Content Warning: Frank discussion of death by suicide
In this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen sits down with fellow Mama Dragons Julie Turnbull and Alyson Paul Deussen to talk about their lived experiences as mothers surviving the loss of their sons to suicide. In this vulnerable discussion, they honestly share the difficult moments of parenting a suicidal child and the journey of grief that their lives took when their child died by suicide. We hope their insights help other parents who are facing the same unthinkable parenthood journey of loss.
Special Guest: Julie Turnbull
Julie Turnbull has been involved in LGBTQ ally spaces since 2014 when she joined the Mama Dragons FB group. In January 2015, her gay son Tyso, died by suicide, and Mama Dragons became the space for her to find support in her grief. She was also motivated to turn her grief into action, so she became more involved in Mama Dragons. In 2017, she was elected as the 2nd president of Mama Dragons. In 2018, she served as Mama Dragons President. Under her leadership, Mama Dragons received non-profit status and formed a 501c3. Currently she is serving as the podcast guest coordinator for In the Den with Mama Dragons podcast. Julie is self-employed and manages her own rental properties. She lives in Snohomish, Washington with her partner. She is the mother of 6 (5 living) and the grandmother of 4.
Special Guest: Alyson Paul Deussen
Alyson began her journey with the LGBT community in 2012 with her then newly out son, Stockton. Tragedy stuck in 2016 when Alyson lost Stockton to suicide. Since then, she has continued to share their story in an effort to bring awareness (#standingforstockton #ichooselove). She has been involved with Utah’s LGBTQ Suicide Prevention Workgroup, I’ll Walk With You, Affirmation, and Mama Dragons. Presently, Alyson is working with the Love Loud organization, Flourish Therapy, and has helped create sexual health training for parents. Alyson and her husband George are board members with the UofU Caring Connections: A Hope of Comfort in Grief Programs. The mission is to provide evidence based bereavement care for grieving persons. Alyson and her husband George have three kids, three grandkids, and currently live in North Salt Lake, UT. They enjoy doing humanitarian work, snow skiing, water skiing, soccer, and traveling.
Links from the Show:
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
Content Warning: Frank discussion of death by suicide
In this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen sits down with fellow Mama Dragons Julie Turnbull and Alyson Paul Deussen to talk about their lived experiences as mothers surviving the loss of their sons to suicide. In this vulnerable discussion, they honestly share the difficult moments of parenting a suicidal child and the journey of grief that their lives took when their child died by suicide. We hope their insights help other parents who are facing the same unthinkable parenthood journey of loss.
Special Guest: Julie Turnbull
Julie Turnbull has been involved in LGBTQ ally spaces since 2014 when she joined the Mama Dragons FB group. In January 2015, her gay son Tyso, died by suicide, and Mama Dragons became the space for her to find support in her grief. She was also motivated to turn her grief into action, so she became more involved in Mama Dragons. In 2017, she was elected as the 2nd president of Mama Dragons. In 2018, she served as Mama Dragons President. Under her leadership, Mama Dragons received non-profit status and formed a 501c3. Currently she is serving as the podcast guest coordinator for In the Den with Mama Dragons podcast. Julie is self-employed and manages her own rental properties. She lives in Snohomish, Washington with her partner. She is the mother of 6 (5 living) and the grandmother of 4.
Special Guest: Alyson Paul Deussen
Alyson began her journey with the LGBT community in 2012 with her then newly out son, Stockton. Tragedy stuck in 2016 when Alyson lost Stockton to suicide. Since then, she has continued to share their story in an effort to bring awareness (#standingforstockton #ichooselove). She has been involved with Utah’s LGBTQ Suicide Prevention Workgroup, I’ll Walk With You, Affirmation, and Mama Dragons. Presently, Alyson is working with the Love Loud organization, Flourish Therapy, and has helped create sexual health training for parents. Alyson and her husband George are board members with the UofU Caring Connections: A Hope of Comfort in Grief Programs. The mission is to provide evidence based bereavement care for grieving persons. Alyson and her husband George have three kids, three grandkids, and currently live in North Salt Lake, UT. They enjoy doing humanitarian work, snow skiing, water skiing, soccer, and traveling.
Links from the Show:
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.
Last week, we heard from an expert in suicide prevention. We talked about different signs that someone might display indicating that they are considering suicide. Suicide is usually preventable and we want to emphasize that over and over and over again. I would encourage all who missed it, to go back and listen to that episode before listening to this one. And I want to remind everyone in the United States that if you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, there is a hotline you can call. 9-8-8, and this will connect you with the local resources you need. If you’re outside the United States, I’d encourage you to find those numbers for your local area.
As much as suicide is often preventable, it is not always preventable. Sometimes the unthinkable does happen and families are forced into the position where they need to deal with this reality. Today we are going to be talking to two moms who have lost sons to suicide. I have two primary goals in this conversation. First, is to remind us all that we can survive if this happens. Second, is to increase empathy and understanding for those around us who have been through this experience or who might go through it in the future and help us be a better support network for each other. As I often remind us all, these two women represent themselves. Other moms who have lost children to suicide might have a different experience to share. After all that, I’d like to welcome Alyson Deussen and Julie Turnbull to the den today.
ALYSON: Thank you.
JULIE: Thanks.
JEN: This is going to be kind of a somber topic. Before we launch into the heart of what we’re talking about today, can each of you briefly introduce yourselves to us? I think it helps listeners if they understand a little bit about who they’re listening to.
Alyson: My name’s Alyson Deussen.. I have been involved with the Mama Dragons for probably 12 years or so, fairly early on. I’m a mom of three kids, once of which was my youngest son Stockton, who at the age of 13 came out as gay. And we kind of navigated those waters. And at the age of 17, we lost him to suicide. And so since that time, I’ve spent a good portion of the last seven and a half years, one, working on my own personal journey which has lots of ups and downs. But, also, working in the LGBTQ Suicide and Suicide Prevention space in effort to better educate on how we can assist other families that are experiencing either loss or suicidality.
