Kay Warren: Leading Parents Towards Hope and Joy

Leading Parents to Hope and Joy

Andrea: Welcome to This Way Up. We are a community dedicated to having open conversations surrounding children's mental health. I'm Andrea Nanigian.

Emie: And I'm Emie Waters. When someone you care about is struggling with their mental health, this can be an incredibly stressful and challenging time. So we're here to provide valuable resources to support you as you navigate this journey. Our next guest is incredibly special and very inspiring. We are going to be speaking with Kay Warren today. Kay shares a very personal story about her family and the loss of their son, who struggled with mental health for most of his life.

We are so inspired by her courage and her ability to transform their grief and loss into something beautiful and actually an opportunity to spread hope and joy by helping so many other people. Kay and her husband Rick, founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. And after the death of their son Matthew, she founded Saddleback's Hope for mental health initiative. And then she started Breathe, which is a ministry to support parents of children with mental illness. Breathe events include weekend and online retreats, and free zoom calls with mental health professionals.

Andrea: We're opening this episode with an intimate conversation between Emie and Kay. Just prior to our recording with Kay, Emie was sharing with me a nervous feeling that she was having in anticipation of our upcoming interview. She couldn't identify just where this was coming from, so I encouraged her to share this with Kay. So she opened up to Kay, and the conversation that came about, because of that vulnerability on Emie's part, was really a valuable conversation about how we as individuals approach one another and really in, any topic that may be uncomfortable or where there may be something we don't fully understand. So we decided to keep this in, and we hope that you find value in this conversation as well.

Emie: Okay, to be totally honest and very vulnerable in this disclosure, I was telling Andrea earlier that I felt so nervous for our talk today, and I was sitting here, I'm like, I don't know why I feel so nervous. And so we talked about it a little bit, and certainly we're newer in this space, and we're trying to become another resource. And you've developed a huge, phenomenal resource for people. So I'm sure there's a little bit of that. But I think just your personal story and what you've gone through with your son puts me in a spot from years ago with my daughter that I quickly realized has always been so scary for me to think about. And I just feel like I'm in your sacred space. And so, that being said, I'm so thankful that you'll even have this chat with us.

But, yeah, I was just kind of doing a look inward as to why I felt that, for lack of better description, just nervousness to meet you, even.

Kay: Well, I hear you, and I appreciate that sentiment because I have experienced that many times myself. I have a friend who lost a daughter in a mass murder. And so when I talk to her.

Or talk with her in a space, I'm always so aware of how tender the ground is, how sacred it is to be in conversation. I have experienced that myself. Our stories are so personal and they are sacred and they are tender. And to walk respectfully and gingerly through trauma and loss and grief, it requires courage. It requires courage on both sides. It requires courage for us to tell our stories. It requires courage to enter into deeply the story of another person with respect and love. And so I receive that from you. As not as nerves as much as I receive that as a kindness from you.

Emie: Oh, thank you.

Kay: That you honor how tender this ground is.

Emie: So, perfectly said when you said that we walk on this tender ground. I mean, my whole body can feel that. That is absolutely what I was saying was nervousness. It is knowing that we're coming into that sacred place.

Kay: Yeah. Thank you so much. That's a kindness in me. I think if we have any other response, that's how we wound each other, actually. It's when we carelessly barge into people's stories of I Don't want to say anything that's wrong. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to say something that inadvertently makes things harder. I can receive that all day long. It's when we just kind of carelessly move into people's stories that damage is done. So your honesty and your vulnerability actually paves the way for great connection.

Emie: Thank, you. It reminds me of, actually what we're talking about right now. It reminds me of the movie Avatar. Have you seen Avatar? There line is, I see you. It's almost like in yoga where you say namaste at the end. It's just sort of like the spirit in me honors the spirit in you. I think it's kind of along those lines too.

Kay: Yeah.

Andrea: I think one of the reasons why mental hellness. that's going to be our new term, mental health mental illness,But mental health is not discussed is because people don't want to walk in that sacred ground and they're afraid to talk about it with somebody. So they just avoid it instead of coming from it. Like, hey, I don't understand the shoes that you're in, but gosh, help me understand that. And Emie and I are hoping know, even our little part in this can pave that way. So more and more people are talking about it and our kids are understanding that it's okay and that they can talk about it and share things with one another.

Kay: Right. Yeah. It's why I cheer you on. So I wanted to be a part of this.

Andrea:  Well, we appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

Emie: We appreciate it.

Andrea: Now I would like to start and actually, if you can just walk us through Matt and do you call him Matthew?

Kay: Yes.

