The Hero Within Karen Hall

I Couldn’t Even Say The Word Suicide, Part 1 with Lark Dean Galley

• Lark Dean Galley • Season 1 • Episode 60

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Content warning. Today's episode covers the topic of death by suicide and listener discretion is advised. If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the suicide hotline 988.

Have you ever wondered how to navigate the painful journey of grief and loss following suicide? Join me, Karen Hall, as I sit down with the courageous Lark Dean Galley, who vulnerably opens up about her personal experiences with the tragedies of suicide. Lark shares her reflections on a turbulent childhood marked by her father's undiagnosed bipolar depression and his subsequent suicide, and the devastating loss of her own son four years later.

Throughout our deeply personal conversation, Lark reveals the immense stigma and shame associated with suicide and how it has impacted her family’s journey to emotional recovery. We delve into the complexities of grief, highlighting how it can differ greatly between genders. Lark shares her personal healing process, offering valuable insights on shedding blame and offering grace to those affected by suicide. She also shares her moving thoughts on maintaining a connection with loved ones even after they've departed from this world.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which Lark further discusses her unstable childhood, her struggles with infertility and divorce, and the challenges of managing a blended family. She shares how these adversities have carved her path to becoming a fervent advocate for suicide prevention. A testament to her strength and resilience, this episode serves as a beacon of hope for those whose lives have been impacted by suicide. Listen in to this profound conversation with Lark Dean Galley and find hope amidst the pain.

Lark and I would love to hear your thoughts! If you'd like to support the podcast, please follow/subscribe to be alerted to upcoming episodes and also, I'd love it if you leave a review!

Wishing you lots of love on your own hero’s journey,
xoxo, Karen

Thanks so much for listening!  Please share this episode with your loved ones and spread the love to bless others!
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Connect with Karen Hall

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Podcast: The Hero Within Podcast

Connect with Lark Dean Galley

Website:  https://larkdeangalley.com

Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love. Current warning today's episode covers the topic of death by suicide. I know this topic can be distressing and listener discretion is advised. If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the suicide hotline 988.

Speaker 1:

Despite growing up in poverty, lark Dean Galli has overcome her unstable childhood and poverty mindset. She has her master's degree in economics, was the number one global sales rep for a Fortune 500 company earning multiple six figures in commission, and is a Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business graduate. She is a master of the corporate and entrepreneurial world. After working in the corporate world for 25 years, lark left to run her father's company when he passed away unexpectedly from suicide. Realizing there were many entrepreneurs who could benefit from her experience, lark started her own consulting business. Her 19 year old son's suicide reinforced what she'd been hearing from many of her high achieving clients. They felt unworthy and incapable of reaching their goals. Lark went from coaching on the externals to focusing on why each person matters. Her goal is to help 100,000 people choose to stay on this planet and step into their greatness. Lark is a devoted wife and mother of four adult children and four grandchildren.

Speaker 1:

Today, in part, one of I couldn't even say the word suicide with Lark Dean Galli. Lark describes how she couldn't even say the word suicide when her father died in 2014. Then, four years later, her son also took his life. Soon afterwards, others reached out to her to gain insights to help their own children. Lark was at a crossroad. Because of her compassion, she made a conscious decision to publicly speak about suicide. She never could have imagined that she would do this, but her motivation was that she did not want others to go through what she has. Lark shares about her chaotic childhood with her father, who had undiagnosed bipolar depression, and how this impacted her own life. Lark describes how there is often judgment and shame surrounding suicide and how she and her loved ones have navigated these difficult emotions. Lark describes the differences in the way she and her husband and her daughters have each grieved, and how her relationship with her son continues on. Thank you so much for meeting with me today.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, I'm really glad to share this message as.

Speaker 1:

I've been reading your book. Oh, my goodness, my heart just went out to you so much and I feel like your message is so needed, and I know you've probably felt that too, as you've shared it. A lot of people have probably said that it resonated with them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, in different ways and they didn't even have to necessarily lose a child by suicide. It could have been they lost a child some other way, or just some grief that came up for them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, I think that's such an interesting thing because I haven't personally lost a child to suicide, but I've experienced grief and so I could relate to so much of what you had said, just because of other losses.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

So if you could just tell me about your heart, how you felt called to share the book and to share this message.

