A video version of this episode is available here: YouTube: @TheSurvivorsPodcastChannel
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Episode Summary:
In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Lisa shares her journey of surviving suicide loss twice—first, losing her cousin and father as a child, then discovering decades later that her father had died by suicide rather than a heart attack. The revelation shattered her world but ultimately led her to advocacy, support work, and co-founding The Survivors Podcast. Lisa and Gretchen discuss how trauma can shape a person’s path, the importance of open conversations about mental health, and how we can all work to break the stigma surrounding suicide.
Lessons Learned in This Episode:
- The long-lasting impact of suicide loss on survivors.
- The importance of breaking generational cycles of silence around mental health.
- Why sharing your story can be a powerful tool for healing.
- The misconception that suicide is selfish and how that mindset needs to change.
- How community and conversation can help those struggling with loss and grief.
Episode Chapters:
- 00:00 - Introduction & Trigger Warning
- 00:40 - Lisa’s Journey: A Complex Story of Loss
- 02:06 - Losing Her Father Twice: The Shocking Truth
- 07:11 - The Moment of Discovery & Emotional Impact
- 10:07 - The Lack of Mental Health Resources in the Past
- 14:56 - Founding The HelpHUB™: A Mental Health Resource Platform
- 18:05 - Turning Pain Into Purpose
- 22:24 - Changing the Narrative: Suicide is Not Selfish
- 26:23 - Building a Supportive Mental Health Community
- 28:57 - Closing Thoughts: The Journey of Healing
đź“š Resources for Mental Health & Support
- The Survivors Podcast Website – https://thesurvivors.net/
- The HelpHUB™ – Mental health resources, tools, and support networks: https://www.thehelphub.co/
- Schoser Talent and Wellness Solutions – Mental wellness coaching & support: https://schosersolutions.com/
- Calmerry – Affordable & accessible online therapy: https://calmerry.com/
- Sh!t That Goes On In Our Heads – A raw, award-winning mental health podcast: https://goesoninourheads.net/
📲 Follow & Connect With Us:
- đź“· Instagram: @the_survivors_podcast
- đź”— LinkedIn: The Survivors Podcast
- 🎥 YouTube: @TheSurvivorsPodcastChannel
#TheSurvivorsPodcast #EndTheStigma #MentalHealthMatters #SuicidePrevention #YouAreNotAlone #BreakTheSilence #GriefSupport #988Lifeline #SurvivorStories #HealingTogether #PodMatch #MentalHealth #SuicideAwareness #Podcast #Community #Hope #Grief #Stigma #MentalIllness #Support #LisaSugarman #GretchenSchoser
🎙️ See You Next Week! Stay strong, keep going, and remember: You are enough. 💜
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[Music]
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The survivors has brought to you by our friends at Calmary.
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This podcast mentions suicide, mental illness, grief and loss, and may be triggering for
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some listeners.
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So please take care of your mental well-being by pausing or skipping any sections that
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feel uncomfortable to you.
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And if you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for support.
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So it's like it's so hard to know where to jump in with my story.
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My story is a little bit unusual.
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It's a little complicated and it's long, I think.
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Would you agree?
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It is long.
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Kind of good.
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But it's kind of good.
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It's long and complicated, but it also makes you who you are.
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Right, exactly.
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Exactly.
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Sure, 1% would not be here behind this mic with you doing this if I didn't have the
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story.
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So, I guess like the best place to start is to say that I am a three-time survivor of
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suicide loss.
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I've lost my cousin when I was nine years old.
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The year after my cousin passed away in 1978, I lost my father.
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That one's the real kind of unusual kind of loss.
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You'll see in a second when I explain.
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And then I lost one of our closest childhood friends who we were close all the way up
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through our 50s, lived together in college and with each other's weddings and all that.
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So that was only about four years ago.
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So I had nothing whatsoever to do with the mental health field or community most of my life
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until only a handful of years ago.
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I was writing parenting books.
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I was in the parenting space.
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I was on all the parenting platforms talking about raising kids and work-life balance and
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all that.
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And then everything changed.
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Everything just kind of exploded and imploded.
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And when the dust settled, I was, you know, somebody very very different.
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So for me, I guess the thing that makes the most sense is to explain how I've lost my dad
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twice in my life.