JEN: Thanks for that. How about you, Julie?
JULIE: I’m Julie Turnbull and I’ve been involved in Mama Dragons for about the same amount of time, late 2014. I am a mom of seven, six of whom I gave birth to and one step daughter. My gay son, Tyson, died by suicide in 2016. And in 2017, my step daughter died in an unfortunate accident. And then, the son I placed for adoption at birth, found our family in 2019 and filled a hole that we didn’t really recognize was there. So it was all very healing in our process. I’m the grandmother to four and I live near Woodinville Washington with my partner and five acres. And we also have a home in Mexico where we can run to during the dark winters and I’m also self employed.
JEN: Alyson, you have grandkids, too, don’t you?
ALYSON: I do. I just got my third grandchild.
JEN: I saw pictures of your grandbaby on social media. It looked very fun. I was very jealous.
ALYSON: I had two boys and now I’ve got the girl, so I’m good.
JEN: That’s awesome.
I think in the context of this conversation it would be important to hear a little bit about the child that you lost. Help us get to know your sons a little bit. And I want to actually know quite a bit about them.
JULIE: Tyson was my oldest child until we were reunited with my other son. And so he was the first child that I parented. Thank goodness because he never stopped moving and I was only 23 years old and I did not know that other children were not like him and I had lots of energy. He was the kid that if I pulled over to use a payphone – because, you know, we had payphones then – he would be out of his car seat and out the window and somehow on top of the car. That actually happened. Another time he found his way to a bottle of Dimetapp Cold Medicine and drank, I didn’t know how much, and when I was on the phone with Poison Control and had put the Dimetapp on top of the refrigerator, he found his way to the top of the refrigerator and drank the rest. And I had to tell them, well now he drank the rest, so now, now what. So that was our life. But he was adorable and all his antics make us laugh now. And my mom always says, “You had no idea. You just thought this was normal.”
Looking back – I try to look back and look for the signs, that do I know my child was gay. And I do remember at age 5 he had this obvious crush on another little boy that didn’t really register with me. He officially came out to me at age 18. But by that time he was really struggling in school and he had started to use drugs. And he was a gay boy living in Rigby, Idaho, wanting desperately to fit in and be normal. So he was dating girls. He was super cute. You know, he’s my son, but he’s adorable and has a smile that lights up a room. So all the girls wanted to date him.
JEN: I bet that would be true. He is adorable.
JULIE: Thank you. I think so. He was always in these two worlds of struggling to just find his place and to find his way, but at the same time just making us all just laugh hysterically all the time. He could do a million different accents. He used to work in customer service and when people would call Direct TV or whatever and be rude to him, he would put them on hold and transfer them to Wal-mart. Or, he would come back and talk like Borat. He would do five different accents like he’s been transferring him around the company. He always had fun, whatever he did. He would go to Wal-mart and hide – at age 25 he was doing this – and jump out and scare people and post about it on social media. So, he, just part of the light went out of our family when he was struggling. And it was so hard to watch because he just wanted to have fun. And that’s really what his life was about.
And he was so much fun and so smart and so creative. He could’ve been a writer. He could’ve been a filmmaker. He could’ve been any of those things that he really wanted to be. In fact, he told me one time, he said, “You don’t have to worry about who’s going to take care of you when you’re old because I’m going to be rich. I’m going to write a movie or a book or a screenplay and I’ll be rich and you’ll be fine. And nobody else is going to want to take care of you, so it’s going to be me.” We were very close and he could make me very happy and very worried simultaneously. And just so sad to watch him struggle when he had so much going for him.
JEN: This is going to be hard. I’m already getting teary. Alyson, introduce us to Stockton.
ALYSON: Oh, wow. Well, Stockton was adopted, is adopted at birth. and I had the opportunity to meet his birth mom before he was placed. And he was kind of this long awaited boy. I have two girls and we just needed one boy to make it complete. So he was spoiled from the get-go. He had two older sisters that adored him and he just was so cute. And I can say that because he’s not mine, so he really is cute. In fact, I used to always tell him that he was born in my heart. And he said, “Well, my friends said I can’t be born in your heart.” And I was just like, “Well, go back and tell him that that’s not true, because you were.” And so he'd always say “I was born in my mom’s heart, but she found me under a rock.” He was a character from the get-go. So I was always on my toes. Lots of people are like, “Oh, girls are harder.” And I was like, “Oh, boys were way harder.” He just was full of kind of spunk. He was willing to try anything. He was unafraid. And so with that came every kind of experience with small animals that he’d bring in the house or jumping off some place he shouldn’t be. He was super active. We had a summer home up in Montana and he loved to do stuff on the water. He liked the snow ski, but it wouldn’t just be going down the regular run. It would be I want to go down this one, I’d say no, and he'd go. So that was just kind of his personality. He was a big reader. He loved to read lots of series of books and loved to watch things. So anything that he really enjoyed, he really did it wholeheartedly. He’d take a series and have it read in two days. And he was a very smart kid, probably too smart, so school seemed a little bit boring for him. We put him in the advanced classes and that was too hard because he actually would have to work. So he was content to stay in the regular classes. He was a fun kid. I do think that, as he started to get into his teenage years and kind of find his place, I didn’t mention this, but we’re from Utah. And, with that came a little bit of challenge, because he was very comfortable in his own skin, but wasn’t necessarily comfortable around his peers and things, especially after he came out. That seemed to be a bit of a divider for him. And this also was 12 years ago or so. So, in a lot of ways, I think things have evolved. But, at the time, to come out in 7th, 8th grade, is a little bit rough and in the neighborhood we lived in. So he experienced some challenges with that and just being out at that young age. And we, of course, didn’t really know exactly how to navigate it. So we made it up as we went at that time. Really, he was lots of fun. I always used to say, “I was about four weeks behind him in every way, shape, and form.” If he was doing something good, I didn’t know until about four weeks later. If he was doing something crazy, I didn’t know until four weeks later. So I was always like, “I don’t know. give me a few weeks to figure out where we’re at.”
