting a totally different war than what it was when
- 2:43Speaker 1: even just ten fifteen years ago, And so we have
- 2:46Speaker 1: to understand it as a baseline that it's easy for
- 2:48Speaker 1: us to give advice on what our young people should do,
- 2:51Speaker 1: but the truth is we have almost no clue what
- 2:53Speaker 1: it actually feels like to live in their body and
- 2:56Speaker 1: their brain in this time of our lives.
- 2:58Speaker 2: Absolutely well, you're speaking the truth because the world has
- 3:02Speaker 2: changed so much in the last ten or fifteen years.
- 3:04Speaker 2: And I'm older than you, and it's changed even more
- 3:06Speaker 2: than that since I was young. The building on that,
- 3:10Speaker 2: then what world has social media and smartphones played in
- 3:15Speaker 2: the decline of mental health in the past decade?
- 3:17Speaker 1: Then, so we obviously can't blame everything on social media,
- 3:21Speaker 1: but the Surgeon General did come out last year and
- 3:24Speaker 1: declare youth in teen mental health a national emergency. In fact,
- 3:28Speaker 1: they've shown that anything over three hours a day of
- 3:31Speaker 1: social media doubles your risk for depression and anxiety. And
- 3:35Speaker 1: the average teenager is spending three and a half hours
- 3:37Speaker 1: a day on social media. And I think if we
- 3:40Speaker 1: looked at most of our teenagers, or even just ourselves,
- 3:43Speaker 1: my own screen time, right, these companies have spent billions
- 3:46Speaker 1: of dollars making these things as addictive as possible, and
- 3:49Speaker 1: then their solution is to tell a teenager who's at
- 3:53Speaker 1: a point in their life developmentally when they're not they
- 3:55Speaker 1: don't have the self control and the impulse control to
- 3:59Speaker 1: combat these things. And then we try to put the
- 4:01Speaker 1: blame on them and say, oh, well, you're not limiting
- 4:03Speaker 1: your time. It's like, oh, well, we have tools, we
- 4:05Speaker 1: have you know, you can, you can put screen limits
- 4:08Speaker 1: on it. But the problem is that they don't have that.
- 4:11Speaker 1: They don't have that ability in their development. So we
- 4:13Speaker 1: absolutely have to find ways to teach them how to
- 4:16Speaker 1: use it responsibly and model that ourselves. Right, if we
- 4:19Speaker 1: as adults are looking at our speen twenty four to seven.
- 4:22Speaker 1: We certainly can't expect a fourteen year old to do
- 4:25Speaker 1: the same.
- 4:26Speaker 2: Amen, you're spitting truth this morning. Man. That's so true. Sam.
- 4:32Speaker 2: Let me ask you a couple of questions about that.
- 4:34Speaker 2: Just I mean, when parents come up to you and
- 4:36Speaker 2: they say, my kid is whatever, eight, ten, twelve, just
- 4:41Speaker 2: fill in the age. What should I do about their
- 4:45Speaker 2: request for smartphone? What do you tell them?
- 4:48Speaker 1: I mean, Australia just banned social media for anyone under
- 4:51Speaker 1: the age of eighteen. Obviously this needs to be a
- 4:53Speaker 1: family decision. And I also think it doesn't help if
- 4:58Speaker 1: we don't train them what to do after they turn eighteen.
- 5:00Speaker 1: If we just say absolutely not and then hand them
- 5:02Speaker 1: a phone at eighteen, they also don't have the skills.
- 5:05Speaker 1: So I think it's really important as parents in all things,
- 5:07Speaker 1: that you're using that time to walk through these things
- 5:10Speaker 1: with them, help them interpret what they're seeing, what they're experiencing,
- 5:14Speaker 1: And you can't expect these platforms to not show them
- 5:17Speaker 1: really graphic things. Just on my own TikTok, I've seen
- 5:20Speaker 1: people getting shot, I've seen nudity and like they can
- 5:23Speaker 1: say it doesn't happen, but it is, it's there and
- 5:26Speaker 1: it is happening. So how do we in a responsible
- 5:29Speaker 1: way say, hey, I trust you and these things are
- 5:32Speaker 1: really pretty messed up and we need to figure this
- 5:35Speaker 1: out together on how how we can use this for
- 5:38Speaker 1: good and make sure that it's not causing making our
- 5:41Speaker 1: lives worse.