Andrea: okay. Matthew's life. What was he like as a little boy, and what were some of the things that you saw and just bring us through your journey?

Kay: Sure. He was my third, my youngest, and because I already had two children, I think I was able to pick up more quickly than if he had been my first or maybe even my second. If he'd been my first, I would have thought, it's all me. And if he'd been my second, I might have thought, well, that's the difference between boys and girls. Because he was my third, I'd already had a boy and a girl.I knew pretty quickly that he was different than my other children. I just never attributed it to mental illness. I didn't know children could experience mental illness that many years ago. I just didn't know. And I just knew he was different. I knew he was harder. I knew he had more challenges. But I pretty well just chalked it up to his personality being different.

Not that there was something else going on. His first nine months were really pretty easy.

But then at about nine months, it's like he shifted and changed completely and would start to hold his breath. If he got hurt physically or if he got mad, he would hold his breath.

He would cry and hold his breath until he passed out. And it was like, well, what is that? That's pretty scary. He just had a negative mood all the time. We couldn't play candyland or shoots and ladders or all the typical little kid games, because if he lost, he'd throw the board, cry, be in this bad like, I couldn't distract him. I couldn't like, oh, let's think about this, or, let's do that. So he had a negative mood, very emotional. I was worried in preschool that he'd be the first kid ever kicked out of preschool just because he was difficult and a little aggressive. And then by the time he was seven, he started coming home from school saying, “Mommy, I'm so sad.

I'm just so sad.” And we had moved from the neighborhood that he had lived in up to.

That point, and so I really thought it was just the sadness he would feel from moving. He was missing his friends that he was used to playing with, but it became more than that. He lost interest in video games, which is a big deal for somebody who loves video games. He didn't want to play with his toys. He didn't want to play at school. He lost interest in everything and would just say, I'm sad. And I'd say, “Did something happen?  Did you and your friend at school?

Did you have a fight? Did you get in trouble at school? Is your teacher upset with you?”

trying to just tease out where this sadness might be coming from and couldn't ever figure it out. I remember asking the children's minister at our church, can kids experience depression? And she said, yes, they can. And it was like a light bulb went off of my head. And it was like, then I think he's depressed. I took him to his pediatrician who agreed that yes, he was clinically depressed. And that just blew me out of the water because, like I said, I didn't know children could experience mental illness. And from there it just feels like it was like every three months or so we get some other diagnosis. And then he started having panic attacks, and he also had hyperactivity. And so it was like depression, panic attacks, ADHD. By the time he was eleven, he had been given the diagnosis of early onset bipolar, which I don't think they do it quite like that anymore, but at the time that's what they said. And then suicidality started when he was twelve. And then sleep disorder and body dysmorphic disorder and OCD and major depressive disorder. And then his last diagnosis, about 18 months before he died, was borderline personality disorder. Now, do I think he had all of that? I don't know. I think what it points out is through, the difficulty in diagnosis and, coming up with exact, clear, definitions.  What I can end up saying is he just lived a very tortured and tormented life with lots of mental health challenges.

That's one part of him. But the other part of him, the healthy part of him, was sweet and loving and creative and funny and tender. Very concerned about vulnerable people, other people. He could always spot the other person in a room who was struggling. He knew how to make a beeline, to make that person comfortable, how to engage them, how to relate to them. He was bright, he was a beautiful boy, and he was a beautiful young man.  And he was complex, multifaceted and healthy.Matthew was an absolute joy to be around. Unhealthy Matthew, as the illness progressed, became sort of frightening. He could be frightening in some of  his responses and some of his disconnection with reality. He was both. He was an amazing person who suffered a lot.

Andrea: I love how you say healthy Matthew, and then Matthew with the mental illness. Because with both of my kids I would always try to carve out the mental illness so that they didn't identify with that. And it's hard to do. And I think as a parent it's easier to do because we get to see those beautiful sides of them. We get to see the sides that are just lovable, right? And then we also do see the sides that are concerning. But it's beautiful to be able to see that you separated out that way. And I think from at least my own sense of coping, when my kids were going through the thick of it, was being able to separate the illness from the child.

Kay: It was always difficult, I, think in parenting to tease out, like, he might behave in a certain way or act a certain way. And we as parents had a lot of conflict trying to tease out, okay. Is that his mental illness that's at play here? Is this just he's a human being. who messes up or he just needs to take responsibility for that? It was always so hard to try to tease that out, and you can't perfectly hardly ever do that. One of the therapists that we saw gave us a visual that helped my husband and I with some of that. She talked about a layer cake, and that when you slice into that layer cake, you're slicing through layers of, both cake and frosting and cake and frosting and so you're getting all of it as you slice through and so with our kids, sometimes you cannot perfectly figure out what's coming from where you're getting all of it, usually when you're interacting. But that helped me a little bit to know that I couldn't compartmentalize him too distinctly. I was getting all of him, and that meant I had to deal with a whole person all the time.