JEN: When I think of Stockton, I always picture him with a guitar.
ALYSON: Yep. He was very talented. He was very artistic. He played music. He played by ear in a lot of places like the piano, it was by ear. And he liked to sing. He was positive he was going to be on one of those singing shows. I can’t remember which one he thought he’d try out for. And he loved playing the guitar. And he was really good.
JEN: I thought he was going to be on one of those music shows.
ALYSON: And he probably could’ve been in just probably a little bit more time. He loved to bake. He loved vacation and travel. And I’m with Julie, when you look back you go, to me I feel like that was as much of a reprieve for him as it was that he liked to necessarily – it wasn’t where you were going, it was just a break from the stressors of life and things that really weighed on him. But he was always gung ho. In fact, I used to always tell my husband whenever we’d find a super LGBT-friendly country, we’d be, “Don’t tell Stockton. He’ll move there.” And I don’t want him that far away because if he knew the scene, he’d be all in.
JULIE: I think their personalities are very similar.
ALYSON: Yeah.
JEN: When I picture Stockton, I picture the guitar. When I picture Tyson, I picture all those water pictures, crazy tricks on water skis.
ALYSON: Stockton was tubing was his thing behind the boat. And the higher in the air the better.
JEN: Thank you for helping our listeners get to know your boys. I didn’t get a chance to meet Tyson before, but I feel like I know him because Julie’s stories are so vivid.
As you both attempt to speak out and use your experience for good in advocacy in the world of suicide prevention, I want our listeners to be mindful of suicide contagion. I’m interested in how you do your advocacy and awareness work while avoiding that suicide contagion discussed last week?
JULIE: Yeah. That’s a hard one. and it’s one I didn’t know anything about suicide until I was forced to know things about suicide. So I think that I possibly made some mistakes in that area. I think it’s very common for us, for anyone, when you have a loved one who passes, they become almost God-like to us because we forget all the hard parts or the struggles we might’ve had with someone or the sad. We just focus so much on the good we want to remember them in such a positive way that I think we can put them up on a pedestal. And so I’ve worked really hard on that. And I actually had someone come up to me one time – And Alyson had talked about this – Maybe if I died by suicide, maybe my parents would be like you. and that hit me so hard that I have to be so careful not to paint my son in this way that this was a glorified [inaudible]. I don’t know how to say it any differently. So I’ve tried to be really honest about the struggles and about the hardship in our family as he struggled because he struggled with drug addiction for years. Although he’s all the things that I said, and he was this light in our family, there was also this really hard part in our family and we all suffered along with him in his addiction and his struggles and I would never blame him for that, obviously, because it was mostly out of his control at this point. But I think we have to be really careful that we don’t make it look like “You’ll be popular if you die by suicide.” And I think there are kids that are in such dark places that they can go there very easily and they can think, ‘Well, if I die, then I’ll be popular.” It’s a hard thing to talk about and I don’t know that I’ve got it right at all, either.
JEN: I appreciate that. Alyson, any thoughts to add?
ALYSON: Yeah. It’s a tough one. I even think we’ve shared our story quite a bit. We kind of landed in the timeframe that aligned with some other things going on in the LDS faith at the time. They’d come out with a policy not too long before. And I’d even found, and it’s interesting because I probably in the last couple of years is where I’ve felt a little like people know who we are and know our situation, but they don’t. I’ve spent a lot of time praying, actually, because I don’t think they really realized the bandwidth and the extent we put out to share our story with the idea that we were helping other people. And instead, put us in a space where, “That’s Stockton’s parents.” or George and Alyson. And I would trade every one of those moments to have my son back. And, in no way did I ever share those stories at that time or any time since where it was because I wanted anybody to glamorize the situation at all. And also, for my son. I’ve done it in memory of him and to honor his memory and in hopes that other parents and families don’t have to experience the things that we’d experienced. And so it’s kind of a hard one. In fact, I sometimes get really frustrated when I see people post about someone dying or say things because they forget that there’s a family behind that public post. They forget that there’s people that are devasated behind that and really don’t understand what it can do to a family, even if their intentions were good.
JEN: I think it’s important for all of us to remember that as we’re sharing stories and talking about things like suicide – Julie’s touched on this a little bit already but – there’s almost never just a single issue that we can point to. So if anyone’s trying to take a story of any person and use it in a way that points to, “This is the cause. This is the problem.” We’re kind of reducing, making reductive assumptions because it’s always more complicated than that little sound bite or the meme might be.
ALYSON: I always use the example when I talk about it, it’s a layering thing. And you just don’t know what layer might be the last for someone in that situation. And really, the goal is we’re all going to have layers, but where can we also take off layers. What organizations or what groups or what people can help remove those layers as opposed to adding to them.
JEN: That’s a really thoughtful way to consider that. Thank you. Is it possible to articulate or describe the feelings that you experienced right after learning that your child was gone?
ALYSON: I couldn’t breathe. It feels like something bigger than, like an elephant – it felt like something is sitting just crushing your chest and for me I couldn’t find out how I was ever going to make it.
JULIE: For me, and this was a hard thing for me to talk about for a while and I maybe only talked to a couple of people about it. Well, when an eight year struggle with drug addiction and lots of suicide attempts and sometimes in mental health facilities, some time in jail. When Tyson would be in jail, he was in jail just once for missing a court date or something. But any time he was locked up somewhere, I could breathe and feel safe that he was safe. And the rest of the time I was living with this level of anxiety of he’s not safe. And I have a couple of friends whose kids have died of drug overdose. And one of them I asked a couple years ago what her first feeling was when she found her daughter – because she found her. And she said, relief. And I started to cry because that was my first feeling. I was so relieved. And I felt guilty for it for a long time that it was just so, like, it’s over. This battle is over. He’s free. And we’re free as a family. And I felt that way for a good 24 hours before really the grief started setting in and I realized he’s really gone and not coming back. But I think that might be, as I talk to other people, we as mothers, as parents, watching our children suffer, to see them out of pain in whatever way that could be, for me, the weight of the world was lifted off me. Now, the weight of the world was quickly put back on my shoulders as I navigated grief and the permanent loss of it. But that was my first reaction.
