Most people associate PTSD and its unpredictable symptoms with women or men who have experienced a traumatic event—rape, a car accident, or an attack.

But people also can experience PTSD when someone they love dies unexpectedly. That shock coupled with human emotion, and any underlying guilt or feeling of unfinished business with the deceased, can deeply affect a survivor in a traumatic way.

Traumatic deaths

Earlier this month we posted the “At Home in the Dark” video about how PTSD can affect suicide loss survivors. Charles Shaw, the film series’ creator, narrates the video and explains how he and his mom are still deeply affected by his sister’s suicide. Shaw and his mother experience PTSD as a result of the suicide.

A person who was raped may have vivid flashbacks when he sees a certain car or hears a song. And a person who has lost someone to suicide can experience this type of flashback when the phone rings, or when she hears about another suicide. People who have lost loved ones to suicide also can have bad dreams and feel anxious—like they’re waiting for the event to happen again.

Other traumatic deaths, such as murder, accidental deaths, and sudden deaths, can leave the dead’s survivors with residual PTSD.

How to deal

People with PTSD may not “get over” their loved one’s death, but they can live with the condition.

First and foremost, people experiencing PTSD should take care of their self and grieve. The grieving process doesn’t end; finding ways to respect this feeling and live with it can help someone get through the bad days.

Other treatments to consider include mindful thinking, meditation, medication, attending support groups, or seeking specialized counseling from a therapist who understands grief and PTSD. Possible therapies include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Exposure and Response Prevention. Learn more about some of these therapies here.

The best “treatment,” though, is to remember that this condition is a natural response to a traumatic event. Respect your mind, body, and emotions and give your self room to process and heal.

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The Historical Origins of PTSD: ‘At Home in the Dark’

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People who have loved ones who have committed suicide have a lot of emotions to deal with.

Charles Shaw, creator of this film series, and Shaw’s mom, know this emotional burden all too well. In this short film, Shaw talks briefly about the pain he and his mother feel in the wake of his sister’s suicide.Related on EcoSalon
The Historical Origins of PTSD: ‘At Home in the Dark’
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Mariel Hemingway talks about the blessings and curses of her famous family in her film “Running From Crazy.”

Ernest Hemingway has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. He was the greatest writer of the 20th century yet plagued by the demons of mental illness, eventually taking his own life in 1961. Mariel Hemingway is a member of his dynastic family, the daughter of his oldest son Jack.

She was born into privilege, but more than that, she suffered the pain that went along with her famous name. In all, seven members of her family have committed suicide, including her famous grandfather and great grandfather, and her older sister Margot, among a host of other close relatives.

She even dropped a bomb that her father sexually abused her sisters. Though she doesn’t ever remember it happening to her, she did remember sleeping with her mother every night. It was hard to swallow because you didn’t know what to make of it–she mentioned it for a few moments and then moved on.

The movie does a good job of showing that relationships, especially those among family members, can be complicated. While there’s a backdrop of love; jealousy, darkness, and a lack of ever being able to convey feelings, makes truly opening up to her sisters and parents too hard to bare.

But while this movie was filled with sorrow and dotted with shame, Mariel showed how you don’t have to be what you’re born into. She’s made a point of giving her two beautiful daughters the love she never felt. Her daughters seem somewhat removed from the gloom she witnessed. And in those times when they have dealt with bouts of depression, there seems to be a growing openness that allows them to suffer a little less.

This documentary isn’t just about the Hemingways and the mental illness that plagued their family, it’s about the darkness we all face and how we deal with it in our own lives. As Mariel says, no one will ever love you as much as you love yourself. Part of loving yourself is knowing who you are at a deeper level. Though she admits she struggles, through clean living and self knowledge, she thrives. This movie is certainly worth a watch, especially if you’re as intrigued by the famous family as I am. All families have struggles, though in her case the struggles are magnified.

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Image: Steve Harbula

The post Mariel Hemingway Talks Mental Illness, Substance Abuse, and the Stigma of Suicide in a New Film appeared first on EcoSalon.

Yes, this is another Internet post on Robin Williams’ suicide. But hear me out.