Emie: Yeah, that's a good analogy. Have you always referred to his experiences with mental illness as mental illness? Because Andrea and I go back and forth know what is mental illness or is it mental health struggle or mental challenges? How do you qualify those kinds of terms and definitions?

Kay: Yeah, no, it's a great question, because the fact is, we all have mental health all the way from, yes, we're in a healthy space to moving into more unhealthy spaces. So, again, it's very difficult to be precise with a lot of the mental health diagnoses because it's more art than science, I think. I hope someday it will be maybe more scientific than it is. But for instance, I used to say emotional imbalance. That was the word Matthew, let's see, he would have been 37. So when he was 7, 30 years ago, there was a lot less known about all of this than there is now and so we use the term emotional or chemical imbalance or emotional health. And now I think people are pretty comfortable with using either the term mental illness or mental health challenges. I tend to think, and I don't think there's a right or wrong. I tend to think that might depend on the severity. If someone has schizophrenia, that is definitely a mental illness and a brain illness. If someone has psychosis, that's not just a mental health challenge, there is an illness that's impairing them from living their full life. I think if you dial that down to somebody whose challenges are not as great and they're able to function pretty. Well, even within the parameters of having some things that make you want to say, well, that might be a mental illness. I think a mental health challenge is probably okay. We do retreats for moms, with kids with mental illness and I had started using the term mental health challenge to kind of soften itt a little bit. And she was offended, I mean, genuinely offended, that we used the word mental health challenge because she felt like we weren't taking her child's illness seriously enough. It's like, this is not just a challenge. No.  And so that's why I don't think there's a right or a wrong.I kind of use them interchangeably. I might use them interchangeably in the same paragraph if I were writing something. Because I think as laypeople, we don't have to be so absolutely precise. We can kind of accommodate that for some people, mental illness is kind of offensive.

Andrea: They can't use those words. So mental health challenges feels better for them, but also use mental illness for the people whose kid is really, really struggling with a serious problem.

And that way they know we get how hard and how difficult it is. So I can go either way on that.

Emie: Thanks for that. I know Andrea and I talked about this months ago, and it made me question myself and think, my gosh, do I have an issue with how I look at my own kids experiences? And I think it came into play because each of our kids kind of has some overlap in anxiety and depression. And when she said mental illness, I went, my daughter does not have a mental illness. And it was kind of like that. And I went, no. And I asked my daughter, do you think you have a mental illness? She said no, I think I have a mental health struggle. So we kind of went back and forth on that. And so I appreciate your perspective on that, because I started thinking, maybe it's my problem. Am I ashamed? And I don't want to say she has a mental illness, but I don't know. It's kind of an ongoing dialogue around those words.

Kay: I think that you're talking about a very common conversation that parents have in trying to describe what their child is experiencing and how even I think there are cultural differences there are in different cultures mental illness is so taboo that to use that term is really inviting pushback or disbelief, from other family members. So I think you have to just take into account cultural differences. You have to take just your own family of origin. How was mental help handled in your own family? So that's why I don't think it's right or wrong. I think it's one of those places where we walk kind of softly with each other and figure out what is the best way that feels like in your family to talk about it and then just not sweat it too much from there.

Andrea: Emie and I have had this conversation I don't know how many times. We've gone around and around. I wonder if I've referred to it as mental illness because my son got sick overnight. Then it was like, oh, that is absolutely, in my mind, an illness. But now I look with my daughter, and she's kind of gone through some stuff, and now she's got anxiety, and it's like, okay, well, now she just has some mental, health challenges. But I think it could be a timing thing too. But severity of it is a big thing.Generationally, too very much. Generationally, I think, is a big key very much.

Emie: Good point.

Kay: Yeah, I agree.

Andrea: You mentioned that you do parent retreats. I would be so interested to hear what kind of things you talk about. What do you do? It sounds like a place I could have probably used about ten years ago And I don't know. Is it just mothers that go currently? 