JEN: Those both make a lot of sense to me.
ALYSON: I got to that point, Julie, where the relief was. And I felt terrible about it.
JEN: When you say terrible, do you mean like guilty for feeling that way?
ALYSON: Oh, yeah. I remember. In fact, I didn’t even dare say it to anybody because I felt like that was like such a betrayal of Stockton, even. But I just knew that, because he’d had some struggles and I felt like I didn't know that he was going to be able to conquer them, that they were too big, that it was just like maybe this was the better option. And I felt terrible for that.
JULIE: Yeah. Same.
JEN: So, for both of you, it’s been not quite a decade but kind of in that realm. How did your emotions about all of it, how have they evolved over time? I’m going to guess right off the bat that it’s not consistent. If I asked you on a Tuesday then it would be different from today? Or if I asked you a week from now it might be different. But just kind of the overarching. like if somebody is in the midst of it right now, maybe what they can kind of expect over time.
JULIE: For me, I think because time doesn’t fix anything but you do get comfortable with your new normal, right? It’s been eight years, so it’s been eight years that I haven’t been able to talk to him and he hasn’t been in our family or that we don’t consider where he is when we plan family events or whatever. But there are times that I’m hard on myself and think I should've done this, or I could’ve done this better. And I wonder what he would be doing now if he were still alive and all the dreams that he had. And I feel sad about that. But in the end when I have those moments, I always come back to the solace in assuming he would’ve continued to struggle because he tried so hard. And I just have to find peace in the fact that I continue to let him go and be happy for him that he found freedom from his burden he called life. So, yeah, it’s a rollercoaster sometimes. And sometimes there’s music, I just allow myself to go in a bathroom or whatever and just sob until I can’t sob any more and just let out those emotions. And then I’m happy again for him.
JEN: That makes a lot of sense.
ALYSON: You know, it’s weird because it feels like there’s times when you’re like, Okay, I can laugh and enjoy things and have fun. And then there’s other times where it’s like, how dare you do that. And so you kind of go through this rollercoaster of emotions. And I feel like for some reason, I think this holiday season has come upon me and been heavier than maybe it was last year. And so you sit and think, why is that the case. And I’m with you, Julie, you just have to kind of go with it and find things. Sometimes that means I sit down and look through a photo album with things. Or I go back and listen to music that he would write or sing. And then there's other times that I can talk to my little grandson and tell him about his Uncle Stockton. Lately, we’ve been talking about – his nickname was “Bubba” and my grandson’s so intrigued by a nickname. And so we talk about Bubba all the time. And so it’s just little things like that. But the emotions, they evolve, but they don’t go away. It’s like learning to navigate without an arm. I always say a quarter of my heart is gone and nothing can fill that quarter. It’s not like I can put something else in that space.
JEN: In those early days, what sorts of resources did you guys find access to that you found most helpful?
ALYSON: Julie. Honestly, one of the biggest things for me was other moms.
JEN: Yeah, finding other people who had experience, yeah.
ALYSON: I had Julie. I had another woman who probably was about nine months ahead of me with loss. And I just found that my husband, as good as he is, just didn’t quite understand some of the things I was feeling and I could just call this other woman and say, did you feel this way? Is this normal? And it was just enough for me to feel like it validated some of the crazy thinking I was going through, even. I tried some grief counseling. But, for me, I wanted them to give me steps A through Z on how to fix it so I could feel better or a pill that I could take. And every time I’d come out I’d go, “Oh shit. There’s no pill. And there’s no checklist.” And if you know my personality, I like to get it done and move on. And this wasn’t going to happen and so I quit going because I was like, “Shit, I can tell myself the same things you are. It’s going to suck.” And then it wasn’t until a year and a half that I actually participated in a suicide grief group up at the University of Utah, and it was with suicide survivors specifically. So everybody in the group had lost someone to suicide. And I found that to be helpful in some ways but tough. Tough to see other people’s experiences and suffering and some that this wasn’t their first go around, either.
JEN: That would be painful to have to hold that with each other. But also makes sense that we seek out support from people who really get it. And talking to somebody who hasn’t been there, they’re never really going to get it. So I appreciate that. Julie, how about you?
JULIE: Yeah, kind of the same thing. I met Alyson at Stockton’s funeral or viewing. I knew I had to move mountains to get here. It’s kind of like you, I had friends in Mama Dragons, you were one of them, Jen, that moved mountains to get to Tyson’s funeral and it was so important. Those are the people I remember being there, and other moms, whether they’ve lost a child… I have a lot of friends, it seems like, who’ve lost children and not to suicide necessarily, but some common theme would be drugs or even just an accident. It’s a club you don’t want to belong to, but it’s a club where you can’t imagine the connection you feel. So, I think for me, I dove really hard into Mama Dragons because that’s where I felt like my people were. That people would understand and that wouldn’t judge. And I didn’t care if anybody judged. Honestly, I didn’t care if anybody judged anything about Tyson’s life. He was on the front page of the newspaper in Idaho Falls, Idaho, one time and he just thought he was cute. I just got over it. I don’t care what you think about my kid, I think he’s amazing and he’s struggling. But I just didn’t have a lot in me to read the books people sent me or to go the places I was supposed to go to get help. It just wasn’t helpful to me. So my connections with other moms and just kind of diving into those spaces, and I feel bad for people who don’t have that. I don’t know what I would’ve done without it for sure. And Alyson and I have had many conversations about it because what else do you do? You go find the people who know how you feel.
JEN: Is there ever a point where you feel like people recover or get healed – for lack of better terminology – after losing a child to suicide?
