Gratitude and Thanksgiving

The following article was an honor to co-author with my daughter, Katherine. I am so proud of you and grateful that you honored us all with your own personal truth.

You might think you know where this Blog post is going, given its Thanksgiving this week, but this is not going to go quite like you expect. The last twelve months (closer to 15 months) have been incredibly blessed for me, and those blessings were highlighted by a unique and powerful personal experience that I had on November 16th, where I had the very distinct privilege of attending a Masquerade Ball in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia in support of the Quell Foundation. Let me start there. Founded by President and CEO, Kevin Lynch, a retired member of the U.S. Navy and veteran health care executive, the Quell Foundation strives to reduce the number of suicides, overdoses, and incarcerations of people with mental health illness. The organization works to accomplish this by encouraging people to share their stories, increasing access to mental health services, providing a pipeline of future mental health care professionals with scholarships, and training first responders to recognize mental health crisis warning signs amongst their own. Over the last 4 years, the Quell Foundation has supported more than 400 college students and families through $1.275 Million in scholarships. 

The evening was filled with stories from current college students and other people that have been faced with their own mental health challenges, sometimes getting up close with contemplating suicide or even further. In some cases, as part of the Quell Foundation mission, these students have lost a loved one to suicide, including a brother, a sister, and a close teammate. These scholarship recipients are “Survivors” in the Quell Foundation support language, and in some cases, they’re also considered “Fighters” themselves, overcoming the trauma from these deep losses and dealing with the challenge of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and even depression. As many of you reading this know, I have the amazing privilege of leading Tridiuum, a digital behavioral health software company partnering with leading health care institutions around the country in helping to combat this very real epidemic around suicide. This initiative, nationally referred to as the Zero Suicide initiative, is one of the most important efforts that our health care institutions, communities, and our friends and families are tackling in this country right now. 

Tridiuum and this initiative were very important to me before August 2, 2018 last year, but after that day, that week, it became highly personal. Because on that day, that week, my young adult child was still alive after attempting to take her own life. She is a beautiful, brilliant, talented young woman (a polymath of sorts), but on that day, that week, coping mechanisms failed and none of our family had picked up the signs. 

Thankfully, she was not successful.

Now, Katherine would like to honor us with her story… 

Wanting to Die Forced Me to Learn How to Live

by Katherine E. Redlus

On August 2nd, 2018 I attempted suicide by hanging from a ceiling fixture. 

In the moment I decided to kill myself, all I saw was how everyone’s life would improve around me.  As I tied myself up, numb and feeling like I was floating outside of my body, my eyes became level with a greeting card taped to the mirror that had two birds on it that read “God has Great Plans for You.” My grandparents had sent it as an encouragement for me and my husband’s cross-country move from LA to NYC. All I can remember is thinking about the pain I’d cause them if I went through with it, and yet it still took every single ounce of willpower to stop and text my dad that I needed help.

I was taken to the hospital where I was held on suicide watch for about eight hours. Because I was admitted on a Thursday, I had to be hospitalized through the following Monday morning. Three days in a horrible hospital where everything was suicide-proofed and the care was truly terrible (that’s a story for another time.) The nurses and psychiatrist kept asking me what had caused this, and I didn’t know what other than feeling like my mind had splintered into a million pieces. All I could do was tell them the facts of what had happened in the last several months:  

• I’d been working 60-hour work weeks in multiple jobs, and in the studio recording my album in all of my “spare” time (10+ hour days) prior to leaving Los Angeles. As a result, I’d become critically exhausted.
• We moved across the country, and my husband had a comedy tour in the middle of our move. 
• We were temporarily staying with my dad while I looked for a job and apartment in NYC, and I felt like this was a huge inconvenience for everyone. 

On top of all of this, a week prior to my suicide attempt, my grandfather called to tell me that my biological mother died at age 45 of congestive heart failure, from decades of chain-smoking, alcoholism, and drug abuse. She refused to take responsibility for her choices and the pain she caused everyone, and we had been estranged since I was a young adult. While we hadn’t had a relationship in years, I had plenty of horrifying and depressing memories to last a lifetime – with nowhere for the rage and sadness to go. I couldn’t even have the catharsis of going to a funeral where we all talked about the good memories, because there were none. In fact, I felt like my mind presented me a movie of the top horrible moments with her over the course of my entire life. The pain runs deep. No one from our family liked her, and for good reason. Most of my close cousins didn’t even know her personally. We all had to make peace with the fact that her life hadn’t made sense, and then she died. Story over.

The psychiatrist’s response to my reasons? “None of these things are reasons to kill yourself.” I fought him on this for 24 hours, but then I realized he was right. Exhaustion, overwhelm, transition, rage and grief – even when they happen all within a two-week time period – is never a reason to kill yourself.

I truly couldn’t figure anything out or give the doctor a better answer until the second day I was in the hospital. I went to meet with the social worker on call because we needed to figure out my release plan (sounds like jail, right?). She asked me to reflect on what had really caused my reaction, and something about her being the first one who really seemed to understand the destructive relationship with my biological mother, something cracked inside of me and I finally opened my mouth to say words I had never dared previously admit. I sobbed so hard I thought I was going to throw up and said, “there is nothing that I can possibly do that will make up for all the pain and damage my mother caused. If I can’t make my family proud, there is no point in me being here.” I just remember her shocked reply: “you are not responsible for her mistakes in life and you don’t have to make it up to anyone.” 

It felt like someone had taken a two-ton weight off of my entire body. 