Kay:Well, let me clarify that. We do in person retreats, which are currently just for moms, but next year hope to expand for couples. So moms and dads. So the in person is currently just moms, but we also do online retreats and, zoom calls with mental health professionals. So both of those are open to moms, dads. It could be a grandma, or it could be a sibling, because, sadly, sometimes it’s grandparents who are the main caregiver or it's a sibling who's taking care of another sibling because the rest of  the family isn't able. So those are definitely open to other family members. The in person retreats right now are just moms. I call it breathe, because if you have a child with a serious mental illness it’s a long journey. It's a long journey. Some of the moms that I talk with or come to our retreats are moms whose kids are 30, 40, 50 years old, and they have been at it for a very long time, and they're weary. They're just weary. And so breathe is a rest stop on a very long journey. And so we just work really hard to pamper, so we do everything but chew their food. We just take care of the moms.It's a high touch, high connection, high rest, pouring life back in. And I follow the same format almost every time, because this is the way that I learned to deal with my son's serious mental illness and, helping other people whose kids have serious mental illnesses is this I think that we have to spend some time grieving reality. Because if your child has a serious mental illness and it's been going this way, and it may include homelessness or it can include substance misuse, or it can include violence, it can include I mean, at the really far end of the spectrum, there's a lot of grief that you are in this what often feels like a hopeless cycle. And it's rough. It's painful. And to be able to pause and grieve your loss, grieve the loss of what you hoped for your child, and look at the reality. Look at it. Look in the eye and see this is not what I expected for my child. This is not what I expected for our family. I did not know any of this was going to be part of our reality, but this is our reality. So it's engaging reality then being willing to grieve, acknowledge the sadness, acknowledge the losses, and then from there, rebuild hope. So it's engaging reality, embracing grief and then expanding hope. Because if you don't have hope, you can just get buried in this long journey. So that's what we do. It's engaging reality, taking a hard look. And then from there know that that's going to lead to some tears and some sadness and we do some grief rituals and grief experiences and then move people toward hoping again. So they've had their rest gap and then they go out and they get back on the long road. That hasn't changed over that weekend. But suddenly they've got resources and connection. We connect them back with their bodies, connect them with God, connect them with each other and kind of like fortify them and then push them back out onto that road to keep living with some hope.

Andrea: that's beautiful. What a gift.

Emie: I actually can't even imagine if somebody would have ever even phrased it as grieving. That actually gets me kind of choked up to think I missed that step. Because if I look back in those years, I think I would have felt like I was taking space when there wasn't space to take because everything had to go to my family. So to give a woman a mom, that space seems like a life changing, even a lifeline.

Andrea: I agree.

Emie: I think that's extraordinary.

Andrea: That's what I was going to ask you, how you learned that.

Kay: No, I didn't have that. No, I didn't have it. I had wonderful family. I did have supportive friends. It's not like I was completely alone. Or dealing with Matthew's illness on our own.

But there were so many times even with that, I felt alone, I felt isolated. I felt like I didn't necessarily fit in other women's groups because while know, talking about, oh, my kid won Student of the Month, I'm like, yeah, my kid punched a hole in the wall last night. It can just feel so isolating. And I didn't know where to get help. There weren't podcasts like yours, there weren't resources. And after Matthew died, I just kept thinking, what can I do that is life giving?

To know in response to this grief and this loss?  What can I do that brings beauty from these ashes of his death? And over a few years, it kind of came to me that what I can do is I can help parents. I can help provide for parents. What I didn't have at a time. Your podcast has such a powerful connecting between women going through difficult times when I so desperately could have used support, could have used connection, could have used the resource to feel like, okay.

I can make it. This is really hard, but I can make it. And I'm not alone. I think sometimes the gift is just knowing that somebody else can relate. 

Andrea: Absolutely. I think that at least when I was going through kind of the really hard times, I didn't feel like anybody could relate because they may have had different challenges. But I look back at Emie, we found out ten years after both of our kids kind of were in the midst of their crisis, that had we just talked to one another back then, we would have had a connection of somebody who understood. And I think that connection is such a big healing opportunity for all of us absolutely.

Kay: To know that there's I mean, I'm just picturing in my mind the moment that people drive into the retreat center.  They're in an Uber or they're in a carpool or they're driving in by themselves or whatever, but the moment they get out of their car and see this group of women knowing that every single woman there knows what she's going through, Because while the circumstances may be slightly different, there's enough similarity that when they get out of the car, I can't tell you the number of women that break into tears, fall into our arms, weeping.I'm thinking of one particular woman. The first time, she came from Montana, and she was like, I'm in a rural area. There's nobody up there. There's nobody else who is totally alone. And she got out of her car, and she just grabbed me, and she began to weep. And she looked at these other women with their smiling faces, and they're welcome, and she just said, my people. These are my people.It was like, yes, we are here because we get each other. We don't have to explain.We don't have to qualify. We don't have to put caveats around what we say. it's just like, you look at a woman sitting across from her at breakfast, and it's like, oh, man, I see you. I get you. I know what you're talking about. And that is beautiful. So your podcast has such a powerful connecting. We, all just need to be seen. We do. We need to be seen. we need to be understood. We need to be validated that we're not crazy because we think this is also hard and painful. Because it is.