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I think that makes the most sense.
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So I've lost my father twice because I lost him when I was 10 years old.
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I was at day camp for the day.
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When I came home, my mom came to grab me off the school bus, camp bus, and I didn't walk
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with her to my house.
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She turned me in the opposite direction and walked me away from our house that had a line of
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cars down the street in front of it.
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And I thought, I was just crazy things you think of when you're 10 years old.
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I was totally sure that that was a surprise party because my birthday, my 10th birthday,
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was two weeks before that day.
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And I could see like my grandma's car and my uncle Milton's car and my aunt, Harriet's
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car.
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Like everybody's cars were there and I was so sure that it was a party for me.
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And my mom gets me off the bus and she walks me the opposite direction of the house.
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And I see my aunt's car parked way down the street in like a weird spot, way down the street.
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And I don't know why.
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Like it just hit me in that moment.
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It was like five o'clock in the afternoon.
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My dad would never have been home at that time.
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So we lived north of Boston and he worked in the city.
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And I would never have had my dad home at that time of day.
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He always came home later.
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And for some weird reason, I said, where's dad?
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Why isn't dad here?
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And my mom just like had her arms around me as we're walking over to my aunt's car.
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And she said, daddy had a heart attack.
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And like my first instinct was we have to go to him.
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We have to go to him right now.
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And she said, we can't go to him.
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And by now we're like sitting in my aunt's car.
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And she said, daddy died.
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Daddy had a heart attack and died.
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And of course, your whole world just explodes in front of your face.
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And that was the narrative that I lived with for 35 years in my life.
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That happened when I was 10 years old.
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Always believed my dad, who was a super fit guy.
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He was a mountain climber and he raised cars.
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And he was super, super active, outdoorsman.
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But he also smoked three packs of Winston's a day.
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So it was heart disease in the family.
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And all else.
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And I had a hard story to believe.
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Had no reason to disbelieve it.
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So that's the story that I had my entire life growing up all the way through, like high school
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college, getting married, having kids.
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And then very unexpectedly, 35 years later, when my dad was 45 when he died.
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So when I was 45 years old that summer, I accidentally learned that my dad had actually died by
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suicide.
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And it just like that did me.
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It just took me out.
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He really did for a long time.
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It's funny.
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People probably don't know it.
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People who are in my life, even my closest friends, didn't know because I was like two very
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separate people for a very, very long time.
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Like the outward facing part of me was so different than the person who was like in my bedroom
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behind closed doors sobbing to Dave for like three years.
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So I've lost him twice because when I found out it was a suicide, my mom confirmed that
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it was in fact a suicide.
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I lost everything in that moment and went right back to square one.
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Like I was right back to like day one minute one of losing my dad all over again and grieved
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him.
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But now I was a suicide lost survivor and what the hell was I going to do with that?
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Like what is that even?
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You know, I had no real.
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I mean, I had experience with it only in the context of like my cousin had died by suicide
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but I was nine years old.
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Nobody talked about it.
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It was not a thing.
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So now all of a sudden here I am like a survivor because my own dad took his life.
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So that's my why that that just like I shut down for a long time.
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I stopped writing, stopped creating content.
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Didn't didn't really feel like I was aligned with what I wanted to do and my mom, I mean,
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you've you've met my mom.
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She's a little fireball.
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I love her.
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Oh my god.
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My mom is like the greatest of the great.
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She's the queen of all that matters.
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And she said to me like super early on, she was like you absolutely can start talking about
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this or writing about this.
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Like whatever you need to do with this more or less is what she said, you do go do it.
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I support you.
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And I was like, no, my god, this is no way.
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I'm not going to write about this now.
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I'm going to talk about this now.
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I can't do that.
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No way to painful.
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Don't know what I'm dealing with.
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Don't even know how I feel.
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My kids didn't even know about it.
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Only at that time my mom and Dave and I were the only ones who knew about it.
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Because as soon as I found out about it from my mother, I of course like, you know, my
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mom was staying with us and I brought, we had gone out for lunch and the conversation, it's
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just king.
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And he went back in the house to kind of get her bearings and Dave, I said to Dave, like
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I need to take a drive.
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We need to go take a drive.
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And he was like, well, he knew immediately knew something was wrong.