- 5:42Speaker 2: Yeah, just let me speak here, just as just as
- 5:44Speaker 2: the host of the show, there there are and as
- 5:46Speaker 2: a parent afore gets there are companies who make phones
- 5:49Speaker 2: without Internet. Names are like Gab and Bark and I
- 5:54Speaker 2: think true me there's other There's plenty of alternatives out there.
- 5:56Speaker 2: If you're kid is needing a device to call you
- 6:00Speaker 2: when the soccer practice is over, you don't have to
- 6:02Speaker 2: give him a Rolls Roye in order to just you know,
- 6:05Speaker 2: it's kind of the same thing, you know, that's what
- 6:07Speaker 2: a smartphone is in terms of technology. It's a Rolls Royce.
- 6:09Speaker 2: You're giving a kid a Rolls Royce instead of just
- 6:11Speaker 2: giving him a bicycle. But anyway, that's just me talking
- 6:15Speaker 2: your organization, as Sam is called recklessly alive. What does
- 6:19Speaker 2: it look like to live recklessly? A lie for you?
- 6:23Speaker 1: So, I think so. I grew up with an alcoholic
- 6:25Speaker 1: father and as a result, of that disease. He just
- 6:27Speaker 1: caused a lot of pain in my life. I used
- 6:30Speaker 1: to hide under the table in kindergarten because I was
- 6:32Speaker 1: afraid of the world and afraid to live, and that
- 6:35Speaker 1: followed me well into my twenties. And so after I
- 6:39Speaker 1: attempted my own attempt, I had to figure out, Okay,
- 6:43Speaker 1: what is my life going to look like going forward?
- 6:45Speaker 1: What am I going to change so that I enjoy living?
- 6:48Speaker 1: And so I truthfully recklessly a live is going to
- 6:51Speaker 1: mean something different to everybody. For me, it meant I
- 6:53Speaker 1: needed to take some bold action in my life and
- 6:56Speaker 1: live in a way live and create a life that
- 6:58Speaker 1: I was proud to live. So at first I did
- 7:00Speaker 1: a bunch of crazy things. I like ran a marathon
- 7:02Speaker 1: and I jumped out of an airplane. And while those
- 7:05Speaker 1: things did make me feel alive, pretty quickly I found
- 7:08Speaker 1: that the best way to be recklessly alive is to
- 7:10Speaker 1: find something in the world that you can make a difference.
- 7:13Speaker 1: For me, it was how do you reach back into
- 7:15Speaker 1: your story in a place that you were really hurting
- 7:18Speaker 1: and find other people who are there and give them
- 7:20Speaker 1: the tools, the education, the help that they need. And
- 7:24Speaker 1: that's the most alive that I've ever felt is in
- 7:26Speaker 1: serving and in giving back to other people, And so
- 7:30Speaker 1: that is what I focus on now. Is recklessly alive
- 7:32Speaker 1: just means creating a life that you enjoy living that
- 7:35Speaker 1: you wake up excited to experience in a way that
- 7:38Speaker 1: makes the world a better place for those around us.
- 7:42Speaker 2: How did you get to that point though? Because you
- 7:44Speaker 2: were you're rid a low point in your life and
- 7:47Speaker 2: thought about ending your life. What was the turning point
- 7:50Speaker 2: for you in your life to get to the point
- 7:52Speaker 2: where you are today? Or was it multiple steps?
- 7:55Speaker 1: You know, for some people it is one big low moment,
- 7:58Speaker 1: maybe it's a break up that sometimes that's really can
- 8:02Speaker 1: be a warning sign for something like that, just a
- 8:04Speaker 1: big event, and for some people it's a long, slow
- 8:08Speaker 1: degrading process. For me, it was I had a really
- 8:10Speaker 1: negative self talk. The voices in my head were really
- 8:13Speaker 1: constantly attacking me and telling me how worthless I was.