Emie: Yeah, there's so much healing and connection.

Kay: Right.

Andrea: Parenting's hard enough, and then you layer this on top of it. It's just adds, a complexity. So Emie and I always talk about how we tend to focus on mothers, because it seems like mothers are the ones that take the lead most of this, but we also had a conversation about how our partner, husband might have perceived and handled it himself. And it's so different. I've had some realizations just in the last few months that my husband was coming from a very loving, different place where I thought he was my adversary at the time. What was your family dynamic? How did you manage to support one another?

Kay: We had more conflict over this than probably almost anything in our years of marriage because we're very different personalities to begin with. We already had challenges raising our children just because we are so very different. I would look at a situation through one lens and thinking he was looking at the same way, and then you have these moments of like, oh.you're not looking at it at all the same way I am. And so just for us, with our strong personalities that are very different, we already had some challenges. And then, as you say, you layer in any mental health challenges and it just exacerbated some of the conflict.And particularly as it just kept going.Just kept going and going, and for Matthew, getting worse and worse. And so then we would doubt ourselves and we'd start to doubt each other. And it's, you know, if you hadn't done this, I thought we should have done that, or the other person would say, well, I know you're really resistant to trying this, this and this. Honestly, it was very challenging. And our other kids, because he was our youngest, his older siblings, the good part was they were very attached to him and loved him and were close to him, but also extremely frustrated. Sure, extremely frustrated as, they became adults and he became an adult and them seeing the toll that it was taking on us. So first, if there had just been mine and my husband's opinions of what to do, now I've got my older kids who have opinions of what we should do or shouldn't do.

Emie: Yeah, and they're older. That's right.

Kay: He's the baby. Yeah, that's what I mean. They are older. So they're bringing their adult perspective to it. And so there just was a lot of conflict, and I find that when I talk to families, particularly those for whom the illness carries on and doesn't necessarily improve or he's very episodic. And those episodes can know at the bottom, falling out over and over again. And something that I've learned even since with my older children, since Matthew passed away, as we have unpacked slowly, not only the trauma of his death, but also the trauma of growing up with a sibling who had serious mental illness, for whom we often centered the whole family around his needs. And it got again to the place of is he coming at Christmas or is he not coming at Christmas? Is he going to come mad at everybody? Is he going to come where he loves everybody? So there was always the tension of how is he going to respond? Or how is this going to be? Or we have a family vacation planned. And oh my goodness, he's not coming.

Andrea: At the last minute and everything's thrown into chaos. So there's so much chaos. There can be, there's not in every family, but there can be a lot of chaos and a lot of conflict, resentment, lack of even understanding on the part of siblings and sometimes spouses, sometimes partners, of, what is really going on here? He or she is manipulating you, you're. enabling him or her. Those are such common conversations in families that have heard it all, have lived through most of it, and can verify that families need so much support, so much help with figuring out, even within the marriage dynamic. And then how do you manage a family where there's someone who so obviously has needs that are great? I don't think there's a good answer. I don't think there's a one size fits all answer as much as just to say, hey, listen, this can get really messy. And your family is not weird or bad or wrong if your family is experiencing some of this drama, chaos, conflict, it's so common. And you're not a bad family if your family is walking through some of that. All it points out is that we just need so much support and so much compassion from other people and places and opportunities to dialogue with each other and glean from other families. What was helpful in your family? maybe we'll try that in our family, but again, just not walk in the path alone.

Emie: Yeah. What was particularly helpful for your family in the healing process?

Kay: Well, in the aftermath of Matthew's death we've all done a lot of grief therapy, a lot of trauma therapy, recognizing that not only did we look a his life differently and what we should do or shouldn't do, we all grieve differently. Every person grieves themselves in their own way. And so, as mom, I've tried to be very careful not to superimpose on my children that they grieve the way I grieve, that they respond the way I respond. And I've had to absorb, some of their anger, some of their sense of, as it feels now safe for them to be able to stay. I knew you were there, mom. I knew your body was in the same room with me. But there were a lot of times  I didn't feel you were present because you were present until you got a text from Matthew, or until you got.

A call from Matthew and then suddenly I would lose you over and over and over again. Your body was in the room, but your mind and your attention was elsewhere. And I just got so tired of always feeling like my needs were not as important as his. That's hard to hear as a mom, that's hard to hear because I did not want that from my children. I wanted to give equal attention and love and care to know that I hadn't and I wasn't always aware of it. And to absorb that without being defensive, without saying, oh, no, you're wrong. that's not the way you're not looking at right. I was there for you. I was there for you and for them to be able to say, Mom.

