STDA? What in goodness name is that!
My day started like every normal day on Tuesday.
My little guy (not little at all), came home not feeling well on Monday, still wasn’t feeling too good Tuesday morning. It is weird because he never falls sick. I asked if he wanted to stay home and relax for the day, and he said he’d rather stay home.
That was strange too, my spouse and I decided to talk to him some more, asking questions like, is everything okay, are you enjoying school (he just started Gr.9), is there anything you want to talk about? He answered, he is enjoying school, just not feeling well, he still has headaches. So we dropped it.
And just a few minutes before getting ready for work, I decided to pick up my phone instead of getting ready. And my world changed.
There was an email from my son’s school, the most disturbing email l have read in a very long time.
One of the students in the school, young girl in grade 12, died by suicide!
That liner rocked my world.
Mixed emotions for whatever she must have gone through that she felt she couldn’t share, which made her make that earth-shattering decision of taking her own life.
What her parents must be feeling, trying to make sense of what could have, should have happened, the pain, personal rejection, blame, trauma and so on and so forth.
I really can’t say what they must be going through, l have not experienced such a situation and I pray to God that no one else ever experiences it. Loosing loved ones is traumatizing, I lost my younger sister over 8 years ago, and it is still painful, so I can’t even begin to imagine their pain.
I am not the deceased parent, but my world literarily came down. I feel pain deep within, my heart is heavy, l feel very weak, like l am carrying an invisible weight (I am used to weights, but they have become weightless), this is different, just a mixed bag of feelings that I can’t even begin to articulate.
I am sure by now, we are all thinking about what went wrong, what could have been done to support, to prevent this from happening.
There is no manual that comes with parenting, we try and learn as we go. We make changes based on our experiences and or observations around us.
As a mother to all mother’s, my personal take is that we are living in a STDA, superficial technology driven age. Our children (any one under 20 years) were born into technology, this is all they know. We have to be there to support them and have some form of understanding in what they are doing, how they are feeling, what they are thinking and who is in their circle.
We need to help them understand how to balance real life to superficial live. The world has become a global village, and everyone is in each other’s business because of technology advancements. And as adults we know that what you see is not necessarily real all the time, there are lots of make believe, fake, unreal, superficial things going on. But our children are young, naïve and very impressionable, and they tend to believe almost everything they see. There is the issue of bullying too.
Mental wellness and wellbeing is super important, we cannot work 24/7 and leave our children behind. We need to be more engaged, take time to talk to them, show them love, and spend time with them. I feel, these are ways that will help us know and see if something is off. We cannot continue to say we are working ten jobs because we want to provide better for them. They are growing up without us, all these sacrifice is not worth loosing them for.
This is not a blame game, or what anyone can do better, or that technology is the reason behind this particular case, but this is a heart broken woman and mother sending a clarion call to every woman and mother, to be a little bit more involved and pay a little bit more attention especially in this STDA we, and our children are living in.
May the Soul of the Departed Rest In Peace.
God help us all!
