Annemarie Matulis sent me more details about the event we posted earlier this week. The really unique thing about this workshop is how it brings together people who have attempted suicide and those who have lost someone to suicide to encourage meaningful connections from their differing perspectives on suicide.
From my own experience, there’s something really healing and powerful that happens when people who have been touched by an issue -- who’ve felt the pain, confusion, and grief around it -- find their way out and then head back in to help others. These exercises, according to the description below, will “offer a starting point to begin to tear down the walls fear has built and develop new soul-care skills that can bring some inner peace within while walking through a difficult emotional challenge.”
Don’t miss out. The workshop is tomorrow at noon. If you’re interested in joining in, save the link below or reach out to Annemarie at director@avoiceatthetable.org for more information.
What you need to know:
WHO: Anyone emotionally impacted by a suicidal experiences of a loved one or their own
WHAT: A 90-minute interactive wellness workshop
WHEN: Saturday. May 22, Noon EDT/9 a.m. PT
WHERE: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNSwv7kZdXI
Steve and Kerry Palm lost their 14-year old daughter, Kacie, to suicide in 2014. In the 8th
grade, Joseph Marques was being bullied in middle school. He experienced severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.
Their paths to recover and heal from trauma began from very different places. On Saturday, May 22nd, they will deliver another 90-minute emotional wellness workshop via a livestream roundtable to demonstrate the benefits of doing this together – demolishing the silos and blending their hearts.
Two men, a college student, and a UPS driver may seem an unlikely pairing. Not really. Not if you fully grasp the purpose of the Impacted Family & Friends workshops. Both men are activists and advocates for suicide education and believe that suicide prevention is everyone’s business.
Two years into his grief journey, Palm founded the Kacie Palm Project for Youth Suicide Prevention and joined efforts of the Bristol County (MA) Regional Coalition for Suicide Prevention. In his junior year at high school, Marques turned an essay exercise into a workbook/memoir, “Depression, A Memoir, Guide and Journal.” Marques and his family have become regulars at the Regional Coalition’s annual Light the Way walk for suicide education as has the Palm family.
The purpose of the peer to peer, trauma-informed, resilience-based format of the Re-Energize &
Re-Connect Wellness Workshop series is to offer a safe haven for suicide attempt survivors and
suicide loss survivors to come together and re-energize and re-charge their internal psychological, emotional and spiritual “batteries” and then re-connect with living life fully, to celebrate life, recovery and wellness.
These psych-educational workshops were developed by Annemarie Matulis and Tracey Medeiros in late 2013 to be used as a companion to a documentary Matulis was completing titled, A Voice at the Table (2014) https://vimeo.com/92330799.
During the May 22 workshop, Palm and Marques will remove the barriers between siloed groups as they share their own lived experiences within the context of a specific exercise. Topics range from dreams matter, to anger and control, to staying out of the sandbox, to fear-driven behavior, to forgiveness and soul care, and more.
The exercises outlined in these workshops may not be “the” answer to the quality-of-life wellness challenge for this huge population, but they offer a starting point to begin to tear down
the walls fear has built and develop new soul-care skills that can bring some inner peace within while walking through a difficult emotional challenge.
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