I know you wanted to be and then to have to, like I said, absorb that within myself and not feel guilty because often I feel like I would still make the same choices that I did because the level of his needs were that high. But I wish I had understood it a little bit more in that time. I wish I had been able to find ways to let my other kids know how much I loved them. But now I have the opportunity to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was not able to be there in some of the ways that you needed. I love you with all my heart, and I'll do the best I can from here to make up for that in the best ways I can. Like I said, looking at reality is going to lead to grief. And from grief, you have the opportunity to make repairs, to start again, to acknowledge that you wish it had been different, but don't know that it could have been So how, can we go forward from here and repair and rebuild? It's hard work. It's really hard work.

Emie: That's amazing. I think as a mother, in any context, let alone the trauma that your family has been through, to be able to say to your child, I acknowledge and validate your experience, and I'm also doing the best that I can in the moment, and I love you, and I hear you, I mean, that's just perfect. It's all you can ever give. It is to say, I honor your experience of this situation. Whether I did anything intentionally, I can't control it. And it's so beautiful that you give that to your kids. I love that. Not many of us can do that in those very vulnerable times in life. It's beautiful.

Kay For me, it has come down to I can either be defensive, which is my natural inclination, is to defend myself and defend my decisions and, my choices and my actions. Or to just put it back on them, or,you were too sensitive or you didn't understand what I was needing to do. I can go at it that way. But what will end up is it will create just another layer of separation between me and my kids. And if I want to be close to them and I want to kind of repair what I know is damaged. I have to be willing to sit there and listen. I have to absorb their pain in some way and take it into myself and reflect back to them actually compassion. And it's just not easy. It's not easy. I've done a lot of internal work to be able to get to those places where I don't get reactive, but I can listen and hear and see my surviving children and what they need and what I can best give. 

Andrea: Earlier you had mentioned the guilt. I think I have done a great job of taking on and acknowledging what had to be done had to be done, and that there's consequences to those choices that I had to make. But I still hold on to the guilt that I didn't give that child what they needed at the time because I didn't have the bandwidth. And honestly, I thought up until right now, I had given that guilt away. But then you're talking about it and tears are coming down my face. I'm like. So it's just that guilt that we hold on to as mothers, and I'm sure fathers do, too, but we've got to give ourselves that same love that we give to the kids and to our spouses when we realize that life was not perfect. It was chaotic, and we were all doing what we could to survive at the time.

Kay: Hopefully that guilt recedes. That's what I'm hoping for, because I still live with some of that. I can weep very easily when my kids say something. So if my first response is to.

Kay: Be defensive, my second response is to feel overwhelmed with sadness of what I did or didn't do or could or couldn't do for my other kids or even things I wish I'd done differently with Matthew. And it's natural to feel that way. It's normal to be that way, to have those responses.

However, I'm looking to, as you say, forgive myself, as well and be gracious with myself, knowing how dink and hard I tried to do it all right and well and good and loving and knowing that I did. Not succeed at that all the time, but just be kind to the worried, anxious, struggling mom that I was, who was just really doing the best that she knew how to do.

Emie: Yeah. What would you say? I know what I'm thinking, but I feel like I should say it in a little bit more sophisticated way and I can't think of anything. So I'm just saying, if there are parents listening that are in that space where they're so afraid and they're afraid for their child's safety, what advice could you give or resource or what should somebody do?

Kay: Well, if you're talking about are you specifically asking about suicidal thoughts? Suicidality?

Emie: Yeah, suicidal thoughts.

Kay: Dr. Stacey Friedenthal has written just in the last few months, a great book, and I always get the title wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's Loving Someone with Suicidal Thought. That's close to it. Stacey Friedenthal is the book that I wish I'd had when Matthew was younger. Because like I said, his suicidality started when he was about twelve. And I was just completely freaked out by that terrified. The first time I heard him talk about wanting to die, I just thought, I cannot do this. I simply cannot do this. I am not equipped and this is not something a mother should ever hear her child just I remember that. But Dr. Friedenthal's book is practical. It is not written for professionals, it's written for lay people. So it's, in very easy to understand practical language.He talks about what to say, what not to say, how to empathize when you need to reach out and get help. It is probably the best book I have read on someone you love has suicidal thoughts and talks about children as well as adults. I think it's also important to not panic because I think that's probably our first response to many things like that is just panic like mine was. And just because a child says that doesn't mean that they're going to attempt to take their lives. But it does mean that we have to engage them at a different level and we have to engage them in a way that hears what they're trying to say that figures out what is causing the pain. And I remember that being, that several therapists and several psychiatrists told me as one of the main tasks as his parent was to try to minimize the pain and maximize the pleasure.