JULIE: You know, I liked Alyson’s analogy about living life with a missing arm. I think people have to -- you find your new normal. I think I would’ve said before I lost a child that you would never recover from that. And I told Tyson that when he was so suicidal. I said, I won’t recover from this.” And he said, “Oh, yes. You will.” And he at one point said, “You love me, and if you could get inside my head, you would tell me to go.” And that has been so helpful to me. So, for me, it’s just my new normal. I mean, what else can I do? I’ve had some experiences with Mediums and whatever you believe in that, something that she said to me was so helpful because she said, “Very hard, Tyson vibrates at a very high level” – which he did in life as well – and she said, “It’s very hard for him to meet you in sadness. He needs to meet you in happiness. He will, but it’s hard for him because he’s happy. And so let him meet you in happiness.” And so I really try hard to honor that. He wouldn’t want me to be sad and mopey and regretful and wondering what I could’ve done differently. So he gave me a lot of gifts in that. And he was older. Stockton was very young. Tyson was 26 and had years to prepare and know how to have the conversations with me. So I feel like I’m very fortunate that I had those opportunities. But for some people, it hits them out of nowhere and I can’t relate to that. I can’t imagine. I feel like I was so prepared. I don’t know what I would do if I was one of the parents where out of nowhere their child just died by suicide. That’s a whole different conversation.
JEN: How about you, Alyson? What does recovery look like?
ALYSON: I think for me now, it’s holding grief, but also holding gratitude. And it’s like holding one in each hand because there’s so many things and people that have crossed my path that I wouldn’t have met had it not been for Stockton. And it’s such a hard thing to look at now because I go, “Oh, my gosh, they wouldn’t have ever been in my life. Or they wouldn’t have been part of my life.” I’ve reconnected with Stockton’s biological mother and his half-brother. And so as much as I carry, I would say the same amount of grief, I’ve found a way to move in a direction that helps me also appreciate the gratitude that I have or the things that Stockton taught me and the things that I have learned from this experience. In fact, I had someone come to me and they mentioned that I could go through a couple of – I don’t remember what it was that they offered me – and they said it would really just help you get over Stockton. And it almost caught me off guard because I looked at them and I was like, “Well, I don’t think I want to get over Stockton. That doesn’t feel good to me.” I don’t want to be sad and down and all those kind of things. But I don’t want to forget either because that’s part of what connects me, I guess, to my son. But I think I’m with you, Julie. Knowing him, he’s probably having way more fun than I am. So I just have found that I’m going to live life to its fullest. I don’t know when that’s going to change in my own life or those around me. And so as a family we have just decided that we’re going to make the very best of what we do have. And we’ll take those moments of sorrow and grief and we’ll remember and celebrate him. But we’re also going to do things that hopefully honor him moving forward.
JEN: When you talk about holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other it makes me think of the concept – I’m wondering if that arm gets stronger. The grief holding hand, you started off and it was impossible to carry, maybe, without other people. But, as time goes on, it still weighs the same but do you get stronger? Does it get easier to carry?
ALYSON: Yeah. With my husband, I think one of the things that was helpful for us is that sometimes when one was down, the other one was up. So, yeah, I think you’re stronger. But I think there’s other times where you need someone else to step in and be that strength for you. So I think there’s, like you said, there’s a song that comes on or today's the 27th, Stockton died on the 27th. And it’s crazy how sometimes those little things just hit you and you go. “Oh, that’s the 27th.” And so all those little things just play in it all. But, for sure, are the waves further apart? Absolutely. Do they come in big sometimes? Yes.
JULIE: And I think for me, the times that it’s hardest is when I grieve for what could have been. Or like his boyfriend that he had that I just adore still, got married. And I went to their wedding. And that could’ve been him and that should’ve been him. And he should’ve been traveling and doing these things. That kind of stuff is hard when you see their friends doing the things that you know they would’ve loved to do. So it’s almost like you’re grieving, for me, his missed opportunities in what could’ve just been this really cool life. And then I have to think, I don’t think he cares at this point. But those are the hard times for me, for sure. I guess it’s easier.
JEN: Was there something that you found most helpful from friends and family, either in the early days or even as time has progressed?
ALYSON: Well, I can tell you what’s not helpful?
JEN: I’ll ask that next.
ALYSON: I’m just kidding. It’s funny. I literally before we came here, I had just got my nails done and I ran into a girl from high school that I haven’t seen probably since high school. And, long story short, she asked about my family and I tell her that I lost my son to suicide. And she says, “This must’ve been why we’re here because my best friend lost her grandson yesterday to suicide.” And she says, “And I don’t know what to do.” And so she sat with me while I got my nails done and we just talked about what’s helpful and that kind of thing. So it was just weird that that kind of came together today as I was getting ready to meet up with you guys. I mean, right from the get-go, some of the big things for me, I always tell people, we were oblivious to even paying our bills. I mean, now you can pay everything online and recurring payments. There was some stuff that we completely missed. It was helpful for me – I had two daughters that were really a mess and I was a mess. And it was just helpful to have people come and take them and give them one-on-one attention that I didn’t have the bandwidth for. and so that was super helpful because they were getting the attention they needed without feeling like they’re just a side-show to the whole mess in a way. I think there was – I just always tell people, if they have animals, go take their damn dog. If they have a lawn, mow it. All those things that are just the day-to-day things. Nobody wants food so don’t take them food. They don’t eat it. They won’t eat. The books, I’m with you, Julie, didn’t read a one. I think they're still packed in a box somewhere because I moved soon after. I haven’t read one book. And we talk often, I’m on a committee with the state health department and we talk often about just spoon feeding people. That really, you don’t have the band-width. If someone would’ve brought 100 resources to my house over the five days or whatever that timeline is, I wouldn’t have ever looked at them and probably never would’ve found them. You really need to be able to just kind of spoon-feed people as they get the strength. So, for me, that’s one of the things I suggest is that here’s a list of resources, but kind of feel out your person and see where they’re at, and then offer it, and if they don’t like it, then maybe two or three months later, they will. But that’s been one of the things I have always appreciated just someone acknowledging the anniversary of his death. And it can be super simple. I've always appreciated someone acknowledging his birthday in small ways like that. Literally, I have one brother that sends me, in the last couple years, just a butterfly text that’s just a butterfly emoji. And, to me, that’s all I needed. But I also had friends that checked in daily, weekly, for a long, long time. And I also think, I have a particularly close friend that asked me something and I told him and he said, “How come you never have told me that?” And I said, you never asked. So, for me, I’m not going to just divulge everything unless people really ask and want to know.
