Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean

Niall Breslin, Co-Founder of A Lust for Life

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean” – Ryunosuke Satoro 

The gradual development of A Lust for Life although deeply rewarding has not been a journey vacant of obstacles or de-tours. I’ll be honest, being so exposed to other people’s pain on a daily basis takes its toll on every last person involved in our small organisation. Our shared humanity connects us all. We have heard and seen things that although are incredibly distressing have only served to motivate us more on our mission and advocacy work when it comes to mental health on this island and beyond. We have also heard and seen things both individually and collectively that have ignited our hearts and spirits and highlighted the fact that for every act of sorrow that exists in this world, there are a million acts of love.

Personally, I have found the road at times quite lonely, questioning myself and at times wondering whether we can really make a difference as an organisation. I suppose it’s quite a natural feeling but it’s not one that occupies my thoughts enough to make me lose faith.

Meeting CEO of Pieta House Brian Higgins and being able to offload and search for advice from him has been unquantifiably important for me. We often meet in a café in Dublin and spend hours chatting about our current situations and where our heads are at. It’s very easy to lose track of your own self-care but it’s often these casual informal meetings that bring some space and clarity to your own mind.

One clear common denominator that exists between myself and Brian and the respective organisations we represent is the belief that it is the coming together of people with shared visions, and our collective unification, that will create the dynamic for cultural and systematic change in our society. Not one person, not one organisation, not one political party or politician will change this alone. It’s absolute paramount that we begin to join the dots with the great minds and ideas that already exist.

We have proven in Ireland in recent times that it’s the rising up of the people that shakes the system and our public servants, our government, need the people to shake the system to help them push change through. The pace at which our leaders, policy makers and respective governments have dealt with this mental health crisis in this country simply is not acceptable. People are now willing to talk, the stigma is slowly eroding but we do not have a system that can adequately deal with the demand, relying on a costly economically, socially  and humanly ‘reactive model’ and consistently devaluing the potential of a more feasible and empathetic ‘preventative model’.

It’s the likes of Pieta House and their team that are left trying to pick up the pieces of a broken model and inadequate system. That is why I am so energised by the relationship between A Lust for life and Pieta House and our upcoming plans to create something very special for this year’s Electric Picnic. An advocacy group and service provider with shared values, ethics, passion and belief joining the dots so we can become stronger together, louder together, inspired together. Our hope going forward is that we can create other alliances and bonds with even more individuals, groups and organisations, turning a drop into an ocean.

Brian Higgins CEO of Pieta House

For a couple of years now, Bressie and I have met to chat, ponder, laugh and share difficulties over coffee and the odd cake (though I may be more guilty on the latter). We have often talked about how crucial our work is in generating and nourishing hope and providing support for people to live well, be well and thrive in their future.   A Lust for Life are excellent at advocacy and my colleagues in Pieta House are excellent at delivering support to people in their greatest need.

Bressie’s openness and wisdom are a great support to me and I am so delighted that our ponderings have led us, Pieta House and A Lust For Life to join forces for our #SoundEffect campaign and Electric Picnic stage to open conversation on what we the people in Ireland want our society to be, what we want for ourselves and what we want for each other. At Electric Picnic we will host a series of discussions and panels which I hope will open dialogue, widen horizons and plant seeds of thought that will ultimately strengthen our society and create an Ireland that no longer needs Pieta House and A Lust for Life.

Our vision at Pieta House is of a world where Suicide, Self-Harm and Stigma have been replaced by Hope, Self-Care and Acceptance.

There is a sad reality that our society is fractured, people come to us in this fractured state, not broken, but in need of care… and repair. Facilitating people to repair and find a new future is what we strive to do at Pieta House.

The Japanese have a wonderful art of KINTSUGI. They take broken clay, pots, vases, sculptures and they repair them with molten gold, they literally fill in the cracks with gold, creating a finished product stronger and more beautiful than before, celebrating the cracks, celebrating the history of its vulnerability. That’s what we are about in Pieta House.

Whilst we can help mend the fractures in the lives of our clients, by working with them to replace thoughts of suicide with thoughts of hope for a new and positive future and by replacing actual self-harm with actual self-care, we cannot replace stigma with acceptance to such a degree that it can have maximum societal impact.

In order to do this we need to engage society in this honest and difficult discussion and ask for their help in delivering this and to ask society for your help to take the lead in this.

At Pieta House we can do our work in our therapy rooms, but you can do your bit in your families and communities. Together we need to engender a community of people who support each other. Do you want to add to society’s cracks and fractures through what you do and what you fail to do or do you want to strengthen bonds and make a positive impact?

We need a society that places more emphasis on self-worth than net-worth. We need a society that proactively promotes diversity, tolerance, understanding and care, these things cannot be incidental, they must be deliberate. We each have a responsibility to our society. Your friends and families rely on you, your culture finds its way through these people into wider society.

Since we opened Pieta House in 2006, over 30,000 people have come through our doors at the point of suicide or actively engaging in self-harm. Every one of those 30,000 people have told their story of how they came to the point of suicide or self-harm, every one of them told their truth. What is “Truth”? Whilst what I hold to be true may not resonate with what you hold true, it is nonetheless my truth and my reality, it is what motivates and guides me. It is not for us to seek to impose a different truth on others, but we can try to change the reality within which it exists for people, to help create a new and positive future.

We know from the 30,000 plus truths that we have been told, that stigma is a most dangerous cause of suicide. We know from their truths, that what we as a society, a community, a family, a workplace think about race, about gender and identity, about sexuality, about peoples worth, about how people look, about politics and religion impacts on people, sinks deep into their core and sometimes can cause a rot so deep that they see no possible future for themselves. None of these are a justifiable in bringing someone to the point of suicide, none of these trump the inherent personhood of each of us. All of these are a branding (for that is what stigma means) that we apply to people to mark them as different from us, to place them “outside” of “us”.

Sadly, we allow these stigmas to exist in our families and in our society. Our deliberate actions or inactions grant them permission to exist, to grow and in some ways, we even promulgate them through the throw away race or gay jokes, the casual body shaming, our rhetoric on who is and is not “one of us”.

If we care more about self-worth than net-worth, if we dedicate our focus to solutions and not problems, if we celebrate difference rather than condemn it, we will really make a positive difference to our communities and our society and we will move closer to creating a world without suicide.