Because when the pain of living or circumstances gets high enough, whatever that could be, it's going to be different things for different people. But if that pain gets high enough, especially teenagers and children don't have the cognitive ability to necessarily think long term or to think this is going to pass or I can get through this, they tend to just think in this moment and in this moment I can’t get through this.  And therefore the alternative is I don't have any alternative but to get out of the pain. And so with children and teenagers in particular, there is impulsivity that is not always as present as we get older, but to therefore not brush it off. Don't brush off that kind of talk as meaningless or they're just being dramatic.Take it seriously and try to lean in. I mean, that's the time to lean in to your kids and, make sure that you're hearing what is going on. What is causing distress? Is it they're not doing great in school? Is it they're being bullied?  Is there a friend group issue? Is social media influencing them? That is such a danger point, particularly for girls. All the studies point to how devastating. Social media can be, particularly for young teenage girls. So if you're talking about children and youth really leaning into trying to get to that communication that you take it seriously that you're going to be there for them, that you're going to figure it out together and then really press in and don't ignore that. For adults and, people past their teen years, those things still apply. But the reasons can be even more profound. It could be around your job, it could be around disappointment in life. Not feeling your life didn't turn out the way you thought it was. I mean, there could so many things. As well as mental health challenges that can lead to suicidality. So don't panic.  Press in in the best ways that you can with compassion and get to find out what's causing the distress, getting people the help that they need, and definitely not ignoring. Do not play the ignoring and this will go away game because we're talking about somebody's life. 

Emie: That's huge.

Kay: You have to take it seriously.

Emie: Yeah. It's one of those times where we do have to ask the hard questions.

Kay: And not be afraid, not be afraid to use the word suicide. Are you thinking of taking your life? And that's terrifying for most parents.

Emie: Terrifying.

Andrea: So when my daughter was younger, she was probably ten, she had said that she wanted to die. And I remember the therapist was talking to her and she says, okay, let's talk about that. are you having a feeling that's so bad that you feel like you would be better off if you were dead? Or do you want to die? Do you want to do something to take action? And I always tried to use that with her because she was a child and I was trying to understand, okay, where are we on this spectrum? Are we over here where we've really got to take some action? Or are we here where we just need to work? Like you said, address the pain. What is the pain?

But when you were talking about this, one of the things that crossed my mind was you had said that he started to have suicidal ideation around twelve. He had mental health challenges, illnesses since he was seven. How did you feel as a mom when he wanted to leave home and be an adult on his own?

Kay: scared. because it was an ever present topic of conversation. Sometimes when people die by suicide, people will say, I had no clue.Sometimes they'll say, I had no idea. I had no idea. He or she was feeling that way. Had, no idea that this came completely out of the blue. And then you can sometimes go back and untangle and find some clues. But initially it's like, I just didn't know. With Matthew, it was the exact opposite. It was just a constant topic of conversation for years. And then he would make attempts and attempts to attempt.  And so even though I didn't expect him to die on the day that he did, it was not like out of the blue for us. And so he was living on his own when he died.  And he had roommates and I was really grateful for that. But when he didn't have a roommate, then I felt he was more vulnerable. He just didn't have the same kind of connection and there wasn't anybody there to kind of keep me informed of what his mood was doing, how he's feeling. So I did feel he was more vulnerable to be on his own.

But he was also an adult and I couldn't make him live with us.   And he couldn't live in a mental hospital every day. I mean, yes, sometimes that is necessary, but he would have periods where he would do a little better and we'd start to think, oh, maybe it's going to be okay. Yeah, maybe it's going to be okay. But he really just got worse and worse. And there was a lot of just waiting sleepless nights and not being able to control it, not being able to do anything, really, other than just make him some muffins and go leave him on his porch because sometimes he wouldn't answer the door. I just did everything I could to stay connected, stay in touch, and knew.

Kay: That he was very involved. So I'm not sure I'm even answering the question that you're asking. 

Andrea: No, I think you are.  I think what you're saying is really there is not anything other than fear, really, that was kind of this underlying there was always, I mean, we always worry about our kids, but we've added another level of that.