Like most people my age, I grew up watching Robin Williams do what only he could do. “Mork and Mindy” is one of the earliest sitcoms I remember watching, only this one I watched with bated breath. There was simply no one cooler than that silly, adorable alien. What would he do next? Everyone was asking that same question because, no one ever knew.

My dad had a video recording of Robin Williams’ live performance at the Met and my siblings and I would watch it sometimes daily, even though most of the jokes were over our heads and significantly inappropriate for children our age. Still, we loved watching him morph into other people, shapeshifting right before our eyes like some supernatural creature. There was always something inoffensive about Robin Williams’ way of handling offensive topics, something genuinely kind and childlike. Perhaps that’s why my dad let us watch that performance repeatedly. Perhaps that’s why America grieves so heavily over this loss.

My family and I also fell in love with Robin Williams as T.S. Garp in the 1982 movie “The World According to Garp,” a film we watched more times than I can count. He personified what it meant to grow up in a world as the terribly shy, sexy and then sad John Irving character that Garp was; the way Robin Williams played him made it so perfectly humbling and beautiful, especially in the final moments of the film. I’m 100 percent certain that Robin Williams as the writer Garp influenced me to become a writer. To a ten-year-old, he made writing seem like both a responsibility and catharsis. He justified journeying into my own imagination and gave me permission to explore my own well of creativity as well, even if it would never compare to the abundant warehouse of inventiveness that was Robin Williams.

Along with the millions of other adoring fans, the news of Robin Williams’ death hit me in the gut, hard. Much harder than I would have ever imagined. I have cried three times in the last several days imagining his last lonely moments alive—what those once hilarious voices in his head must have been saying, and the tremendous, unbelievable grief that was no doubt hovering like an unmovable boulder. An Orkian space egg that would never make it back home. The heartbreaking fact that it came down to that unbearable moment for him—that friend to all of us, diffusing the absurdity and rigidity of our culture for decades—punctuates the profundity of his career. It illuminates the raw and sheer absurdity of being human–the pain and beauty and the line that so often blurs between the two.

One of the biggest tragedies in the wake of Robin Williams’ death is the repeated mentions of him as being a “coward” or taking the easy way out in committing suicide and abandoning his family. It has sparked controversy and newscaster name-calling, but it also has brought attention to the severity of depression and the brute finality that suicide is. A commitment indeed.

When I heard Robin Williams being called a coward, my immediate reaction was the opposite; that he was so very brave. Not that suicide is a brave or heroic decision or ever even the right one, but coming to terms with our darkest feelings is brave. It’s the hardest of the human endeavors that even our most beloved stars struggle with deeply, often times more than we can imagine. A line of friends and strangers miles long would certainly have met Robin Williams to support and console him if he had let the world know he was moving towards his ultimate decision. He knew this without question. He chose what he chose anyway. Who are we to say he made a wrong decision, let alone one of cowardice?

Euthanasia for the terminally ill is legal in some countries, and it hopefully will become as widely accepted and appreciated as receiving any type of medical treatment for terminal illnesses. Robin Williams’ disease wasn’t physical—there was no tumor eating away at his lungs or brain (although news has surfaced that he was suffering from early onset of Parkinson’s disease). But he was suffering from a debilitating, painful illness that he couldn’t stand for one more moment. If that’s not terminal, I don’t know what is. Perhaps if he could have just held on another day, things might have changed. The darkest hour is always just before the dawn, after all. But instead, he decided he’d had enough. He took inventory, hopefully made one last joke to himself, and then bravely left us all with the most candid glimpse of what it really meant to be Robin Williams.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Image: calciostreaming

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ColumnWhen I was a junior in high school, two girls took their own lives. Twenty years later, I realize how writing about a friend’s suicide has shaped my outlook on storytelling.

Twenty years ago this week, my mom was standing in the kitchen and asked me a simple question: Do you know Mari Mannion and Liz Gallagher?

There was something about the way she said it, or maybe the look on her face, that sent a shockwave through my body. I did know them.