Speaker 2:

Okay, sure. So my father died by suicide in January 2014, and he had struggled with mental illness his whole life and I actually was not surprised that he ended his life, because he had talked about it for so long and we tried to help him and he just had isolated himself. And so when that happened in 2014, I couldn't even use the word suicide, I couldn't even say it. My best friends didn't know how he actually died, and so I understand the stigma and the shame that surrounds suicide. Then fast forward five years later, when my 19 year old son took his life in March of 2019, suddenly all of those feelings came back again just feeling terrible, being ashamed, the stigma, what will people say, et cetera. And I really do feel that my father's suicide prepared me, in a way, to be more aware of what was happening with my son.

Speaker 2:

After his death, and within just a couple of days of his death, I had three women friends call me and they each expressed great sorrow over the loss of my son, but they also said I am so concerned about my own teenager because these were teenagers that knew my son, and if you've heard of copycat suicide, it happens a lot in teenagers and these kids had already attempted or talked about attempting suicide and the mothers were terrified. And that's when it sort of flipped a switch in my head and I realized that I now had a choice and my choices were I could go into a dark hole With my father. I was five months in a dark depression and I didn't even realize it at the time. No one would blame me if I stayed in my house and didn't do much and felt sad. No one would blame me. But I also realized that if I didn't speak out and these children who I knew took their lives, I could not live with that.

Speaker 2:

And it was not an easy choice. But it was a choice where I made it out of compassion for my friends and for their children, because I thought I do not want my friends to go through what I'm going through. It would just break my heart if one more parent has to go through this. But it was a conscious decision to start talking about it. And so, within less than a week of my son's death, I suddenly was on this soapbox and where five years prior I couldn't even use the word suicide, now I was openly talking about it and I was encouraging parents please, this is a real thing. I personally thought it could never happen in my own home, and there it did twice, and so it is a real thing. And, parents, I promise you, for any struggles, any difficulties you think you might be having with your child, it is nothing compared to losing them to suicide. There's so much heartache around that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, could you describe your thoughts about how it would be viewed if it was a car accident versus if it was suicide? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2:

We all have these levels. Oh, this is worth right. With regards to a car accident, that's something passive that maybe he didn't necessarily cause and it was maybe outside his responsibility. But with suicide, it is 100% stuffable right. 100% of the suicide deaths do not have to happen and that was something that he chose. And, oh my goodness, the stigma around that. And how is that possible? And how was a parent? How didn't I see that? How could I have failed my child that I didn't even know he was struggling to the extent that he felt he couldn't go on one more day? And all of these things just swirled in my head. I had to overcome that pressure of thinking it's worse for people to judge me as a mother whose son died by suicide than actually speaking out in the hopes of helping others.

Speaker 1:

Right. I think that feeling of blame and judgment from other people is a barrier. We're talking about it and it's a natural inclination to isolate anyway, but then if you feel judgment, it's even more so that you'll isolate, and I have had to overcome so much of this and just move forward in my life by understanding that.

Speaker 2:

First of all, take blame off the table. I can't blame my son, I can't blame my father and I can't blame my husband. I can't blame myself. Take it off the table because you can start to really cause rifts in relationships. If there's blame, as humans we love to find that scapegoat. Put the blame on that person. All my problems are your fault, but that will cause a rift in the relationship. And so very early on I realized we could not blame at all, that didn't need to be there and just opening up to a lot of grace to ourselves, to our son and to people around us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I thought it was interesting. In my experience with coaching, I see how men grieve so differently than women and in many times they really isolate and they don't feel safe talking about it, and they've been socialized and taught those things ever since they've been little and so it feels like a weakness to talk about feelings.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I want to talk about that because that was a big thing. So my husband is 35 years in the military. He's a hardened combat and up until that point in our marriage I had seen him cry twice and one of those was at his mother's funeral. So you're talking 21 years of marriage. I've seen him cry twice. He's very stoic and when our son died, my husband cried for three days straight. He was literally on the floor. He kept his hand like this, in a fist, up near his heart, like his heart was shattered, and he just went around for three days just like this, sobbing, and he was inconsolable, whereas me, on the other hand, I had been quite upset with my son before he died.