- 8:17Speaker 1: I also had made some choices that were not helping
- 8:20Speaker 1: me live the best life. I was spending a lot
- 8:22Speaker 1: of time binge drinking, I was not exercising, taking care
- 8:27Speaker 1: of my body, wasn't I hadn't processed the trauma that
- 8:30Speaker 1: I had been through all those really the abuse and
- 8:33Speaker 1: the bullying that I experienced that was still just like
- 8:35Speaker 1: rooted in me. So I think there's so many factors
- 8:39Speaker 1: that can lead to it, but suicide at its most
- 8:41Speaker 1: basic level is just when your pain is higher than
- 8:43Speaker 1: your ability to cope. And having talked to thousands of
- 8:47Speaker 1: people who feel that way, we lose almost fifty thousand
- 8:49Speaker 1: people a year in the US, by the way, But
- 8:51Speaker 1: having talked to so many people, almost everybody says they
- 8:53Speaker 1: don't actually want to die, they just don't know how
- 8:55Speaker 1: to end the pain that they're experiencing. And so that's
- 8:59Speaker 1: what we're fighting against. And that's where I was too.
- 9:02Speaker 1: It was I couldn't see another way through it. And
- 9:06Speaker 1: the truth is, your brain gets sick. They've done brain
- 9:08Speaker 1: scans of people who have mental illness or who feel suicidal,
- 9:12Speaker 1: and parts of your brain don't light up the way
- 9:14Speaker 1: that it should, including the part of your brain that
- 9:16Speaker 1: controls empathy. So you're already feeling hopeless, you're not experiencing life,
- 9:20Speaker 1: you're not feeling the hope and the love of your
- 9:22Speaker 1: family and friends. You're kind of distorted, honestly, like your
- 9:26Speaker 1: brain is a little bit sick and twisted and you're
- 9:28Speaker 1: not seeing and experiencing things that they really are. But
- 9:31Speaker 1: the good news is that we can talk about this stuff.
- 9:34Speaker 1: You know, all the research shows talking about it doesn't
- 9:36Speaker 1: make it any more likely someone will attempt. In fact,
- 9:38Speaker 1: it makes it much more likely they'll seek help. That's
- 9:41Speaker 1: just kind of an old lie that's out there and
- 9:43Speaker 1: old myths like these things are okay to talk about.
- 9:46Speaker 1: We know that it's everywhere, and so the more that
- 9:49Speaker 1: we normalize it, the more that we make it okay
- 9:51Speaker 1: to open that door. The more that we talk about
- 9:54Speaker 1: ways to get through it, whether that's therapy, maybe that's medication,
- 9:57Speaker 1: maybe that's just lifestyle changes. All of that is so
- 10:00Speaker 1: important so that someone in their lowest moment can see
- 10:03Speaker 1: other people like me who've been through it, who've gotten
- 10:05Speaker 1: through it, then they can make a choice. They can
- 10:08Speaker 1: make a choice to reach out for help, to open
- 10:10Speaker 1: up and to keep fighting through the pain that they're experiencing.
- 10:22Speaker 2: How did you get to this point of wanting to
- 10:25Speaker 2: live of living recklessly aligned? Though? I mean, what did
- 10:27Speaker 2: you do in your life to get to this point?
- 10:30Speaker 1: So it is something I still struggle with, you know,
- 10:32Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you that after I survived,
- 10:34Speaker 1: it was just immediately healed. And I do believe that
- 10:37Speaker 1: God can do that in people's lives, but for a
- 10:39Speaker 1: lot of us that's not the case. And so it
- 10:41Speaker 1: was a couple of things. Immediately after the attempts. The
- 10:43Speaker 1: first thing I did was and this is a challenge
- 10:45Speaker 1: that I give in the first week of my book,
- 10:47Speaker 1: but I say, just do one simple thing every day
- 10:50Speaker 1: to make your life better or make the world a
- 10:52Speaker 1: better place. Just one and then take a picture of it.
