29 Likes, 0 Comments - @raderwardfoundation on Instagram: "We're having a snow day! ⛄️ We don't get snow often, so we take every chance we get to build a..."
'pretend to be a time traveler' day
remembering with love
Rader made things (games, projects, videos) and put them out into the world for other people's enjoyment. ❤️💙💛
pete davidson shines a light in the darkness
suicide is a volcano
on point explores the rise in suicides
Click to not only listen to the podcast, but also find links to other related stories from USA Today, WBUR, ABC News, and Rolling Stone.
Mario (Kart) Monday! Real-world race will send finalists to Vegas
tips for surviving the holiday season
celebrate universal human rights month
wrapping up worldwide bereaved siblings month
November has been Worldwide Bereaved Siblings Month. In observation of it, I'm sharing an online game that both my kids created together in 2011 when they were 10 and 12. Gamestar Mechanic may have been the first site Rader (known there as minimario) used to make video games. "Teen VS. Thief" is a five-chapter storytelling game following a teenage detective. It’s a long game, and I haven’t played through all the chapters (I’m pretty terrible at the keyboard-based controls). But it’s fun to see how the kids combined their talents to bring their idea to life.
Also, for anyone who wants to read more on the topic (perhaps you've lost a sibling yourself?), please read this wonderful article from What's Your Grief about bereaved siblings, who could be considered "the forgotten mourners."
a safety plan could save your life
Here are some practical safety plan ideas. Check them out and choose which suits you. Maybe you want both an app version and a paper version.
Download the notOK app. (App Store, Google Play)
Register with your email address. Add a few people as Trusted Contacts (the app sends them a text message request when you authorize it to do so). It walks you through setting up the messages you can send these contacts with just a tap of the panic button when you’re not OK, and again when you’re OK. You set these up ahead of time so they’re ready to go when you need them.Use NowMattersNow’s plan (and here’s their guide). You can fill out one or both; see which suits you best.
Or try this template referenced in the USA Today article.
why the redemption arc is so awful
[Today I posted a new essay to the “writing my grief” blog section of the site. The theme is the redemption arc.]
Let me call your attention to a destructive line of thinking. You may have heard it applied to a variety of scenarios and expressed in a couple of different ways. For example, does this sound familiar? "Special kids are given to special parents." Ugh, so common in the disability community. How about this one? "This (tragedy or loss) occurred so you could 'become your best self' or 'grow as a person.'"
That's right, I'm talking about "everything happens for a reason" — the redemptive storyline. I'm intimately familiar with this storyline because I've been redeemed myself, but not in the way you think. I'm in recovery from a lifetime of belief that 'events unfold the way they should,' and 'good things will come of it' (whatever 'it' is). I was always a silver lining person.
Truth be told, I'm still a silver lining person. I love to see something good develop. Who doesn't? But the difference is now I know how hurtful it is to claim there's divine design behind disasters. Here, I'm going to throw in another incredibly unhelpful variation on this theme: "God won't give you more than you can handle." (You may have thought that one came from the Bible. Surprise! It's not in there.)
You know what? Things do happen. My 15-year-old son died by suicide. Are you really going to tell me a benevolent god looked at me and said, "Yeah, she's got this!" Oh, please. Yes, tragedies occur — or losses, or challenges — in the lives of all sorts of people. And maybe what feeds this narrative is, most of us rise to them. Because what choice do we really have? And who wants to take up residence in the worst place life has ever brought you?
I am only speaking for myself here. I know others also seem "strong" or "brave" or "inspiring" in the face of tragedy, but they have their own stories to tell. The reasons I do the work of the Rader Ward Foundation are varied. But yes, of course I want to try to do some good. I don't want other parents to have to figure out how to go on after a child's suicide. I don't want anyone to struggle with their mental health and not know what resources are available. I don't want bereaved people in this society that doesn't do grief well to continue to feel isolated and vilified. Yes I am trying to create some good in the world after what's commonly called "a parent's worst nightmare" became reality in my life. Obviously I don't want Rader's death to be "in vain." NONE of that means he should have died so this good would come from it. Or so that, god forbid, as a writer I'd finally have something important to say.