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He was like, what is going on?
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And I told him and I remember him.
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So the first thing he said was, well, how do you know?
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Like could it have been a mistake?
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Like, you know what I mean?
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And I said, honey, he left a note and he was like, okay, like now, okay, like we know now
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that this is real.
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What we're what we're dealing with is real.
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But it was just the two of them were the only ones who knew for years before I felt like
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I had kind of had my bearings a little bit and could like talk about it.
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And why I wanted first and foremost to talk about it with my kids and say, like, look,
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you guys, there's inherited trauma and there's inherited DNA.
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And we all have it.
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And my kids at that time were like junior high in high school.
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And I really felt like it was important for them to know, like, okay, there's some serious
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mental illness on my dad's side of the family.
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And it may not be impacting you now, but it could impact you at some point in your life.
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And you need to know about it.
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And it's important to be able to talk about it and have that dialogue.
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So kind of once I told them, it was like a little slow domino effect.
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It was like I told them I told my immediate family and started like, you know, widening the circle
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and told friends and whatnot.
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And now all of a sudden it was like I went from like one day still sticking with that narrative
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of like my dad died of a heart attack.
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It's crazy how many people ask how my dad died.
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Like it really bugs my kids that people ask so much because it's such a personal question
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but so many people do.
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So for the longest time, I still kind of reverted back to the old my dad died of a heart attack
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narrative.
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Then it was like all of a sudden.
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Once I kind of reconciled with things in my own head, never looked back.
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I was like, nope, my dad died by suicide and never looked back.
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I never felt shame.
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Never felt any shame.
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I was bullshit though at my father, but not probably not for the reasons that you would
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think.
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I wasn't angry at my dad for leaving me.
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I was so upset with my dad for leaving my mom as a single mom with a 10 year old child.
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Working a part-time job as a secretary at a nursing home like the hell did she know about
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like you know at that time like my dad took care of everything and what did she know about
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raising a child alone and you know bookkeeping and finances and house and mortgage and all the
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things.
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So for a really long time, I was so furious at him for that.
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And that was also still at the time when I really believed that suicide was a self-ashacked
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which a lot of people, a lot of people believed that.
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And that's something I want to talk a lot about.
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100% because of a lot of selfish.
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No.
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And just to interject into your story.
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Just remember like when your dad made suicide, the resources that we have today were not
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available to him at that time.
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Right.
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Oh my God.
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That right there is why I founded the hell pub which I know we're going to talk about at some
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point later on and we kind of you know mention it in each episode but that's why I founded
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this whole platform to put people with the resources they need, connect people with the resources
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that they need.
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That's why I'm on the crisis lifelines with the Trevor project.
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That's why you know I work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to tell stories
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about my experience and help mainstream these kinds of experiences with other people.
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And yeah it was, I mean so that was my why for kind of diving into one site unloaded it
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all on the rest of the world and everybody kind of knew the truth.
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Then it was like I couldn't stop.
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You know what I mean?
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I just like and I know you feel the same way because you're literally doing the same
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thing.
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I know we're going to talk about your story next week but you know it's you know secret
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that you know you're a survivor of an attempt of a few years ago and that whole experience
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completely changed the trajectory of your life in the same way that you know learning
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that my dad died by suicide changed mine and it's crazy when you think about like the things
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that happen to us in our lives that are these like tragic traumatic like world shaking
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you know shake your foundation to your core kind of things that happen.
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And then you can turn around and and still somehow dig out a nugget of you know of golden
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there or something that's you know worth something to other people like that's you know you
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went through shit like you went you were like you were in it and now look at you now now
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you're like inspiring the world to reach out for help and talk about what's on your mind
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and what's in your heart and all those things and and you know I've been through it again
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again and again and you know as a survivor of suicide loss and and all I want to do is talk
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about it like all I want to do is explain to people that you do not have to use that as
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a way of ending your pain like we can fix it there is help.
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And you know it's funny but not funny how shit that we start doing right after facing
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things like this like that one in our wheelhouse right like five years ago for for me this was
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not in the wheelhouse it was not on the vision world okay I don't even know what a vision
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world is it's like not my generation but what we're doing is we're changing the world
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and I love that you're so open about your journey about everything you do and you're out there
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helping people every single day like your story matters.
