Restoring Hope to defeat military suicides

I am sure you've heard the expression "Where there is life, there is hope." This saying usually means that the next breath we take offers hope of something getting better. People only commit suicide when they have lost all hope of anything getting better.

If we hope that tomorrow we'll finally feel loved, there is a reason to get up the next day.
If we hope we'll find a job or someone will give us a chance to prove ourselves, there is a reason to wake up in the morning.
If we hope we'll find justice, find help, find someone does care about us, then it is worth planning on waking up.

Yet if we have spent far too many nights hoping and too many days waiting, hope slips away and the reason to try one more day, one more hour, one more minute is just too painful to even try to last.

This is why so many commit suicide. The reasons behind the downfall are too numerous in normal civilian life but with all of the usual reasons people have for trying to end their own life, the members of the military and survivors of traumatic experiences have one more. They want to escape the ghosts haunting them. They grow tired of waiting to "get over it" and they don't want to believe there is someone out there able to help them because whoever they are, they are not showing up to do it for them.

With PTSD they are disconnected emotionally from family and friends. While this pushing away of people in their lives distances them from feeling their pain, it also prevents them from the connection that would offer them support and love. They get the idea no one cares. They feel they let down their families. They feel as if they are condemned to the hell they live with. The list of levels of hell go on at the same time they want to return to being "who" they were before all of it happened.

If they know others have been in the same emotional state they are in then there is hope. There is hope because the others are standing up and still breathing after being through the same horrors. They offer hope by simply still being alive. They offer more hope when they can talk about where they were, what they went through and how much it changed them, but are still alive. Giving someone the chance to hear about a survivor surviving life after is the best medication on the planet because they find hope again that they can heal too.

Restoring Hope: On Covering Suicide

On Friday, Sept. 24th the Pentagon Channel wraps up its special Restoring Hope programming on This Week in the Pentagon. Throughout the month, we have introduced you to families impacted by the loss of a loved one due to suicide as well the warning signs and what actions the military is taking in suicide prevention.

In this blog post, Pentagon Channel producer Terese Schlachter shares her experience working on this special project. You can hear more of her thoughts, along with This Week in the Pentagon producer Candace Hewitt, by clicking here. For comprehensive Restoring Hope coverage please visit http://www.defense.gov/restoringhope.

When Danelle Hackett drives to the Walmart to do her grocery shopping, she puts a cooler in her trunk. That’s because she lives so far from the frozen food section, stuff will thaw before she gets it home. She agreed to move to Carpenter, Wyoming because her husband, a 26 year Marine Corps veteran, wanted to retire to a wide open space. He bought the house after sending his wife of more than 20 years just a picture. She wanted so much for him to be happy. So they lived there- occasionally defending their garden from wandering horses- watching snow drift easily over their four foot fence.

On June 5, Jeff Hackett drove the distance to the American Legion hall in Cheyenne, where he shot himself.

Danelle is one of the widows I spent an afternoon with, as part of the Pentagon Channel’s special coverage of suicide in the military. Her grief was raw. She sobbed as she told me how her husband’s PTSD had worsened and how he wouldn’t ask for help. But she wanted to be part of the series “Restoring Hope”, so others might learn from her story. I still look at her Facebook page occasionally, to see what she’s thinking about. Comments people write to her are warm and supportive, but as I read them I imagine all their voices throwing echoes because they’re coming from so far away.
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