The redemption narrative may make for happy endings in the movies, but it wreaks a lot of havoc in real life. Next time you're in a position to offer comfort to someone suffering a tragedy, challenge, or loss, please keep the platitudes to yourself. Don't tell them it's all for the good or that this is how it was meant to be. Instead, say you care for them and you're there to listen.
P.S. My writer friend Maureen is mom to a child who has Down syndrome. I read this article of hers years ago, and it really stuck with me. In fact when you read it, you can see the influence it had on my thinking. I went back and found the piece after I finished writing to this prompt, and surprised myself with the parallels! Also let me state explicitly that I don't believe having a child with differing abilities is a tragedy. But it's shocking how much overlap there is in the way people tend to react to my situation and hers.
#givingtuesday, supporting jed
Today is #GivingTuesday, and I choose to support The Jed Foundation. My fundraiser was on Facebook, but you can give to JED any time here. JED exists to promote emotional health and prevent suicide for our nation's teens and young adults. They are doing life-saving work that's important to me and the Rader Ward Foundation.
Our foundation still awaits official nonprofit approval, a months-long process. Eventually we will resume fundraising for our scholarship fund, but we don't know when that will be.
why do we celebrate Mario Monday?
As if we needed a reason. But we have one, and here it is.
And here’s the “longer than Twitter” version.
One of the things we take pleasure in most as a family, going back to when the kids were little, is playing Super Mario Bros. Nintendo games. We started with Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, we think in 2007 when Rader was beginning elementary school (it was released in November and we might have bought it for Christmas). And from there, Rader found a way to play nearly every Mario game from every era, on the Wii and Wii U, Nintendo DS and 3DS, and computer. For more than half his life, Rader's daily wardrobe consisted of Mario t-shirts with basketball shorts. We collected Mario figurines and stuffed toys for playing with. Every birthday and Christmas brought more Mario merchandise into our lives for all our enjoyment.
I had saved all of the outgrown t-shirts for a quilt to send with him to college. When he died, Rader's grandma, Sue, crafted that treasured quilt for me to keep. I've bought more shirts since then, so we all have a couple in our closets for special occasions.
When it was time to come up with a logo for the foundation, my thoughts immediately turned to Mario. So the four-square logo you see is a section of pixelated 8-bit Mario, taken from right over Mario's heart.
finding a therapist doesn't have to be hard
There are lots of reasons to see a therapist. Not sure how to find one? Try this handy flow chart from Take This.
grief comic? yes, please
From the incomparable Megan Devine and illustrator Brittany Bilyeu:
storycorps' national day of listening
happy thanksgiving 🦃🍁
For now, to actually watch/listen to our silly video, you have to click over to Instagram at the link below. I’ll work on getting the video embedded here.
19 Likes, 2 Comments - @raderwardfoundation on Instagram: "Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🍁 #gobblegobble #givethanks #Thanksgiving2018"
self care checklist for the holidays
new writing being added to the blog
In January 2018 I participated in Writing Your Grief, a 30-day workshop through Megan Devine’s Refuge In Grief. I’ve continued to write since then, but felt it was time for some more accountability and input, so I joined the next level workshop, Round Two. I'm posting the new essays to the blog section of the foundation website.
I’m sharing my work with a new group of grieving writers, so I’ve repeated some details you may have seen before if you’ve read some of my previous pieces. If you’re new, the basic explanation is that Megan sends out a writing prompt: generally some quotes on a topic along with her thoughts, and we are invited to write whatever comes up in response. Some of the writing is intensely private, as you might imagine, so you won’t see my work from every day posted, but most will be. Some I may even post on Facebook.