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Yeah I'm so I mean I really hope so and now you know it's funny for people who are listening
00:13:09
you're not going to be able to see me do this but gee I did this to you before we even
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started recording this morning I told you what I gifted myself for my birthday last year
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it was like a little like a little teeny tiny thing but it has become so powerful for me
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in my in my office I realized that something was missing on my desk and so I made for anyone
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who's not watching the video of this I'm holding up a picture of me with my dad I was
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probably like seven years old and it's right here on my desk it's right there it's staring
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me in the face every single time I write an article or I do an interview or we take a
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podcast or I write another chapter in a book or whatever it is it's right there and the
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freesies thing and I don't even know if I've ever told you this or maybe I have at this point
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I really genuinely feel like every single thing that I do whether I'm on a lifeline or you
00:14:02
know talking about my story I'm doing it with my dad like I I have had the most overpowering
00:14:07
sensation lately in the last probably six months that we are absolutely doing all of this
00:14:13
work together.
00:14:16
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00:14:21
supports you through life's challenges connect with licensed therapists and reap the
00:14:24
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00:14:29
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00:14:31
I'm sure he's like shining down on you like every day and like sitting with you right
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like he in his own mind wishing that he had the resources that we have today and that's
00:14:51
why podcasts like ours are so incredibly powerful and important.
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Yeah that's I mean you know we talked about this in the last episode that you know for both
00:15:02
of us the thing we want most which is why where we totally align you and I I mean you and
00:15:07
my align and like 65 different things but the thing that like really brought us together
00:15:13
was I've never met anyone who is as passionate as I believe myself to be about making an impact
00:15:21
in the world about changing the conversation about changing the narrative about about bringing
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the hard topics and conversations into the spotlight in the mainstream until I met you
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and because they've been taboo for so long right and I think you know for people that are
00:15:38
my age you know that have been told not to talk about it that it's important that we have
00:15:45
these conversations right and you know and have it and not have it be like generational.
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I mean this what we're going through what we're talking about and suicide happens in every
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single generation every single age group.
00:16:00
Yeah it does but I mean I think about my dad in his case nobody knew nobody had any idea that
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my dad was struggling I mean my mom certainly didn't I mean it's my father was in the room now
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the way he was then you would have seen the most lovable charming funny grounded present joyful man.
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I mean it's that's why sometimes it's when I really think about like what he must have been going
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through it you know just kind of makes me want to cry because I realized that he was suffering like
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over I mean when you're at that point and you do that thing you are suffering in a way that most
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people do not understand you understand it but a lot of other people don't and you know he he just
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took that one last step that fortunately you didn't take and there was no I mean he was 1978
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like who the hell was he talking to about his feelings he he certainly wasn't talking to his family he
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certainly wasn't talking to his friends I mean the ironic thing is that at the very very end of his
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life the last I think my mom says it's like the last month or so he did actually say to her that he
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was staying a therapist but I think it was just like too little too late or the wrong person and
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whatever the reason was it didn't work and I think it was just too late but that's all I want to do now
00:17:29
is when I'm not on the lifelines all I'm thinking about is being on the lifelines to be the person
00:17:34
on the other end of the phone that my dad didn't have you know or to you know I just I just submitted
00:17:39
the manuscript for my next book that I've been working on for like four years that's the story of
00:17:45
