Dec 12, 2018 - We are Not Meant to Die Young by Theresa Sheldon
I was 14 years old when I lost my first friend to suicide. Every year, I continued to lose friends to preventable deaths from alcohol & drugs, suicides and accidents from drugs and alcohol. By the time I was 22 years old, I was heartbroken with losing two dear friends within months of each other, that were preventable, that I decided I was done making friends. Everyone seemed to die and there was no sense of reality or reasoning why. I closed down the fort and said no more. I refused to allow people into my life because everyone left.
At the funerals, the messages were to tell people you love them because you never know when your time is up, but I wanted to scream out “this didn’t have to be the end of their life”. This didn’t have to be the way their story ended. This could have been prevented. My friends continued to die at a high rate and we continued to ‘celebrate their lives’ with partying or basketball tournaments, which has never made sense to me. Why celebrate someone’s life who didn’t live up to our teachings? How does this honor those still living? What are we doing to honor the lives who are living up to our teachings and expectations? I thought we would outgrow suicide and addiction, but if it doesn’t get you as a teenager it stalks you as an adult.
When I was a Board of Director, I thought I could legislate healthy behavior. I thought if you made it mandatory for your employees to attend mental health trainings, trauma informed trainings, suicide trainings, abuse trainings and etc that we would see a decrease in this loss, but that didn’t prove to be true. I felt like a failure for not being able to figure out how to prevent the death of our young people. How can you make generational trauma less painful? How can you make mother’s love their children? How can you make healthier homes for children to flourish in? How can you stop the abuse? How can you stop the pain?
I thought I handled death well because I went to massive funerals a year, but I realized I just didn’t deal with it. I put it in a separate box and locked away the disappointment, the fear, the shame, the sorrow, and the only emotion that remaindered was the anger. I was angry at everyone. Angry at mothers and fathers who were so broken they couldn’t parent so their children were suffering the same fate they did. Mad that uncles and aunties didn’t help as they were too busy with their dysfunctions and trying to survive. I was fed up with unhealthy grandparents who enabled and condoned the bad behavior. Who hell is helping these children???? But love cannot save you otherwise no one would die. Love simply isn’t enough. It’s one spoke but many more are needed.
Every death that occurred, I thought this one is enough. This loss will be enough to wake up our community. This loss will hurt enough that people will rise up and demand we as a community do more together. This loss will be the awakening that our ancestors prayed for. This loss will be the reason we unite and create a healthier place for our children to grow into. This loss will be enough to change how we behave. But sadly that hasn’t happened.
I don’t know what the answer is but I do know we are failing as a community. I wonder where the ones are with the answers. I wonder where the elders are to help us and to correct this wrong behavior. I wonder where are the truth seekers who speak up saying that we cannot afford to live in trauma for we do not survive. How many of us are functioning but not surviving? We continue to be jealous of each other, distrust each other, put each other down. We judge each other instead of trying to help. We condemn instead of reaching out. We judge instead of offering assistance.
We are the seeds of our ancestors, we carry their prayers, we carry their songs, and we carry their blood. We are met to thrive. I have realized that I can only impact myself. I can only learn about my own trauma and my own faults to improve my life. I do not enjoy facing my trauma and I do not enjoy dealing with it but my spirit appreciates it. This is why I am thankful when a class like “learning how to handle PTSD” comes a long because I know I need more education and I know I need more tools to handle all of this.
We are not meant to die young. We are not meant to die broken. We are not meant to be ashamed of our mental health. We are not meant to carry the scars of those before us. It’s not fair and it’s not right. We as Native people have the odds against us. We do not get a lot of “re do’s” in life. I wish I had the answers and I wish I knew how to bring people together to make a healthier and safer Tribe for our kids to nourish and flourish in.
By Theresa Sheldon (Tulalip Tribes)