Speaker 2:

We had a hard relationship and I went a week without shedding a tear. I was so angry with my son and it was different. But my husband is being very vulnerable, he's being very emotional and I will tell you that, as the time went on, my first reaction was that's not manly, you need to stop this and you need to be the man. And I didn't really want him to express this utter emotional breakdown, this distraught that he was feeling, because if the man is falling apart, then what does that leave me? Right, right, and I thought of Brene Brown. She talked about this at one time where a man had approached her and said where's the vulnerability for us men? And it did take me a few months to understand and give him grace and say he's not being less of a man. He's just finally expressing so many emotions that he's kept pent up and I had to allow him his healing in his way.

Speaker 1:

In his way right, and I think that can be so challenging because it can feel uncomfortable for us. Like you said. What does that mean for me? If they're feeling this way, and so many times in those kinds of situations, people want to fix it and that can be very uncomfortable for us when someone else is grieving.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'll tell you my older daughter was working in corporate job and it had been a few months and she was struggling. She was still trying to show up, still trying to do her work, but it was hard and an insensitive co-worker said why are you so sad? Why is it such a struggle? It was just a brother. Oh my God. It was like that's probably more indicative of that person's relationship with their brother versus my daughter's relationship. Right, and sometimes we think we're going to react in a certain way when a situation comes into our lives, and I've had the opportunity to have several bizarre things happen to me and I can tell you right now I haven't reacted anything like I thought I would react. You don't know, until you're in it.

Speaker 1:

When you saw your daughters and how they reacted when you told them about Christian, you said that's a normal person grief. And when you said that, it made me think about how so many times we judge ourselves In our grieving process Sometimes we judge the other person in their grieving process. Yes, we can also judge ourselves and think I'm not doing it right. I think you felt some feelings like I should have expressed more emotions, and your husband may have even felt that other people may feel I shouldn't express so much. Right, right, and can you talk about that judgment?

Speaker 2:

Sure. So I wrote the book and I published it and then, two years later, I did the audible and I actually had a friend of mine who's a clinical therapist. We would do a review after each chapter and this was so helpful. It was like I was getting this therapy session just for myself, although the listener can benefit as well and it was so beautiful because in that chapter about the grief and my reaction to my son's death versus the other members of my family, he said what is normal, we've been conditioned. We watch a movie and somebody breaks down, and oh, that's grief, not necessarily Right. So he said, however, you show up and you grieve, that's natural for you. And so it helped take off. This sadness that I felt was like, wow, what was wrong with me that I couldn't show any emotion, that I just I shut down. I was completely emotionally shut down and it might have been my brain's way of trying to protect me and help me cope through the unimaginable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I remember when you talked about when your father passed away, how you were the one that had to make the decision about disconnecting the life support, and you also Compared yourself to the way that your sisters were expressing their grief. And so when you looked at yourself and how you grieved with your father Compared to how you grieved with Christian, can you compare in contrast to so?

Speaker 2:

hard. Yes, so my father was undiagnosed by polar most of his life and so we grew up in very unstable childhood. We didn't know any different. But you know we're talking with other people. It was very different. We moved every year, a lot of food, insecurity, we didn't have a lot of things, but my father always made it like an adventure. Here we go and then as we got older he just did not have the capacity to engage with us very much. He was a very emotionally and often physically distant father and then as we got older, adults etc. That became even more pronounced.

