My mom finally shares her thoughts about my dad's suicide

Today was Bell Let’s Talk day – where

Bell donated 5¢ to mental health initiatives for every:

• Text message sent*
• Mobile and long distance call made*
• Tweet using #BellLetsTalk
• Facebook share of our Bell Let’s Talk image

(*for Bell subscribers)

Awesome, right?

Today started out with me tweeting and re-tweeting lots of stuff with the hashtag #BellLetsTalk. And then it got profoundly better after that. In a very personal way.

 

And then, I checked. Facebook. It turned out that my sister had shared what my mom had posted. For the first time in my 41 years, my mom shared her feelings about my dad’s suicide in 1975. Holy *crap*.

I was BEYOND shocked and honoured as this has been a lifelong wish to hear my mom talk without shame or judgment. Thank you Bell for opening up this conversation for our family. I have had Bipolar Disorder since 2007 and Bell’s effort to de-stimatize mental illness has now fulfilled an important desire — to have my mom be able to acknowledge the validity of that.