losing my dad twice and losing him to suicide and and I think about all these things it's like I can't
00:17:52
do enough like I just want to get and I know you're exactly the same way that's why you were like oh
00:17:56
sure I'll I'll jump from doing this wildly successful other podcast to do let's do a podcast together
00:18:03
I was like so you know I have to do even more no time during the day to do things but it's so
00:18:10
important and I love to love you and I love you to you're so passionate about doing this and about
00:18:17
sharing your love and your your hurt with people especially when you're on the crisis
00:18:24
life right like because by the time you get to that point at least for me like you're fucking that
00:18:32
yeah I know I am really trying not to cast I'm trying to be really good I know you've been
00:18:36
I for anybody who's listening and watching you have to understand something about G G cannot
00:18:41
complete a sentence without the word fuck and the fact that we have gotten how many minutes are we
00:18:46
right now 19 minutes get your belief that you have gotten to the so proud of you so I believe we
00:18:54
it won't last it might but like you know your story is so important because there are probably other
00:19:03
people out there that the same thing happened right and so finding out later in life it had to
00:19:13
have been incredibly painful and hurtful and trying to figure out those emotions of that doll
00:19:20
yeah yeah it was um it was it was a time let me tell you that much it was a time and I you know
00:19:28
and I say this I say this in like the most genuine and heartfelt way that I possibly can
00:19:36
I would probably not be here if it was not for my mother I mean my mother is the most extraordinary
00:19:43
human that I know anyway aside from everything that she's done to protect me from you know all of this
00:19:49
but a lot of people wonder if I ever had any feelings of animosity or or you know if I was angry with
00:19:58
her or felt any resentment toward her for keeping the secret like she she did she kept the secret for 35
00:20:05
years that my dad died by suicide and the answer to that question is oh my god no not a second not
00:20:11
not a single second of time have I ever been anything but just eternally grateful to her for
00:20:19
sparing me because look I mean I kind of alluded to this a little while ago and I never really finished
00:20:24
the thought that I had always believed that suicide was selfish it was just my own little belief system
00:20:30
that probably started when I was 10 after my cousin passed away and and I don't know where it came
00:20:35
from it didn't come from my parents it was just like something that just I I just developed on my own
00:20:41
and I just kind of quietly had that belief system until I found out about my father until I started
00:20:47
like digging into kind of the the wise behind the psychology behind why the why people take their
00:20:54
life why how do people get that desperate what is it really all about and I realized it was just like
00:20:58
and that happened overnight like you and I have had this conversation a million times that I went
00:21:03
from believing it was selfish to completely recognizing that mental illness is an illness just like
00:21:09
any other illness that needs to be treated and respected and managed in the way you would if you
00:21:15
had heart disease or cancer or anything else like that and I didn't realize that until I had to
00:21:20
navigate my own dad's suicide and then I was like what an idiot I was such an idiot how would I ever
00:21:24
think it was selfish there's nothing selfish about it whatsoever and it completely talk about like
00:21:29
mind shift like blowing your mind it literally happened overnight and I was like oh god no it's not
00:21:37
that at all but if I in that moment if I had found out when I was 10 years old that it was a suicide
00:21:41
like it was bad enough to know that he was gone forever my mom just like like instinct took over
00:21:47
and she totally mom-of-aired me in that moment and was like nope my child is going to be hurting
00:21:53
enough for the rest of her life because she just lost her father I am not layering a suicide
00:21:58
on top of that now and then it became like now you're going high school in college and then you're
00:22:03
getting married like what's the point um and then it ended up coming up by accident but um
00:22:08
yeah it's just uh it's been a journey it has definitely been a journey then I think of it like where
00:22:14
I am now and the work that I'm doing now and the connections I've made in the community that I
00:22:19
a part of and like our relationship and and how like absolutely certain I am that I am in the right
00:22:28
place at the right time with the right person doing the right thing like I've never ever felt
00:22:33
more certain about anything than I do about that even though you swear constantly like a fucking
00:22:41
sailor I but you know what sometimes that's like the only word to use I know but I am so thankful for
00:22:48
you and you know trauma brings it can either bring out the worst in the person or the best in the
00:22:57
person and I think that in our cases trauma is bringing bringing out the best in us because we're
00:23:04
we're taking that pain and we turn it into a purpose okay okay you know you and I said at time and
00:23:13
time again we just want to change the world change that change the trajectory and it now more than ever
00:23:19
our message you know is clear and like a lot of people are suffering things are crazy right now so
00:23:27
yeah yeah that's not understood being able to open up and talk about this so to talk about it
00:23:31
freely without any stigma because no I'm not ashamed of my own story which you guys will hear next week
00:23:39
you know I had to go through that to get here yeah and and so did I and and I'm so unbelievably