Speaker 2:

And so I did not think that when he passed away that I would grieve at all because there was no real relationship in my mind. But at his funeral I spoke and I just broke down and sobbed and my husband made a comment later. He said you were the only one of all the kids that actually cried when you spoke, which surprised me. I would have thought that I would be the last one to cry. But then in hospital room my father had made me his medical power attorney, which was a shock. I can just tell you that I was not expecting that I get a call from my brother-in-law. Your, your father's been in accidents on the freeway and then he shot himself. He's in the hospital. You have his medical power returning. You need to come and make some decisions. And I was like wow, not prepared for this right. So I show up. We try to get as many siblings as we can to come who are within the state.

Speaker 2:

There were two that lived too far away to come and the doctor told me he said your father's living on life support. Even if he lives without the life support, he'll be a vegetable. And my father and I had lots of talks. That was the last thing he wanted and I knew that I'm fairly pragmatic. And Well, two of my other sisters were there. They were just sobbing. They would not have been in the position to to terminate that life support in whatever hopes to prolong the life, even though there was really no life there. The brain function was dead right. And then I can remember I was at the bottom of my dad's bed and all the siblings were lined up on each side and the doctor said okay, are you ready to make the decision? And Everybody's head turned towards me yeah, you can only imagine that's a heavy responsibility. And I just said yes, we're ready, and that's a hard thing, having made that kind of decision right, and with our son, he was dead on the scene so that there was nothing like that. But I just remember being so emotionally distant and so angry. That was the first thing that came to me, just the anger that I had with him For doing this because of the situation he had put my husband in completely distraught.

Speaker 2:

I will just say this my book is very raw. There's no sugarcoating, there's no hey. My relationship with my son was great. It's raw and it's real, and my son and I we were like cats and dogs and when he died the only thing I could think of was my son hates me, my son hates me. I felt so bad about our relationship and Within a week of my son's passing, I had three people come to me, completely unsolicited, and they said I have a message for you from your son and I'm like I'd love to hear it because I'm not feeling too good.

Speaker 2:

All three of them said Tell my mother that I love her. And it just softened my heart. And it's been four and a half years now and I will tell you first of all that time does not heal wounds, but it gives you perspective, and I have a different perspective now than I did when he died. The second thing is that our relationships with our loved ones they carry on. My relationship with my son is so beautiful. He is with me all the time. He is especially with me when I talk about his message, because I feel he wants people to know that they matter if they're struggling to reach out, to get help and to make a different choice from what he made.

Speaker 2:

My Relationship with my son now is there is so much love between us and he sustains me, he helps me, he helped me write the book. There were times when I was finishing it up and I was editing it, going back over and over again, and there'd be parts of it and I would read it and I'd be like, oh, that's really good. I know I didn't write that Because I just felt his influence and I'll tell you this. So it took me about a year and a half, from the time that my son died to the time that I wrote and published the book, and the day it was published I actually felt like I lost my son a second time, but this time spiritually, and it was harder than the first time because when I was writing the book and doing everything to try to Bring it to market to help other families, I could feel him sustaining me.

Speaker 2:

And when I Published it, I just felt that his presence kind of leave, and I said, son, don't leave me.

Speaker 2:

And he said into my heart he just said, mom, I need to go help other people, I'm helping people who are struggling and I need to be with them.

Speaker 2:

And so, even though he's with me, he's not always with me like he was, and I just want to tell people your loved ones are not very far away. They're, they are really close and if you're grieving too much or if you're so caught up in this depression, you won't be able to see the signs that they give you or the feelings that they have for you. And Even though it feels hard, I can appreciate it. Yes, it feels hard. There have been days when I didn't know if I Could make it through the day and just feeling so depressed and sad and the grief was so heavy, just like a stone on your heart. I have been there, but I've also been there where I feel joy and love, and I know that it's not forever. It's just a short time and it will be fine in the end, and I just visualize meeting my son again and hugging him and all the things that we couldn't express when he was alive. Now we can express them and the joy that we have together.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that's. That's so comforting. That's so, so comforting and it's a beautiful truth. A lot of people think heaven is so far away and we think it's way up there in the sky and our loved ones are over there and it just feels so, and when you have an experience where you feel their presence or you feel their support or their strength, you know they're right there, and lots of people that have had near-death experiences express things like that. It's a huge comfort and I imagine that has felt very healing To have that experience with him and I would feel very lonely when he left when the book was published.

