Episode 128: LOTE: Exploring The Impact Of Suicide On Families: A Sad But Necessary Discussion
*TRIGGER WARNING* on today's episode.
Episode 128 of the Sober Vibes podcast, it's Livin on the El-Edge week, which means the Elledge sister are discussing Suicide and the impact it has on families. Kimberly and Courtney discuss how suicide has impacted their lives.
This episode is just a conversation and one that is needed.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this episode is dedicated to the ones we have lost to suicide. It's important to keep their memory alive and not focus on how they left this earth but on their impact on us while they were here.
What you will learn in this episode:
- An open conversation about suicide
- How suicide has impacted Courtney and Kimberly
- Trying to make sense of it
- Remembering the moments of the loved one
We hope this episode helps you today.
Please call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline if you or you know someone who is struggling. Help is here.
Thank you for listening.
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Episode 128:Exploring The Impact of Suicide on Families: A Sad But Necessary Discussion
In this episode of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen and Kimberly Ann Elledge, the Elledge Sisters, talk about the road to recovery and sobriety and how to maintain a happy and healthy lifestyle. They also reflect on their recent family toxicity episode, in which Courtney had to ask Kimberly what she wanted her to do. The conversation then turns serious as they discuss how this time of year can bring up strong memories and muscle memory of their childhood and family. They discuss how to manage these feelings and how to stay on the path to recovery and sobriety.
Kim and her family experienced a traumatic incident in the spring of 1993 when their parents announced their divorce. At the same time, the family had a babysitter who was very close to them. The following year, their father moved out, and their mother was very successful with her business. During one weekend, the babysitter was house-sitting and committed suicide in their home. This episode is an awareness and a conversation about suicide, and Kim and her family don't understand why somebody would choose to do that.
The Elledge sisters discussed how mental health issues could manifest in different ways, such as addiction. One of the speakers shared their own experience of attempting suicide as a cry for help in their active state of drunkenness. They also discussed the impact of their babysitter's suicide and how it served as a stepping stone into their parent's mental health issues. The conversation then shifted to the family dynamic before their parents' divorce, which they both experienced differently - Kim was happy that the divorce was happening, while the other was more affected by it. The sisters concluded that their parents did the best they could even though the divorce was traumatic.
The conversation is about the suicide of a babysitter and assistant to the family. The babysitter was in her early 20s, a substitute teacher, had a fiance, and was a trusted person in their lives. When she committed suicide, it sent their family into chaos and confusion, as they had never experienced this level of trauma before. The sisters reflect on how their mother was perceived as a witch for being involved in the mystical and spiritual, which was uncommon in the early 90s. They believes that the consequences of someone else's actions can be devastating and hopes no one has to experience the same tragedy.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00:02 Episode 128: Exploring Trauma Responses, Self-Care, and Family Toxicity
0:02:58 Heading: Reflection on Traumatic Incident: The Impact of Divorce and Suicide on the Eligist Family
0:04:59 Heading: Reflections on Mental Health and Family Dynamics
0:07:41 Heading: Reflections on the Impact of a Loved One's Suicide on a Family Unit
0:14:18 Conversation Summary: Reflections on Suicide and Selfishness
0:16:15 Topic: The Impact of Suicide on Sensitive Souls
0:18:28 "The Impact of Losing a Friend to Suicide: A Reflection"
0:24:42 Heading: Processing Grief: Reflections on a Difficult Childhood Memory
0:27:02 Heading: Grieving the Loss of a Loved One: Moving Past Anger and Finding Peace
0:29:11 Heading: Exploring the Complexities of Suicide and Mental Health
0:35:58 Heading: Processing a Tragic Loss: A Conversation on Beliefs and Coping Strategies
0:37:40 Conversation on Mental Health, Addiction Recovery, and Family Dynamics
0:40:05 Heading: Understanding the Impact of Suicide on Those Left Behind
0:41:58 Conversation on Remembering Good Memories with a Loved One
HIGHLIGHTS
And then another person comes back out and takes their lives and it goes back into a new cycle or social media feed and then it's nothing's talked about. Again. Yeah, also, I'm a strong believer, too, if that's somebody's type of trauma where they've experienced, turn that person's memory of their life into some good afterwards, into some type of organization or benefit on behalf each year, do something good for that person in their memory because they still had a life.
It's sad. And from a personal place where I've seen people and have loved people who have killed themselves, it's awful. It's awful. So you can get to the other side of it. There's definitely help there. But when someone's in that mindset and that level of sickness and trauma and depression and they have blinders on, all they see is a fucking endgame to get out of pain. And I firmly believe they will come back and try again in the next life.
Absolutely. I hope this conversation helped or just listening to it and understanding it a lot more of just being open minded and not so much of judgment. This conversation really sparked from there was a celebrity in the wintertime, I believe, that had committed suicide. Same thing. The happiest person you would think has this great family, has this great career, and then he ends up taking his own life, and everyone is like, Why?. How can that be? How can that be? And I think that's just like, the question that people want to know. And here's maybe a couple different ways of looking at why that could happen to anybody.
There is a lot she didn't ask for. Now that I'm older, when I look back with mom, it's like for her to be sitting there at a kitchen table in the middle of a fucking what the police thought was a crime scene and having to dissect all through that and then having to worry about four children and coming off of a divorce from an abusive marriage. She had a lot going on. And it definitely I have empathy for now. Like, looking back when we're kids, we don't know shit.
And then the bottom always eventually fell out, right? So it was the start of that. And I think it's important too, when you have these life events from a healing perspective, that you have these situations that happen to you, that it's important to understand where your thought process came into play. Right so, like, how I have connected that bottom falling out because it stemmed from that. I think it can make the healing process and the rewiring of the thought process easier for you to continue to grow and heal for your own path. Because all of our life really is not everything's a goddamn lesson. There was clearly no lesson in that for us to learn. That was what it was.