- 10:55Speaker 1: Whether that's texting a friend, cleaning out one closet, doing
- 10:58Speaker 1: one pay one bill that you've been a whatever that
- 11:01Speaker 1: long list of stressful things are in your life. Do
- 11:03Speaker 1: one each day, take a photo and then keep that
- 11:06Speaker 1: in an album. And after my attempt I did that
- 11:08Speaker 1: for almost five months, and anytime I was feeling low,
- 11:11Speaker 1: I would just look at the pictures in my phone
- 11:14Speaker 1: as proof that I can make my life better. We
- 11:17Speaker 1: all have the power. Depression loves to lie to us
- 11:19Speaker 1: and say that you're stuck, that you're worthless, things will
- 11:21Speaker 1: never get better, and that's just not true. We have
- 11:25Speaker 1: the power to take small daily actions to make our
- 11:28Speaker 1: lives better, and that's the heart behind the book is
- 11:30Speaker 1: I wanted something each morning that someone could read or
- 11:33Speaker 1: listen to. I also recorded the audiobook that's just Little
- 11:36Speaker 1: Stories of My Life, those little things that I talk
- 11:38Speaker 1: about self talk, self worth, resilience, and just soundbites Little Morning,
- 11:43Speaker 1: Little Morning, kind of a devotional that says, Hey, whatever
- 11:46Speaker 1: you're going through, you can make it through. Believe in yourself,
- 11:50Speaker 1: and one day at a time things can get better.
- 11:52Speaker 2: Did you see there was a viral video in the
- 11:54Speaker 2: past couple weeks of a police officer talking a man
- 11:58Speaker 2: off a bridge in Florida? Did you see that? And
- 12:01Speaker 2: that was pretty powerful to me because it was selling
- 12:04Speaker 2: that man who was on the bridge the truth that
- 12:08Speaker 2: you're feeding yourself lies, that you're going to hurt people,
- 12:11Speaker 2: and that people need you. What did you see in
- 12:14Speaker 2: that video that you thought was the right thing to do?
- 12:18Speaker 2: And that would that is useful for other people to
- 12:20Speaker 2: to kind of duplicate.
- 12:22Speaker 1: I think just the human connection, the empathy that taking
- 12:28Speaker 1: a moment to stop and listen to someone and look
- 12:30Speaker 1: them in their eyes. I think our lot, our world
- 12:33Speaker 1: is so lost around this idea of connection. We're so busy,
- 12:37Speaker 1: we're so buried in our devices, and when I'm struggling.
- 12:40Speaker 1: The best gift you can give me is just a
- 12:42Speaker 1: listening year. You don't have to fix it, you don't
- 12:44Speaker 1: have to have the right words. It can simply just
- 12:47Speaker 1: sound like, wow, thank you so much for telling me
- 12:49Speaker 1: all that I didn't I didn't know you were in
- 12:51Speaker 1: so much pain. I'm here for you. We're going to
- 12:53Speaker 1: figure it out together. I'm not afraid of this and
- 12:56Speaker 1: just letting someone have that moment to feel seen and
- 12:59Speaker 1: to feel heard, because that's what so many people need
- 13:02Speaker 1: in their pain. At least that's what I needed in
- 13:04Speaker 1: my pain, was just people to understand it, to try
- 13:07Speaker 1: to be in it with me, and then to not
- 13:10Speaker 1: be afraid to take those next steps and help me
- 13:13Speaker 1: on my path to feeling better.
- 13:15Speaker 2: Just talk for a brief moment about what scripture says
- 13:18Speaker 2: or how scripture addresses depression and suicide. For a believer
- 13:22Speaker 2: who's listening to this and struggling with their mental health
- 13:24Speaker 2: right now, what would you tell them about what God thinks?
- 13:30Speaker 1: The Bible has so many examples of While we don't
- 13:33Speaker 1: have the language of depression and suicidal thoughts, there's so
- 13:37Speaker 1: many places in scripture where you read people say things
- 13:40Speaker 1: like oh, I'm not sure I want to be alive.
