I'll Never Grow Complacent of the Loss of Yet Another Teen by Suicide

I was sitting in Starbucks looking through FaceBook yesterday when I came across a story about a good-looking kid with a big beaming smile in a Northern football uniform. He was a Northern Secondary graduate and was about to enter his third year at the University of Guelph. He was on the Guelph Varsity Rugby team. I read that he died by suicide on August 10, 2022. He was only 19 years old. When I see stories like this, it rips my heart from my chest. It brings me back to April 11, 2015, at 1 am, when a police officer approached Nicole and me and confirmed our worst news imaginable, our daughter Maddie was gone. That inconsolable moment will haunt us forever. I didn't know this young man or his family. I cried quietly, sitting in Starbucks, thinking about his parents. To be on the receiving end of this information as a parent is beyond surreal.  

Unfortunately, our kids are all too familiar with kids taking their own lives, and for many, this isn't the first person they've known who has died by suicide. We may never know what was truly going through those last fateful minutes of their minds before they made that irreversible decision.

Stories like this make me reverent about wanting kids to understand their emotions. We want them to identify, understand and adequately process their feelings. Our How Are You Feeling program teaches kids about their emotions before having these "big feelings." 98% of our program's participants feel that emotional health should be part of our school's education; meanwhile, 94% think that what they currently learn about emotional health in school is inadequate. Probably the most crucial statistic is upon completing our program, 96% of participants feel confident that they can better handle an emotional or traumatic event.

My goal is never to have to write about another kid that has taken their life because they couldn't cope or life became so overwhelming. I just saw a post by Gary Vaynerchuk about too many people posting negative crap on social media. He says that we should start seeking out and posting about happiness for a change and that the world would be a better place. I'd love for this to be the case. My heart pains every time I read another tragedy about losing an innocent life. I'm not naive to think that we can eliminate all teenage suicides, but we must improve upon the reality of those numbers today.

As the summer closes and the new school year looms on the horizon, many students feel excitement and anxiety. For some, the thought of returning to the classroom after months of relaxation is invigorating. They can't wait to see their friends and return to a routine. Others, however, are filled with dread. The pressures of academic performance, social interactions, and extracurricular activities can be overwhelming, leaving them anxious and stressed.

It's important to remember that emotional health is just as important as academic success. When students can manage their emotions effectively, they are more likely to thrive in all areas of their life. Unfortunately, emotional overwhelm is all too common in today's world. To promote emotional awareness and help students stay afloat, we must prioritize emotional health in the coming year.  

Because we have had such success with our summer Student Research Study, we have decided to continue to offer it to students. Kids will continue learning about their emotional health and qualify for volunteer hours. We are proud of what we have created and how positively and fondly our graduates have talked about our program. If you'd like your child to participate in our program, we'd ask you to sign up here.

This week, my heart will be with the family of that lost soul. I don't know them, yet we belong to the most awful club imaginable. It's been more than seven years since we lost Maddie, yet hearing of tragedies like this family brings all the pain rushing back to me. I wish our How Are You Feeling program would've been available sooner.