On April 30th, 1994, when we were juniors in high school, Mari and Liz took their own lives and everything changed. It seemed like the whole world was focused on our school. The adults did what they could to protect us from the media (two young, popular girls committing suicide in a nice Chicago suburb is news, whether it should be or not, and our school was bombarded).

The sense that outsiders saw our collective loss as “a story” was troubling and set the stage for how I think about writing today.

I worry a lot about whether some of the stories I share are mine to tell.

I hadn’t planned to write about Mari and Liz, or suicide, but today, I can’t think about anything else. I woke up and was instantly transported back to 1994 via Facebook. Old photos. Names popping up that I hadn’t thought about in years. I dug out a photo from camp and a cartoon Mari gave me when I was sad after a breakup in high school.

Liz had been an acquaintance of mine. I didn’t know her well and don’t mean to diminish the impact of her loss by focusing more on Mari. Hundreds of other people have Liz stories.

Mari and I met in grade school at a girl scout camp and I instantly decided she was the coolest person ever. We went to different schools, and so didn’t really reconnect until a year or so later when we were in a production of “Little Guys and Little Dolls.” Mari was thrown into the chorus as a Hot Box girl and I was cast as General Cartwright. A role I got because it involved not singing and not dancing. Basically, I marched.

Our parts left us with lots of downtime. My biggest memory of that show was during one rehearsal, the director saying, “Libby and Mari, if you can’t stop talking you might as well just leave.” So we left.

While we hung out with different crowds in high school, we chose to be dance partners in a gym class called Dance of the Decades — which shockingly few boys signed up for — and worked on the school newspaper together.

I write all of this for context, but also, I recognize, as a self-conscious way to legitimize my relationship with Mari. To give myself permission to write this story. Which is exactly what I felt I needed to do in high school when I wrote a profile of her for the school newspaper.

Because I was a junior, the profile should have been written by one of the senior editors. But, as my friend and I remember it, I basically freaked out at a staff meeting and said that I would be writing the profile. I don’t know if I cried or just looked so intense and scary that someone said yes, but I was the one who went to Mari’s house and talked to her mom about Mari’s life.

As I walked into her living room, I felt for the first time a very specific sense of anxiety that has resurfaced over and over again in my career: Fear that others might think I am using their pain for my own self-interest.

I felt an intense need for her mom to know that Mari was my friend, even though I wasn’t in her close circle and she probably hadn’t heard my name in years. I wanted to be recognized as someone who loved her, not seen as another asshole reporter chasing the Oak Park Suicide Story.

My only goal was to to write something her mom, family members and her closest friends would like.

I was intensely conscious of the fact that her best friends might be like, “Who the hell are YOU to write about Mari?” It was high school; she was popular, I was a grunge kid. While the social divides weren’t pulled from a John Hughes movie, people did tend to have school friends and friend friends. We were school friends.

I was consumed with the idea that people would think I was trying to act like I was closer to Mari than I was. It’s highly possible that no one gave a shit and that, as a 16-year-old, I was only at the center of my own mind, not anyone else’s. But try telling a 16-year-old that.

It’s a fact that nothing that happens to me and me alone is worth writing about. So, even when I’m writing a personal essay, I’m almost always telling someone else’s story — whether they agreed to let me or not.

Years later, I read David Sedaris’ story, “Repeat After Me,” and thought: “Oh god, yes. That.” In the story, Sedaris writes about how no one is safe around him. All of his family’s stories become his. There’s a parrot involved. It’s a wonderful story.

At the time I read it, it resonated because I was writing about my grandmother’s suicide attempt and wondering what she would think if she could have read the story.

The answer, for some, is not to do this — to leave these stories unwritten. But I can’t.

So, I have decided that if what I am writing is true, and if I am writing a story because, like today, I cannot imagine not writing it, I have to trust that my intention will be felt by readers.

In all of the back and forth on Facebook, a close friend of Mari and Liz’s posted a comment: “Libby, I just re-read the profile that you did on Mari. I’m not sure how you were able to do that back then, but I’m so glad that you did.”