Despite the love and support I’d received from my grandparents (they raised me and are my parents in every sense) I had built an identity around this belief: “If I’m successful and impressive enough, my family will love me and that will make up for what a mess my mother created by having me as a teenager.” Anytime I’d start to feel “not enough”, worthless, or otherwise anxious as a kid, I’d turn to homework, music, athletics. Who needs drugs and alcohol? I was Anesthetizing through Achievement.  I was running constantly. Despite this destructive behavior, I had thankfully discovered self-help and spirituality at a very young age and had improved my life drastically. I got a therapist, ended a toxic relationship, moved to Los Angeles, met my husband and was hustling in creative work. No matter how I worked on myself, I still couldn’t let go of my issues around worthiness and success. Self-help quickly turned into self-harm as I began using it as a way to berate myself for not being where I “should be.” Self-improvement became yet another barometer used to try to impress my family – “look, I’m meditating, exercising, eating right and I barely drink! Look how well I’m doing!” 

I see clearly now that I had built my emotional house on sand – only to be confronted with a hurricane of difficulties. Between our cross-country move, the unexpected horror of my mother dying, and not having work to keep myself occupied created a fertile ground for every single horrifying emotion that I’d run from to come barreling forward. I had no place left to run, no work to bury myself in. Every single insecurity, fear and feeling of unworthiness, aloneness and shame I’d ever felt came crashing down on me. 

Prior to my hospitalization, I was desperate to keep up the fa?ade of relentless self-improvement. Now, while I’m still committed to working on myself, I’m completely transparent about how I’m actually feeling with a select group comprised of my husband, my grandparents, and my dad. We talk more openly about what we are all feeling. We’ve had difficult conversations and made it out stronger on the other side. While hospitalized, I made a “wellness plan” that is the emotional equivalent of a “hurricane evacuation plan.” I finally used anti-anxiety medication strategically alongside therapy, which enabled me to finally do the deep work needed to heal myself, instead of masking the pain through a barrage of self-help books. 

I still struggle with anxiety and depression. I also still meditate, journal and go to therapy. I finally went on a low-dose anti-anxiety medication which helped me tremendously during the process of moving back to NYC, starting a new job, and getting settled down. I’m pleased to say that I’m now gradually coming off of it (under medical supervision) and feeling better than ever. I’m grateful to the medication for helping ease my mind into a place where my “spiritual” tools (meditation, prayer, journaling) could actually help.

Identity is everything. The story we tell ourselves about who we are and what things mean is the most powerful force in our life. For those of us who have lived through severe trauma at a young age, self-perception is sometimes the only solid thing we have to stand on. When an outside event forces us to question our beliefs about ourselves and the world, everything can crumble from the inside out. We see this most obviously in athletes who go through a career-ending injury, in musicians and artists who never learn to tame their inner-demons, entrepreneurs whose businesses fail, and anyone who has chased success only to find out it didn’t change how they felt inside. 

I’m telling my story today only because I hope that someone will read it and feel less shame in admitting that they can’t walk this path alone any longer. This barrier of shame and isolation keeps so many of us from saying “I’m not OK and I can’t make the pain stop.” I didn’t know how to get out of the hole I was in, so I took the next (painful and embarrassing) step of checking into a hospital. Doing life is hard and messy – but it’s also beautiful. I named my last album Brutal Waltz for a reason. Sometimes it can feel like the hand we have been dealt is an insurmountable obstacle, but here is what I believe to be true: 

Where you came from doesn’t have to predict your future.

You don’t have to take on other people’s mistakes, nor clean up messes that aren’t yours.

Everyone is on their own path. We can encourage each other, but we can’t “fix” each other.  

The story we tell ourselves is running the show – what story are you telling yourself about who you are and what things mean? 

You have nothing to prove to life. If your heart is beating, life has deemed you worthy to be here. 

Relentlessly clinging to how you thought things “should” have gone will keep you from embracing the possibility of a different and better future. Dream big, keep a loose grip.

Because you have nothing to prove, you get to decide what brand of goodness you want to spread in the world.

If you can’t find a reason to move right now, imagine me sending you the energy and strength to take the next small step. Ask for help from a person you trust. Make the call. Take the smallest possible action in a slightly better feeling direction. Your path to healing will reveal itself one step at a time. It’s not enough that I want you to live. It’s not enough that a family member wants you to live. You have to decide to live first. 

With love, understanding, and support,

…A little more than 15 months ago, life’s challenges appeared to have presented no viable path forward for Katherine. Since that time, therapy has become a real deliberate practice in her life, as has meditation and self-care. But honestly and maybe most importantly for us all, we talk about it now. By it, I mean our feelings, all of our feelings, struggles, doubts, dreams, disappointments and anxieties. The Quell Foundation sums up its vision “by promoting open, judgement-free dialogue, together we can shatter the stigma.” For our family, we most definitely are not perfect in this effort, but we are talking. We talk about everything, how we feel, how we cope well, and how we don’t cope so well. We tell each other what we need and what we expect from one another. We tell each other that we love each other. We don’t hold back...anymore.

Today, Katherine is married to a wonderful man, they both have burgeoning careers, and they are madly in love with each other. I love that part.  I am grateful for my daughter on this Thanksgiving. She’s amazing. I am grateful for my family on this Thanksgiving. We’re all talking. I am grateful that I get to work at a place that is helping people to not hold back any longer, to tell somebody that they need help NOW. It’s not just names anymore, it’s my family. I am grateful that we don’t have to hold back any longer. If you or someone you know is holding back, please know that you don’t have to anymore. 

If this article and Katherine’s story has touched you and you want to know more, you can read more from her at katherineredlus.com. If you want to learn how you can help, please visit thequellfoundation.org to find out more about Kevin and his team’s mission to help fight for each other in the face of this stigma. The stakes are as high as they get.