JEN: I think that was super helpful. Julie?
JULIE: Those are some really good ones, Alyson. I think it’s really comforting or – I don’t know, the feeling I get when I realize that people haven’t forgotten Tyson. So, when I look at Facebook and I see that he still has friends that still post on his birthday or that post on his anniversary – I don't really anymore. I really let those days go by pretty quietly and I don’t expect that anyone does anything. But when they do, it just feels really cool. It feels good as a mom to know that your child made an impact on other people and that people loved them. So, and by the way, still when people lose a loved one, I’m still not quite sure what to do because everybody’s so different. Even saying, I don’t quite know what to do. And the person’s not going to be able to really tell you what they need either. But, like Alyson said, just the basics like looking out for their family. Because, by the way, the family is very impacted. And as the mom, you’re there holding everybody else up and you don’t really sometimes have a moment or the ability to make it about you. And so to maybe have that burden lifted a little bit if someone has young kids or kids that need to be driven to school. My kids were all, most of them, out of the house at the time. I was able to just sit with myself. Everybody’s going to be a little bit different. I just had somebody I had to talk to about something really sad in their family and I just said, “I don’t know what to say other than, I know there are no words I can say that will make you feel better.” Because there really aren’t. Just knowing somebody’s there is good.
JEN: Alyson touched on this already but I want to ask specifically are there things that were or continue to be particularly triggering or painful when friends and family do them or say them?
JULIE: My family was great. I would say the things that weren’t helpful were people offering me blessings or words of “He’s in a better place.” That’s just, we all know that but shocking how many times you still hear that. And things said to me that would almost indicate that I should be okay with it because there’s a plan. Those types of things, not helpful at all. But other than that, I had pretty good experiences with my family and friends. I did have one member of the family that took the news immediately a lot harder than I did. And I’m not judging but I just remember thinking, “Well, now I feel like – because I was still in my relief stage – and I felt like ”Well, I should be reacting like you just reacted when I made the phone call.” And I always think about that, that should’ve been my reaction and I judged myself for that for a while. Maybe be cautious about your reaction, although it didn’t bother me at all. I was actually grateful for it. But I don’t have the answers because I still don’t know how to act, I still don’t know how to provide support to other people, either.
JEN: What about you, Alyson? Anything that was particularly not helpful?
ALYSON: Well, I had some similar things. I had someone give me a book about how not to be gay. And I was like, “Well, he’s gone.”
JEN: Wait, after?
ALYSON: Yes. I seriously did. I’m like, what were they thinking? And I got some of the articles like, “Oh, he’s not going to hell. It’s okay, he’s not going to hell.” Those kinds of things, and so I would never recommend giving your religious perspectives to anybody as to where you think or what might be happening at this point in time. I think people need to just be a little sensitive to the fact – I don’t know if you did, Julie, but I had a lot of Xanax when Stockton died. I mean, my husband was just putting it in whenever he found my mouth open. So I know I said some pretty unfiltered things because I, one, was pretty looped. And, two, it was just that week after Stockton died kind of thing. So I think we have to extend a fair amount of grace to people in these situations. I would say more the family and the survivors because I think things can be said and done. But, I think for me, it was this expectation that I should be over it, that I should go back to the person I was kind of expectation, that felt really hurtful for me. It was almost like I’ve never been able to be in my family dynamic, the one that needed care. I’ve always been the one that extended the care. And so I’ve never felt like I had that opportunity, nor did my family extend any of that to me. And it became a really big wedge. In fact, it still exists today. And so it’s been tough because I felt like I had two losses. I lost my son, but I also lost the connection with my family that I’d had my entire life. And so that, for me, it was more, “Sit down and understand that I’m not going to be the same person.” I did get, Julie, you probably get this a little bit. But I got to the point where I didn’t care about a lot of little things. And I’m in a family business with my family to this day and it’s like, “Who cares?” In the big scheme of things, a lot of this stuff didn’t matter. And I think that has been tough for them to understand. And it was almost like, if this wasn’t a church assignment to help me, then they weren’t going to do it. And I’ve had these discussions with some of my siblings that will have them. But it was one of those, if you’re called to do this for a family you would definitely do it. But if it’s your sister, then it’s a little different. And I think it’s fear. I don’t think that they were just – maybe with the exception of one – I don’t think any of them were trying to be mean. One, it’s my brothers and they just don’t understand that dynamic. They didn’t understand the LGBT part of it. And so, in a lot of ways, it’s easy – they talk about this in grief support all the time. With a suicide, you don’t have a way of – you have to find a reason to blame why they died. You know, if they’re in a car accident, you can say they were in a car accident. If they had cancer you can say they died of cancer. And everybody wants to have a reason as to why someone took their life. And the cold hard fact is that something up here wasn’t quite connecting whether it was just this tiny moment or if it’s been ongoing or whatever that is. And so instead of just saying that’s what it was, we assign something. I’m divorced, I heard that one. “Well, they are a divorced couple. They’re in a dysfunctional family. That could’ve been the problem.” So those are the kinds of comments and things that just aren’t helpful. Or, “He is gay and he was doing some of those gay behaviors that a teenager probably shouldn’t be doing at his age.” So, rather than looking at it and saying this is someone’s life who we lost, it was more assigning some of these other things that really were just, ultimately, just damaging and hurtful.
JEN: Do you think some of that’s almost like a protective factor for people? Like, if I can blame it on your divorce, then my kids are safe because I didn’t get divorced. Or, if I can blame it on drugs, then I’m safe.
ALYSON: 100 percent.
JULIE: For sure.