How much that comment means to me is impossible to explain. All I know is that 20 years ago, I felt consumed by the need to write something true, which is exactly how I feel now.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon. Here, she shares personal stories, and analyzes news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

Images: Libby Lowe

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ColumnVice thinks suicide is sexy, Roxy misses the boat and Goldie Blox offers hope.

How women in the media are portrayed matters. How we’re represented in magazines and ads shapes public opinion. This week, a magazine gets its alleged tribute to women writers very, very wrong, a women’s clothing company sells sexy over sporty and an ad for a new toy for girls offers hope for the future.

Suicide Girls

Hey Dorothy Parker, before you strangle yourself with that pearl necklace, mind if I ask where you got it? Even when the media attempts to celebrate women, as Vice magazine did with its recent Women in Fiction issue, it often ends up a vulgar mess. In that issue, Vice published—and then pulled from its website—”Last Words” a fashion spread depicting models posing as famous women writers in the act of, or just after, committing suicide. At first glance it looks like just another fashion spread where dead is sexy.

But, the fact that these photos are based on real women is sick. Suicide isn’t sexy and it’s not romantic. Even worse, as Jezebel points out, some of the writers depicted died as recently as 2004, meaning their loved ones had to see a model acting out a painful, real scene in the name of selling pantyhose.

A woman took the photos. A woman styled the shoot. The models were all women. At no point did any of them say, “Wait, this is wrong?” In an issue dedicated to women writers, this spread never even mentions their contributions to the literary world.

The fact that these writers are being celebrated for their suicides or attempted suicides and not their writing says more about how women in the media are valued, and negates the rest of the issue. The idea that suicide is glamorous and a solid way to ensure that you’ll be remembered is a dangerous message to the many people out there struggling with depression.

Roxy Misses the Boat

Remember the movie Blue Crush? If not, it goes like this: awesome female surfer struggles with fear, meets hot guy, struggles to balance him and her surfing ambitions and then competes in an epic surf-off. It seems that the beachwear company Roxy missed the girls kick ass message of the movie with its new ad.

The ad features the body, but never the face, of Stephanie Gilmore, a five-time world champion surfer. She walks, the waves lap her body, she throws on a rashguard but she never actually surfs in this ad to promote the Pro Biarritz 2013 surfing meet.

I don’t know if you have ever tried surfing, but that shit is hard. Anyone who can do it at a pro level is a true athlete and deserves to be represented as such rather than as a (to borrow a the highest Blue Crush insult there is) surf Barbie. Can you imagine a Nike ad for the NBA Finals where LeBron James doesn’t shoot a ball? Me either. Get it together, Roxy.

Blox Party

Now, some hope for the future. Not only is there an awesome new toy for girls on the market, the ad spot for the Kickstarter-born toy Goldie Blox kicks ass—and shows that the next generation of women in the media might get better treatment than we have. Engineer Debra Sterling created the combination book and building set to spark girls’ interest in engineering.

Rather than princess-shaming (maybe that’s the new slut-shaming?), Sterling doesn’t shy away from tiaras or the color pink. Instead, she created a toy that looks appealing to girls but engages their minds in a unique way. Girls, she found, are attracted to storytelling. So she created a character, Goldie, who has to get help from the girl playing the game. She has to complete all kinds of engineering-based tasks to move the story forward.

The toy itself is really cool, and the ad—featuring feisty girls reinventing their own toys to suit their needs—will appeal both to kids and to parents hoping to give their girls the opportunity to access all kinds of play and develop an interest in math and engineering. The girls shown here aren’t going to grow up to be anyone’s Barbie.

Image: Vice

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How a documentary is urging individuals to stand up to crush bullying once and for all.

Kids from my 6th grade class at Collier Street Elementary will remember the funny catch phrase: “Harold did it! Harold did it!” Naturally, the attribute was linked to anything utterly humiliating that occurred on a given day.

Harold Levinson was new, slow, fat and his name was Harold. He made an ideal Piggy for the brazen ringleaders – angry boys undoubtedly getting whipped by post-military fathers at home – and the followers, who despite their own bevy of self doubts, could not resist belonging to something. No one shoved Harold’s head in a locker or stole his lunch money, the typical fodder witnessed in My Bodyguard in 1980. Ours was the more subliminal form of torment in which a a misfit was poked and taunted and convinced he was worthless at a time when his vulnerability was at its peak.

