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About Our Speakers
Roland J. Behm, JD, BA
From a letter to my wife’s aunt after her husband’s suicide in
June 2013:
Families tell each other stories. These stories are used to share
experiences (both the best and the worst of lived experience),
to put these experiences into a shared context, to pass along
important messages, and to define the family’s past, present,
and future. Author Isak Dinesen once said that “all sorrows
can be born if you put them in a story or tell a story about
them.”
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to
retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are
powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. The most authentic thing about us is
our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater
than our suffering. Stories can conquer fear; they can make the heart larger.
Each person is a story based on a collection of relationships ‐ parent and child, husband
and wife, grandparent and grandchild, brothers and friends. Your husband’s story does
not end with his death; it lives on ‐ in you, in your children, in your grandchildren, in all
of your friends and loved ones, and in their relationships with you and with each other.
What about your story? It now opens up to new and possibly unanticipated
opportunities. It may not be what you planned and it may be frightening, but as Joseph
Campbell said, “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.”
* * * * * * *
I advocate for suicide prevention remembering my wife's father and uncle, both dead by
suicide.
Suicide is not a sign of moral weakness. It does not reveal a character flaw. It should not
be a source of shame. Suicide is a public health issue. Suicide is preventable.
Roland J. Behm, JD, BA
Chair, Board of Directors ‐ Georgia Chapter
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Phone: 802.656.1345
Email:
roland.behm@gmail.com