JEN: I’ll tell you straight up and my kids have not done drugs and we have spent a lot of time still battling these issues.
ALYSON: Well, and ironically, one of my other siblings – after that – dealt with it, not divorced, not gay, no drugs. And I actually think our connection has kind of healed itself because of some of those things. And he wasn’t the one that said it, but I think there’s just an assumption that it’s just easier to, like you said, then it won’t happen to me if my kids aren’t doing that.
JEN: Right.
JULIE: Or, possibly, I know my mom wanted to assign reasons. And my brother’s gay so the whole LGBT thing wasn’t a thing. But, Tyson had a couple of, many diagnoses because he thought he was his own psychiatrist as well. And he could convince psychiatrists what his diagnosis was when he would go in. But at one point he said he had a diagnosis that there’s no medication for and nothing to fix it. My mom kind of hung her hat on that. I’ve read about that and there would’ve been no cure for that. So it almost made her feel better that, “Well, he wasn’t going to be get better, so it makes it better.” And so I think that is a lot of self-protection. I mean, we all want to do that. And I think as moms, we feel so responsible for our kids that we put all the blame at our feet. So those things that people say, can really be internalized by a mother that wouldn't be internalized by anyone else because we already feel responsible. And we’re going to have to spend, I don’t even know how many years, convincing ourselves that we weren’t responsible or that we couldn’t have done more because I know I could’ve done more. But we all know we can all be better parents. We all can have hind-sight and look back go, “Well, if I had known, I would have done this.” But most people can do that and their child didn’t die. So being sensitive to that. This is finality for us. We can’t go back and change anything, ANYTHING. We can’t change anything. We have to move forward living with that and forgiving ourselves every damn day that we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And that’s really hard. It’s a lot of work.
ALYSON: I agree.
JEN: This came up lightly before too, but I want to hit on it a little bit. As the mom, we’re kind of looked at as “The Go-To” in most family systems, right? The support when somebody falls and skins their knee, generally, mom’s the one they go to. And this is suddenly big. And we’ve talked before on the podcast about circles of empathy and when you’re at the center. And I would suggest that the mom is perhaps that very center ring in the loss of suicide with her spouse and the siblings close in there. but did you find that other people were looking to you for support when maybe they should’ve been looking elsewhere for support so that they could gather up the energy to pour the support in to where you were? Did your family kind of gather together and support each other or was there some unrealistic expectations for you?
JULIE: I don’t think anybody looked for support other than my children, and of course they did. And so for me, I realized I put a lot of my grief on hold and I propped myself up that I’m cool, I’m fine, I got this. I’ll be there for everyone else. And it was actually a few years before I felt like, okay, it’s my turn to now do some work and do some healing. I was kind of pushing me aside. Honestly, looking back, I think it was helpful for me to distract myself from what could’ve just taken me down into a dark hole. But, that’s Moms; like, all the credit and all the blame. We take it all. And I’ve tried to learn that I can’t take the credit, so I don’t have to take the blame. So I’ve tried to remove myself from that place where everybody thinks the mom is God. But it’s hard. Outside my family unit, I don’t feel like I was trying to support anyone else.
ALYSON: Oh, yeah. I blew that one.
JEN: For the record, I don’t think you can blow it when you’re in the center of the circle, you get to do whatever you want.
ALYSON: You know, I think, though, of course my kids, but for whatever reason we allowed it. And I think part of it was, maybe Julie some of what you were doing, postponing some of your own grieving. But, George and I really, we had a lot of LGBT community that came to us. I would say up until probably two years ago. And we were letting people stay with us. We were 24/7 answering phone calls. I think we were probably triaging 50 kids between the two of us in one way or another. And really realized a couple of years ago, and knowing that at least one of our children wasn’t super happy about that. I used to joke, “I need to give my straight kids a little bit of attention.” And we also found a real easy coping mechanism by traveling a lot. And so we’d just be out of the country or whatever so we didn’t have to deal with some of the things that were going on. Because, you come home and you go, “Oh, it’s still here.” So I think I ended up just thinking this can’t happen to anybody else, so I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to take this on. I’ve got to do it because this cannot happen to anybody else. And for a long time, that worked until it didn’t. And then it came to a point where we were just kind of exhausting ourselves. And then if we didn’t exhaust ourselves, people weren’t happy that we weren’t exhausting ourselves on their behalf. And really, we just needed to start working inwardly on what that was for us. And so made the shift – and like I said – not everybody was happy. But we found it was with new parents of LGBT kids that were struggling. I mean, we’d be at dinner and I’d look over and George is putting someone’s phone number in his phone. And I’d be like, “Don’t do it.” I mean, we have to take care of ourselves. And I think, religiously, we grew up helping everybody and we have to serve and we have to support. And it finally came to a point where we’ve had to just say, we’ve made our circle really small and found that some of our biggest healing has been as our circle has gotten smaller and we’ve really been able to drill down to some of this stuff that we’ve been ignoring.
JULIE: That feels so relatable to me.
JEN: Did either of you find that you were facing any sorts of stereotypes or stigmas or specific expectations because the death was suicide and people have some kind of wonky ideas about that?
ALYSON: I do feel like after meeting with other moms that have lost kids from suicide in the LDS faith, that I do feel like we were treated a little bit differently because he was gay and suicide and because there was a lot of people that had been fairly public about his loss or his death, that we did get a fair amount of pushback from religious leaders at the time of this death. But, in general, after that I don’t think I felt anything, really. And probably because I really don’t care.
JULIE: I was going to say that.
ALYSON: Tell me that, because I value your opinion about this much.
JULIE: I was going to say, if I did, I don’t care. I already said he was on the front page of the paper for drugs and I did not care what anybody thought about it.
JEN: Good.
JULIE: I don’t think anybody would dare. The person that would dare say that to you, I mean, you’re a special kind of person who don’t care. I would hope nobody feels that stigma.