Worse case scenario: the brutality ends in suicide as witnessed in the powerful film, Bully which profiles a handful of boys and one lesbian girl victimized by other students at various public schools in the nation. In the case of the gay teen in bible belt Oklahoma, the fear-based teachers are no better than the thugs; and in just about all of the other cases, parents as well as administrators prove clueless at taking effective action.

14 year-old Alex Hopkins, featured in Bully

Alex Hopkins is among those submitting. A gentle, 14-year-old middle school student, Hopkins is targeted on the dreaded yellow bus in his Sioux City, Iowa district. Branded fish face because of his flattened nose and puffy lips, the meek and seemingly kind boy is attacked daily by an older boy while egged on by other riders.

“Do it!” another geek encourages, while poor Alex is getting slugged in the back for no other reason than he is occupying the edge of a vinyl seat. The viewer becomes increasingly aggravated as no ally steps in to help.

A maddening confrontation occurs when Alex’s parents meet with the school. Despite the fact we have all witnessed the disturbing footage, the principal denies the bus poses a danger. “I’ve ridden that bus and those kids are as good as gold,” she assures them.

Producer Cynthia Lowen says to EcoSalon, “It’s not that the administrators in the film are not good people or are not trying, but many of the administrators in our country simply have not been equipped with the tools to effectively address bullying,”

While the lack of tools is frustrating, Emmy Award-winning director, Lee Hirsch – who, like Harold Levinson was a bullied Jewish school boy –  says blaming schools and policy makers won’t solve the problem of 5.7 million students bullied each year in the U.S. school system. Instead, Levinson looks to individuals to battle the bully epidemic.

“In the film, we’ve certainly shied away from any kind of legislative agenda,” he tells The Atlantic. “Rather, I think the focus, at least for us, especially because we’re not experts, is to hopefully allow people to feel like they can make a difference. Particularly young viewers – that they can stand up, they can put a stop to it, they can step in on someone’s behalf and that’s empowering, that’s possible and that really will cause change.”

His film’s slogan that “change starts with one” has sparked the movement Hirsch envisioned. He launched the Bully Project Social Action Campaign which partners with every mover and shaker central to the bully-victim dynamic. Its primary initiative is getting one million kids into theaters in 55 cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada to view and discuss the the film with a trained facilitator for an immersive experience.

Kelby, a 16 year old bullied lesbian featured in the documentary

“Facilitators use a 50-page guide of questions prepared by Facing History and Ourselves which allows a wrap-around discussion experience for the kids,” explains Margo Reid, head of Partners Relations with the campaign. “It’ s not simply about addressing the symptoms of bullying but also getting to the root issue – which is social and emotional learning in schools and in the community.”

Reid says 100,000 kids have viewed it or are scheduled to view it in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the campaign is reaching out to public schools to do their part. Seeding a special program with $450,000, the goal is to further an online platform for teachers to raise private money to continue to train parents, educators and students on how to make a difference in the response to bullying.

“The parents of the kids who are doing the bullying allowed their kids to be in this film, which was an incredibly courageous act, with the belief that they could learn from seeing their behaviors projected this way and change,” argues Lowen. “I think we all know that kids who bully have a huge potential for change, but it is up to adults to create environments in which bullying behavior is not tolerated, and where adults model positive behaviors and support all kids in the community.”

But support comes with communication and this is often lacking, another factor which complicates the issue. Sometimes victims don’t tell their parents or insist on staying at a school no matter what; sometimes parents blame the victims, as in the case of Alex’s dad who warned his sheepish son to “stop it now or else your sister will also get it.”

Another girl in the film, a battered honors student, tried to stop it by resorting to threatening kids on the bus with a gun from home. A judge gave her a lucky break from a prison sentence but it becomes clear, these kids can’t be expected to solve these horrors on their own. While the problem is complicated, the film shows us the answers are pretty simple. When it comes to negotiating the often ruthless and backwards world of modern education, anyone tolerating violence is as guilty as the aggressors.