- 13:44Speaker 1: The psalms are filled with them. Jonah Jonah said, now, o, Lord,
- 13:48Speaker 1: take away my life, for it is better for me
- 13:50Speaker 1: to die than to live. Job said, why did I
- 13:53Speaker 1: not perish at birth and die as I came from
- 13:55Speaker 1: the womb? There's just psalms. I am worn out from
- 13:59Speaker 1: my groaning All night long, I fled my bed with
- 14:02Speaker 1: weeping and drenched my couch with tears. My eyes grow
- 14:04Speaker 1: weak and sorrow. They fail because of all my foes.
- 14:07Speaker 1: And so when I after my attempts, I started to
- 14:11Speaker 1: read more scripture, I started to decide, Hey, I need
- 14:15Speaker 1: to I'm going to run through all my decisions through God.
- 14:17Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna ask God. Like clearly, all the
- 14:19Speaker 1: choices I was making led me to a place where
- 14:21Speaker 1: I didn't even want to be alive. So I started saying, Okay,
- 14:24Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask God. If this feels like something God
- 14:26Speaker 1: will want me to do, I'm gonna do that. And
- 14:29Speaker 1: in that process is I spent more time in a scripture.
- 14:31Speaker 1: I realized, Oh, like, this isn't something new to God.
- 14:35Speaker 1: This has been a part of the human experience for
- 14:37Speaker 1: thousands of years. We maybe didn't have the language, and
- 14:39Speaker 1: we maybe didn't have the science that we had today.
- 14:42Speaker 1: But a lot of these things very much sound like
- 14:44Speaker 1: what it sounds like when I am struggling, and that,
- 14:47Speaker 1: strangely gave me a lot of comfort because it showed
- 14:50Speaker 1: me that, hey, this is an okay thing to talk about.
- 14:52Speaker 1: God's been giving us stories. Job's one of the oldest
- 14:55Speaker 1: stories in the entire Bible, and it's all about a
- 14:58Speaker 1: guy who talks about maybe I don't want to alive.
- 15:00Speaker 1: And so I think, if you are struggling a we
- 15:04Speaker 1: can't expect just faith to fix it all the time. Absolutely,
- 15:08Speaker 1: use scripture and use God, but also please reach out
- 15:10Speaker 1: to the medicine and the tools that we have. We
- 15:13Speaker 1: want both of those things to work together. I felt
- 15:15Speaker 1: like I was failing spiritually for a long time when
- 15:17Speaker 1: I was suicidal, and that wasn't true at all, and
- 15:20Speaker 1: in fact, I was leaning on God more than ever,
- 15:22Speaker 1: But yet I had this deep emptiness in me. And
- 15:25Speaker 1: it's because my brain was sick, not because I was
- 15:27Speaker 1: doing something wrong or I wasn't following Jesus correctly. So
- 15:30Speaker 1: both of those things can be true, but to anybody listening,
- 15:32Speaker 1: it's you don't need to abandon or lose your faith
- 15:35Speaker 1: and maybe seek out some of those parts of the
- 15:37Speaker 1: Bible that feel like what you feel like, whether that's
- 15:40Speaker 1: psalms or job or something like that.
- 15:43Speaker 2: What role does community play in combating mental health and
- 15:48Speaker 2: depression and suicide.
- 15:49Speaker 1: I think it's essential. I think we weren't meant to
- 15:53Speaker 1: spend so much time by ourselves that I don't even
- 15:55Speaker 1: think we were meant to live alone as much as
- 15:58Speaker 1: so many of us do. And for a lot of
- 16:01Speaker 1: us who struggle, it's like we don't want to have
- 16:02Speaker 1: to go out and fake it. That's how I felt.
- 16:05Speaker 1: It was like when you go to church and there's
- 16:07Speaker 1: like this idea that we all have to be happy
- 16:09Speaker 1: all of the time. And so it's how do we
- 16:11Speaker 1: allow people into our spaces to just show up as
- 16:13Speaker 1: they are. We don't have to expect them. You know,
- 16:15Speaker 1: you're welcome here. Whether you're having the best day of
- 16:18Speaker 1: your life or the worst day of your life, you
- 16:19Speaker 1: don't you don't have to pretend that everything's okay. So
- 16:22Speaker 1: it's not just the community peace that is important, but
- 16:25Speaker 1: because you but you can feel completely alone in a
- 16:27Speaker 1: crowded room if nobody wants to see you and actually
- 16:31Speaker 1: check in with how you are. So it's both things.