JEN: I would hope not also. I wish this weren’t true. But our listening audience is likely to have a larger statistical connection to this topic than the average person might have, whether they’re facing ideation and working through that and that fear you guys talked about, that anxiety and the intensity, and also many who have lost their kids. Do you guys have any sorts of advice for parents who are potentially facing that reality?
JULIE: Well, every situation is so different so it’s so hard. But I would say, for me, I wish I’d had even more conversations about it. I think it’s an idea we don’t want to verbalize it’s a possibility. So sometimes, at least for me as a parent, I would tend to think if I ignored something it would go away. And I think talking about it and if your children can feel comfortable talking to you about it, that goes a long way for them being able to get those feelings out, find the resources. But if you have any inkling that your child might be suicidal or even if you think they’re really just struggling, just having some open conversations about it. And I’m not an expert, a suicide prevention expert might disagree with me. I don’t know. I just know that the conversations we had, obviously, in the end didn’t prevent his suicide, but I think it helped our family and it helped him to feel a little bit more peace with his decision. And, in the end, I have to respect that decision. I don’t own my children. They’re independent human beings. And if their choice is to no longer be on this earth, if it’s too hard for them and they can’t find peace here, I’m happy we had those conversations. So that’s really all I got on that one. That’s a hard one.
ALYSON: I agree. I probably, I had had one other experience with Stockton where he had expressed suicidal ideation and I felt like I was on top of it in that we had him in therapy and we were taking care of things with him and communicating. But we never really talked about him feeling that desperate, I guess, if you will after the fact. In fact, there’s times that I would see him pretty down that I’d think, “I don’t know that he’s doing very well.” And that particular time was not one of those and so that was a little bit of a shock. But I think I always encourage familes and parents to come up with – and we do this with our girls – we come up with, instead of just saying, “Are you feeling suicidal?” We come up with a conversation is, “Are you safe?” Those kinds of things. Or have a scale one to ten, ten being you’re ready to just be done. And you can just say, “Hey, what number are you? I feel like you’re a little down today. What number are you feeling? Do you want to talk about it? How can I support you?” Those kinds of things because, as you know, with families that have lost someone to suicide, there’s an increased risk of losing more family members in that space. So we talk a lot about that. We talk about, my son-in-law’s a big gun guy. And I say, “What’s your safety plan?” And he looks at me, and I’m like “The safe I’m going to give you for your birthday, that’s the safety plan.” And I also try to be vulnerable. If I told you the last seven and half years that I hadn’t thought it might be a nice idea to be gone, I would be lying. And I have to be honest with my kids and I have to be honest with my husband and say, “Sometimes, for me, Mom, 56 years old, I sometimes still don’t know if it’s worth it.” And being vulnerable with them allows them opportunities to say, “I’m at my wits’ end.” My middle daughter, literally, about two years right through COVID, finally has started talking about her brother’s loss. And it took her – she was depressed and laying in bed every day. And you’d ask her every day, “Are you sure you're not depressed?” “Nope. Not depressed.” And so I think we just have to create a dynamic that we can say, even as parents and adults, that some days just suck and you just go to bed and hope tomorrow’s a better day.
JEN: I like how you brought up that you were asking and essentially, she was lying to you about it. I think sometimes as parents, we hope we can be omniscient and if your kids are struggling, we’ll know. Or, if they’re self harming in any way, we’ll be aware or if we ask, they’ll tell us the truth. But the reality is, like Julie mentioned, they’re independent fully-formed humans with their own ideas about what they want to share and what they don’t want to share. And if they don’t want us to know something, chances are, we’re not going to know.
JULIE: And, honestly, before someone dies by suicide, they’ll usually seem like they’re doing great.
ALYSON: That’s the truth.
JULIE: And that’s the tricky part. And also watch, like I would’ve watched for that. That would’ve been a sign for me. But like Alyson said, the kids, the other siblings, I mean, still my kids, we’re still, still I can see how they were affected. It’s a trickle down into a family that is huge because once that becomes an option, it sounds pretty good sometimes. Like Alyson’s saying, sometimes it’s like I’m a little bit jealous that I don’t have the guts to just check out of this life. It’s a brave thing. And it’s hard as a mom, you’re not in a space to be making any hard decisions or recognize you’re being aware of anything. And you’ve got these kids going though this stuff and you’re like, “I can’t deal with this.” You’re shutting down. I have this much band-width to deal with anything for I don’t know how long. It could be years and you’ve got all this going on around you. So, I don't know.
JEN: It makes me grateful for the other adults’ influence in our kids' lives that sometimes when we don’t have the band-width there’s other people checking in, sending us text messages, “Are you aware? Did you know?” That whole village concept.
ALYSON: My kids still go to therapy. It’s something that we’ve found has been helpful for them. We all see the same therapist which has actually been really nice. Not that they can share information but because my kids hated going in and telling the whole story. So, of course, I’d already been in and given the whole story so they could just pick up from their perspective and go forward. But I think there’s no shame in what I tell them is putting more tools in their toolbox. I wish I would’ve had those tools at 25, 26 as opposed to my age. And I also think, you know, sometimes I think it’s not fair. I’m the Mom. I signed up for this. I signed up to have these kids and raise them. My kids are just a product of what happened. And when you talk about the trickle effect, I watch it in their marriages. I watch it in some of the fear in raising their kids or at work potential death. And they’re terrified. And I don’t want them to live lives like that for another 50 years. So I want them to have more tools and have the ability to really move forward in a healthy way. And I think we have to teach and help our kids be resilient but yet be vulnerable.
JEN: Out of all the vulnerable topics that we have attempted to tackle this year, we’re ending with possibly the most vulnerable topic ending out the year. I think it’s so important that we learn how to have realistic conversations about suicide. And, like you guys said, learn how to normalize those conversations so that we aren’t scared to ask questions and things like that. And I want to thank you guys, both, for coming and being real so that we can elevate and make more public the conversation about suicide in general so that we can all work to have a better chance of preventing it. So, thank you both for coming.
ALYSON: Thanks for having us.
JULIE: Thank you for having us.
JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.