“Every single person can walk away from this film with the motivation to make a change in their own behavior, and to step in when they witness bullying, whether that means as a young person sitting with someone who is routinely ostracized at lunch, or as a teacher standing in the halls before classes, or for administrators to take the time to really investigate bully situations, or as parents, to have meaningful conversations with their kids about bullying,” insists Lowen.

To watch the trailer for the movie go here.

Images: The Bully Project

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ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

From the day you are born, your family, to some degree, defines who you are.

How you interpret that connection may change in stages as you get older, but you will always be linked to the over-achieving mother, the annoying sister who gets better grades than you, the father who never shows up for his kid’s awards, the comedian brother who doesn’t know when to quit.

And while this might not be something you want to accept, it’s the truth. Many a friend has emptied the contents of their lives to me and ended sentences with, “I wish I had a normal upbringing. That people could’ve seen me different. I was never anything like my family.”

Really?

I was thinking about this yesterday after my son came home upset about an incident at school where he got into some trouble. My immediate reaction was that the kid needed a hug, so I held him and waited to hear about the source of the sadness. After the story was told, I had to be quiet and let my thoughts simmer. It was hard not to go back to being the same age and identifying, yet the back story was different…

Dad, who was going through a heavy drinking stage, was either at work for the electric company or home yelling at everyone (even in his sleep). Mom, always maxed, was either scooping ice cream at Friendly’s, cleaning Cape Cod mansions, managing a supermarket, or trying to make sure she wasn’t losing her mind having four kids who demanded to be taken to track, hockey and Boy Scouts. And because my parents were not always available emotionally during my teenage years, and my hormones were raging, and I was dealing with teenage girl social issues, I got lost. From the ages of 12 to 16, I began cutting myself, was nearly successful at committing suicide, and eventually became an alcoholic. An addict. I lied to teachers and my parents, skipped school, got into trouble, got stoned, listened to Janis Joplin – I dropped out of “normal” society.

Looking into my son’s big blue eyes pouring over with tears, I didn’t want to yell. I wanted to be there for him, but there was a piece of me I couldn’t shake and was horrified by: What are people going to say about us as a family? We need to look better. Aren’t we cooler than this? Better than this? We’re not that family with the messed up kid, right? Why can’t he – we – just be normal?

The baggage we all carry is so heavy.

As my son disappeared into his room I sat still to think parent thoughts about punishment and how to make things right. Later, standing in the doorway to his room telling him I’d be back, the defeated 14 year-old sat on his bed with a guitar and tear-stained face to look up and nod “okay.”

The ache.

Would he now try to go kill himself? Would he try to find drugs? Will this be the tipping point?

“It’s never the end of the world, you know,”  I blurted out, talking to my 14 year-old self.

He nodded.

“This is just one of those times you mess up and you move on and you grow.”

“Right.”

“Come on,” I said.

“No thanks.”

“Come on,” I said, “Now,” and watched him put down the over-sized guitar.

Punishment consisted of hot chocolates at the coffee shop. My mother would’ve done the same, but added donuts.

If we are to identify ourselves with family as the foundation of who we are, we need to forgive them and ourselves for the wrong turns and bad choices. We need to own the fact that we are imperfect.

My son is not me but he is everything to me. Thanks to my genes, he will say stupid things and put his foot in his mouth. He will get in trouble and possibly not be the school valedictorian. He will be stubborn. But he will not be exactly like me. He will be better than me as my mother was better than the mother before her. I say this as the woman who learned and grew from her mistakes.

Does our family define who we are? You bet.

Celebrate it.

Between the Lines, is a weekly column navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of life and culture between city and country.

Image: Pink Sherbert Photography

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It’s time to talk about physician-assisted suicide as a conscious choice.

We’re used to talking about choice. The choice to have a child, eat meat, recycle, marry. As responsible, conscious people we make decisions every day. But when it comes to end of life choices, as a society we’re a bit behind.