Speaker 2:

I know it was really hard. It was kind of surprising to me. I just thought, oh, he'll always be there and he was like no mom, I got things to do, okay, okay, son.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I really appreciated how you were so real in the book, because so many times when we have these thoughts, when we're going through the grieving process, it can be bewildering to us, like the anger stage, I think. So many times in our culture we feel like it's not okay to be angry, especially as a woman. And so can you talk about what each of those stages look like for you? I know you do in the book.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you. They say that there's different stages of grief. And then other people say, no, that's not true. But I can tell you I went through different stages and sometimes I had to repeat some stages, right? So the first stage, I just remember being so angry, and then a couple days later I went into denial. I'm like this didn't really happen.

Speaker 2:

My son is just at school. He's going to walk through the door at any minute, and I really had to stop that because my mind wanted to create this fantasy and normally I'm a very optimistic person and I think about the stuff you want. But I had to stop that because I told myself you cannot heal if you continue to indulge in this mental fantasy that he's going to walk through the door, that he did not make these choices, and so every time my mind would start to do that fantasy, I would say stop, that is not real. I was pretty hard on myself during those stages, but I felt I had to do it to move forward, because if you're sitting there fantasizing about something that is not real and that is not going to happen, right, that will not serve you. And so I had to move through that.

Speaker 2:

And then it was a week after he passed I was looking at some pictures. He was 19 when he died a young man who thinks he knows everything and mom knows nothing so aggravating. And I saw a picture of him when he was six years old. He had his little scabbers rat and my heart melted and I felt so much love for the six year old and that's when I just broke down in tears. It took me a week to cry and I cried all that day. My heart was just broken at that point and I sobbed.

Speaker 2:

And then you go through the blame and then you go through the grief and every few days it was these different emotions and it lasted for months and I'd have to work through some things and then have a different emotion and work through some other things and, honestly, just trying to figure out what that day looked like. And that's what I told myself just today. You don't have to worry about tomorrow or next week or next month. Just today. And I was so used to accomplishing goals, doing all these big things, making decisions, and there just was no longer any big girl pants to put on. People say, just get up and get going. And there were times when I just couldn't. Right, I would be like I put pants on today. That was the big thing that happened for the day, and there are times when you just do not have the emotional, mental strength to do things and I never understood that until I went through it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, because you have such incredible strength. You talked about your corporate world and you had gone through numerous hard things before and you talked about how you thought, oh, this is my hard thing, but it actually was the thing.

Speaker 2:

Right? Did I tell people yeah, especially when they're in their 20s, like I was? Oh, this is my hard thing. I'll never have to go through anything hard and I'm like, oh no.

Speaker 1:

Take away from today. It was interesting to hear about the difference between the way Lark grieved when her father died by suicide and when her son took his life. Lark couldn't even say the word suicide after her father died because she felt so much shame, and after her son died she also felt shame and fear judgment from others. It was interesting to discuss challenges that men face when grieving and how they are socialized to not be vulnerable. I marveled at Lark's courage to focus on ways she could help those who are suffering with suicidal thoughts, as well as supporting their loved ones.

Speaker 1:

Lark's book Learning to Breathe Again Choosing to Heal after Losing a Loved One to Suicide, and her advocacy work blessed many lives, including her own and her family members. I loved hearing about how her son was with her as she wrote her book and how their relationship of love continues on. Stay tuned for part two, in which Lark describes earlier difficulties in her life, such as her unstable childhood, infertility, divorce and dealing with a blended family, which prepared her for later challenges. Lark also discusses not judging how others grieve and not judging yourself. Lark talks about the importance of nurturing relationships and how she and her husband managed to stay connected when their marriage was strained after the death of their son. You won't want to miss this raw and candid episode.

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Karen Hall

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