- 16:33Speaker 1: It's those of us that struggle. We do need to
- 16:36Speaker 1: push ourselves out into the world. We need to get
- 16:38Speaker 1: into spaces where there are more people, and even when
- 16:41Speaker 1: we don't feel like it, probably especially when we don't
- 16:44Speaker 1: feel like it. This psychology term is opposite to emotion,
- 16:47Speaker 1: so it's sometimes you have to do the thing you
- 16:49Speaker 1: don't feel like doing in order to feel better. And
- 16:52Speaker 1: sometimes that's just I'm going to go to church and
- 16:54Speaker 1: I'm going to decide when I get there how I'm
- 16:56Speaker 1: going to experience it. You know, maybe you do want
- 16:58Speaker 1: to sit alone, but usually once I get there, I
- 17:01Speaker 1: feel better. I've gotten through that brain fog of like
- 17:04Speaker 1: I don't want to do this. And then it's finding
- 17:07Speaker 1: a few people that you can trust that you can
- 17:09Speaker 1: check in with. And not everybody's perfect, not everybody's going
- 17:12Speaker 1: to have the tools to sit with you in some
- 17:14Speaker 1: of these deep things. But that also doesn't mean that
- 17:16Speaker 1: everyone's bad and that they don't care about you or
- 17:18Speaker 1: they don't want you there. Both of those things can
- 17:21Speaker 1: be true. So we all need to be a good
- 17:23Speaker 1: person to listen to you and not expect everyone to
- 17:26Speaker 1: be happy and perfect all the time, and those of
- 17:28Speaker 1: us that struggle need to be brave, and we need
- 17:30Speaker 1: to put ourselves out there a little bit and see
- 17:33Speaker 1: what the world and what God might have for us.
- 17:36Speaker 2: Perhaps this is the final question where you sam, what
- 17:38Speaker 2: is the biggest takeaway and that you want readers to
- 17:42Speaker 2: take away from this book. You can do this.
- 17:46Speaker 1: So the book itself isn't about suicide at all. It
- 17:49Speaker 1: is about self care, it's about purpose, it's about resilience.
- 17:53Speaker 1: But really I designed it to feel like a friend
- 17:56Speaker 1: sitting with you each morning, and even more so, I
- 17:58Speaker 1: hoped that it would be a gift of connection. I
- 18:01Speaker 1: meet so many parents, grandparents, teachers, community members who see
- 18:05Speaker 1: someone in their life who is struggling and they don't
- 18:07Speaker 1: know what to do. And so my hope is that
- 18:09Speaker 1: the book can be that moment of connection where you
- 18:12Speaker 1: can just give them this gift, whether maybe it's graduation
- 18:14Speaker 1: or a birthday, and you're just saying, hey, I am
- 18:17Speaker 1: here for you, I see you, I want to encourage
- 18:19Speaker 1: you through this. Because that's what I wanted. I wanted
- 18:23Speaker 1: moments of connection. I didn't want just cold advice. I
- 18:26Speaker 1: wanted a friendly support system. And so that's my hope
- 18:31Speaker 1: for you can do this, that people feel seen, that
- 18:33Speaker 1: they feel encouraged, and that caregivers also have something that
- 18:36Speaker 1: they can share with the people they love.
- 18:39Speaker 2: If you like today's episode, please subscribe and leave a
- 18:43Speaker 2: five star review. That's how we help more people just
- 18:46Speaker 2: like you find the show.
- 18:48Speaker 3: A big thanks to the team at life Audio for
- 18:50Speaker 3: their partnership with us on the podcast. If you go
- 18:53Speaker 3: to lifeaudio dot com, you will find dozens of other
- 18:56Speaker 3: faith centered podcasts in their network.
- 18:58Speaker 2: See you next time.