00:23:48
grateful that I'm in this position that you know obviously do I wish my father was here yeah do I
00:23:54
wish my cousin and my friend was here like of course I do not a day goes by that I don't wish
00:24:00
that they were still here at the same time though and this is this is the interesting thing about why
00:24:06
like how grief and joy can exist at the same time and I'm sure you and I know you and I'll have this
00:24:10
conversation down the line but in my case like I always have this undercurrent of sadness that
00:24:17
my people are gone and that that they they died by suicide and it could have been prevented
00:24:23
but and I hate the word button you know I don't like the word but I'm gonna say it anyway
00:24:29
but at the same time I'm so insanely grateful that what I have gone through is something that I hope
00:24:38
other people can connect with and find some pathway to hope through my story or your story
00:24:46
because you know I've got we have got a lot of lived experience behind us I mean you're like 7
00:24:54
years old so you've got like centuries where it's here wow okay let me stop and close our
00:25:00
session there's like six years difference in our so you need to stop I know I'm sorry I had to I won't
00:25:05
ever do it again until the next episode I swear okay for all I won't see this is good we laugh we're
00:25:11
talking about suicide and we're like laughing our answers often and it's not this is not to
00:25:15
disrespect the subject in any way this is to show that grief and loss can coexist they have to
00:25:21
coexist and we have to be able to still recognize what we've been through the traumatic nature of what
00:25:29
we've been through and also still that there is another side of it that there is there is joy to be
00:25:35
found and there is hope to be found you know we're we're out here hopefully kind of like
00:25:41
blazing the trail for that in some ways I hope I kind of see it that way I see it that way too and
00:25:48
like I said you know the upcoming episodes we're just gonna dive into like some really amazing topics
00:25:55
and you know some of them will walk away and just scratch in your head and others it will be like
00:26:01
wow I never realized and you know so part of it is like an education the suicide education and
00:26:09
and give me guys some tips and tricks to like you know kind of just figure it out and let you know
00:26:16
that you are never ever ever ever ever that's the biggest thing that's that's the biggest part of this
00:26:22
because we're not just to and we said this in the last episode we're not just sitting here having
00:26:26
conversations about these topics we're growing a community we're building a community like we want
00:26:34
people to reach out to us we want people to connect with us light into our DMs send us emails connect
00:26:40
with us in every way that you can if you have you know a story or an experience to share a point of
00:26:46
view or a tip or something you know because not everything works for everybody and that's the benefit
00:26:51
of like you and I just talking about what we've been through it helps and the other thing that I
00:26:57
think is really important to mention is that and this is why it makes it so relevant when you talk
00:27:02
about like the statistics of suicide like 700 people in the US alone I'm sorry that's a lie
00:27:09
I'm lying it's not it's a liar. Sorry 49 people a year will die by suicide in the United States 700
00:27:16
people will die around the world every year because of suicide loss now here's the interesting thing
00:27:22
that literally stops me in my tracks every time I hear it for every one person who dies by suicide
00:27:29
135 people are affected by that one loss whether it's like a colleague or it's a family member or
00:27:38
it's a friend or someone in the community 135 so if you do the math it's like
00:27:44
tens of millions of people a year are affected by suicide loss and here's where this podcast
00:27:52
is so important if you are out there and you're watching us or you're listening to us right now
00:27:57
and you by some miracle have not been touched by suicide either in your life yourself with an
00:28:05
attempt or with someone in your life who has made an attempt or has passed away you will be
00:28:11
you will be at some point or another you will be touched by this and so this is our new pandemic
00:28:20
and you and I are right here to be where the Anthony Fauci's of the is that too much? No I'm
00:28:29
in a good way right no we want to be the the voice of you know this conversation to be
00:28:39
you know a place of comfort a place of support a place of strength and hope and
00:28:45
it was a little luck and lots of talking we will be I love this and like I said I'm turning next
00:28:52
week for my story and Lisa thank you so much for sharing yours okay thanks for pulling space I
00:28:58
love you a lot I love you too thanks for joining us on our survivors remember no matter how tough
00:29:06
things feel you are enough and the world needs you just the way you are you're not alone in this
00:29:11
journey there's a community here and every step forward counts we're so grateful you took the time
00:29:16
to listen and we hope they'll take one day at a time just know there's always more light ahead
00:29:21
thanks for being here friends just remember help is out there in so many different places
00:29:28
so if you or someone you know is struggling please call 988 and a trained crisis counselor like me
00:29:34
will be there to help you can also find an inclusive and comprehensive directory of mental health
00:29:38
resources tools and content at the help hub dot c o just remember that help is always just a call
00:29:45
or a click away we'll catch you next week in the meantime keep surviving