Jack Kevorkian’s recent death brought back a flood of memories for me. He was my grandmother’s hero. While she was admittedly—and quite proudly—a touch twisted, I happen to agree with her and Jack: We should have a choice when it comes to end of life decisions. Growing up with her in my life, it was impossible not to see suicide as an option. Our first conversation about this took place when I was four. She explained to me that it would be up to her, that made sense to me then and it makes sense to me today.

In my early twenties, well before I met and married my husband, I made my own plans for when I get old. They involve: assisted living, water aerobics and my best friend of 30+ years, Bevin. We have since opened the circle, inviting our men, our hairdresser and other friends to join us. We have scoped out a facility—we haven’t gone so far as a tour, which I assume would raise some eyebrows—it’s close to the lake, a movie theater, Walgreens and a grocery store. These are the things we assume will be important.

Bevin and I took ballet together. We learned to swim together. We take yoga together. We were married in a Jewish ceremony at a square dance—and while I stepped on a PBR tallboy at the end, the state of Illinois doesn’t recognize our union. The idea that if our spouses die before us—or better yet, they don’t—I may be lucky enough to spend my old lady years with her and members of my circle of people is comforting.

The stats on women outliving men support the idea that when the shit comes down, many of us might be relying on female friends as we age. It’s not pleasant to think about, but if you consider the popularity of The Golden Girls and articles like Jezebel’s recent “Are Friends the New Husbands?” it’s clear that women out there are thinking about aging differently than earlier generations, which, I think, means it’s a great time to talk about assisted suicide as a real, legal option.

More than just the specifics of the Old People Dorm Plan, the idea that I will have a say in my own fate is, at the core, what is appealing.

Suicide, assisted or otherwise, is a hard sell. I’m in no way saying it should be mandatory, based on one’s ability to afford care or based on anything other than personal choice. It’s about asking the big questions: How much pain can I endure? How much of myself, or my freedom, can I stand to lose? Has my life been fulfilling? Does the good outweigh the bad? What does my God say about suicide?

For many people, religion might be the deciding factor. And that’s fine. I’m not saying that anyone should break from a religion that has filled their lives with tradition, comfort and joy.

End of life decision-making should be intense and it should be personal. But it should be a decision.

Author Libby Lowe’s grandmother in the prime of youth

In the U.S., Oregon is the only state where assisted suicide is not a crime. The Death With Dignity Act, passed in 1997, allows terminally-ill adult Oregonians to obtain and use prescriptions from their physicians for self-administered, lethal doses of medications. Meaning, the assistance is defined as the ability to write a prescription. How and when to use the medication is up to the individual. In 2010, 65 people—of the nearly four million residents in the state—chose to end their lives.

In the rest of this country we have DNR orders (do not resuscitate) and hospice care for those deemed terminally ill, but we have no legal, dignified way to choose to die. Well ahead of his time, Jack Kevorkian fought to change that. His work on death and dying started back in the 1950s when he presented a paper suggesting that death row prisoners have the right to choose to die by anesthesia so that their organs could be harvested to save lives. It didn’t go anywhere in the 50s, or in the late 80s when he revisited the idea. I still don’t get why.

In 1987 Kevorkian studied in Netherlands, focusing on how Dutch physicians assisted in the suicides of terminally ill patients without interference from the legal authorities. During the 1990s, he assisted in about 130 suicides, ultimately spending eight years in jail. He was released in 2007 and died earlier this month in a hospital.

The progress he made is, in tangible terms, small. But the conversations he started are essential to our country becoming a place where conscious living extends to become conscious dying.

My end of life plan is, in theory, fairly sunny: Me and Bevin and our husbands walking to Walgreens and taking in a movie before going back to the home for 4pm dinner. I realize I may not be that lucky, or that even if I am, I may end up very sick and alone at the end. I can’t say for sure that I would choose assisted suicide if I had the option, but I know I would want the choice to talk honestly with my doctor and my loved ones and then make an informed decision.

The choice to end her own life with dignity is a luxury my own grandmother didn’t have, but it’s one I feel is fundamental to creating a conscious, kind society.

Top image of author Libby Lowe with her grandmother

Update: Libby Lowe (@LibbyLowe) is sharing this post as part of XX in Health Week 2013, a celebration of gender diversity in health leadership.

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