Kay: Well, for me, with my faith, my faith kept me going when he was really ill. My faith is what has enabled me to survive and live again after his death. So my faith did kick in in a way, during that time period, that was so sustaining because it came to the place for me, knowing that I had done all I knew how to do that I couldn't control at all. And I had to get to the place where I could face the reality that I could lose him. M, and say at the same time, and if I do, I know I've done the best I knew how to do and God will get me through it and I will not be destroyed. I may be devastated, but I'm not going to let anything that happens to me destroy me. And that was something I had to decide and come to that place. And it actually helped me in those.

Andrea: Moments when I felt the most frantic in those middle of the night moments where I was awake and fearful and imagining a very painful future, was to come back to my faith and say, okay, I don't know how, but I believe God, you will get me through.If my worst nightmare comes through, you will not leave me, you will not leave my family, and we will get through this and that sometimes was what kicked me over into the ability, okay, I can do this another day.I can do this another day. I know God is with me. I know I'm not alone. I know God is with me. No, it's beautiful.

Emie: Yeah, that's really is all you could do. Is all you could do.

Andrea: You had mentioned that Matthew had roommates. Was he able to kindle friendships and become close to people and have those meaningful relationships?

Kay: Yeah, I'd say there were periods, he intensely craved connection. he just didn't always know how best to achieve it. But he craved friendship and deep connection and love and all those things. And he was very blessed to have some groups of people, particularly his last ten years, who man, when I still  see them talk to them or connect with them or text them or run into them, it's like I always say thank you to those people who stayed with him, who just stayed with him and even when it was not easy to be his friend, even when it wasn't easy to you make plans to be with him and at the last minute he would cancel it or he wouldn't show up and maybe you've done all this and they didn't walk away, his friends didn't walk away. And I will always, always cherish those people. They know who they are, and I tell them at every turn, “thank you for loving Matthew when he didn't know how to love back.Thank you for being a, ah, friend. He was really blessed.” That's a beautiful thing, 

Emie: Kay, you've given so much, just your whole way of being spoke so much peace. And I'm sure I mean, I know there's so much healing that had to have been for you to get there. But I'm so thankful for having been able to talk with you because you give so much clarity to what is horrible storm of emotions and fear that even before talking to you, I couldn't have put it into a patterned way of looking at something even as simple as you saying that you talk to women at the Retreat by saying, first we're going to acknowledge your reality, then give you space to grieve, and then look towards hope, a way of identifying joy and other things. But that is huge. And, it's probably very simple for you to say because you are working with women in that space all the time. But I just want to say that is a huge gift to me because the clarity is so validating and empowering at the same time, because thinking of so many different things on a personal level, those three things I can anchor into and apply over and over and over, that was just an unexpected gift out of this. So I just wanted to say thank you.

Kay: Thanks, Emie. I'm glad we can overcomplicate things so easily and then you get overwhelmed because it all just feels too complex. So, for me just to bring it to simple, I can hold that in my hand. I can hold that in my hand. I can do those three things. As hard as they are.I can do those three things. I can't do 20 things.

Andrea: Emie, do you remember having that conversation about trying to get, a therapist on to help us understand the stages that parents go through? And I think this right here is so simple that you can't have hope until you've grieved what you've lost and recognize that it's not what everything that you expected. So I hear that, and I'm like, there is an absolute process that you can't have hope if you're still so much in turmoil over what's going on.

Kay: Hope, and so we all want to just pole vault over grief. I don't want to feel bad, I don't want to cry. I don't want to feel all those yucky emotions. And you cannot get to hope without going through grief.

Andrea: And, you know, one of the things  I think, as parents, when we're going through those hard times is we don't have the time or the energy to even focus on that. It's all consuming. So sometimes that grief comes years later.

Kay: Well, it points out to me the need exactly what you said in the moment, things can be very chaotic, very overwhelming, and you are just trying to get through a day.I am not worried whether sometimes whether he flossed his teeth or I just want to make sure he lives today, whether he makes his bed. We can deal with that another day. I just want to make sure. So you're really very in the moment, and getting through a moment or a day or a period or whatever. So what it points out is that if you aren't intentional, even with just small little places of caring for yourself, if you don't allow those places where there can be breathing, slow down, breathe refresh, we will wear ourselves out on this long journey. So you can't wait until perfect conditions before you start taking those breath pauses for yourself. You have to find, even if it's five minutes in a day, to do something that allows you to honor your body, your soul, your spirit. It will keep you fueled for the journey.

Andrea: We hope you enjoyed this episode featuring Kay Warren. To find additional information about Kay, her Breathe Ministry, and upcoming retreats and events, please refer to our show Notes. You can listen to this way up on various platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and more. And if you haven't already, we would love your support by subscribing to our podcast. So please connect with us also on Facebook and Instagram for more information and updates.