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Abstract

d just the job she had envisioned — landscape design work for a prominent local landscaping company.This is what I knew about Mary Jo. It gave me exactly zero insight as to why she would take her own life.<h1 id="b2be">Investigating the ‘why’</h1>I was driven to discover why my only sister, and someone so widely regarded as a successful, independent woman, would ever commit suicide.I gained valuable insights from 20 years of daily journals I found at her home, and from talking with people who seemed they should know her.Her most recent journal showed that several months after starting her first job as a landscape designer she was fired. Though she loved drawing landscape designs by hand (as she had learned during her studies), the company required she master a landscape design computer application. She could not “get it” no matter how she tried. After several months, the company dismissed her. It was the first time in her uber-successful business life she had ever had such a setback.I hadn’t known about that. Turns out, few others did, too.<ul><li>I called her minister, who was a personal friend of mine. I thought perhaps MJ had sought her counsel with her big job setback. Nope. The minister expressed surprise and sadness and spoke of the contributions MJ had made at the church — doing her planning and organization work with eagerness and professionalism.</li><li>Her journal showed she had been seeing a psychologist weekly. Her counselor was the wife of one of my friends, so we had a passing acquaintance. I called her to share about MJ’s suicide; she was aghast. She was professionally reluctant to share anything about their sessions together until I appealed to her as a friend, and promised to hold our conversation in complete confidentiality. Then she acknowledged that MJ had been expressing some depression recently, but nothing the therapist interpreted as a precursor to suicide. She had no awareness that MJ had been fired, and was surprised that MJ would have withheld that in their prior session.</li><li>Her journal indicated she had seen a well-known psychic on occasion; most recently, about two weeks prior. I had had some prior business dealings with this man, so I called him. He too was astounded. “Bob, just a few weeks ago I had told her I saw a wonderful job offer coming soon! I can’t understand why she would leave with that ahead of her!” Her journal showed that she had, in fact, received the job offer. But she was afraid of failing — as she felt she had in the prior job. So she turned it down.</li><li>In her suicide note, MJ named her best friend the executrix of her estate. I called to share what had happened and seek her insights. She was aghast; the rest of the conversation was punctuated by sobs and deep sighs. She and MJ talked by phone every week. She had no idea MJ had been fired from her job, nor that she was feeling any more depressed than “normal.” (I would later gain greater insight into that ugly truth as I consumed her journals.)</li></ul>Aside from her psychic, it seemed MJ had told no one about being fired from her job. I could only surmise that she was ashamed about having been fired. It obviously affected her deeply and shattered her self-confidence — to the point where she had turned down an apparently lucrative job offer. I would later come to interpret her job loss as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.<h1 id="b306">Messages from beyond the grave</h1>From her journal entries, I found several recurring themes. Repeatedly, over 20 years of journals.I recognized them instantly. Because they were messages that originated within our family. I had excavated those same self-limiting messages from the shadowy depths of my psyche over the prior ten years. Investing more than 1,000 hours in supportive men’s circles and dozens of deep emotional processes, I had managed to become intimately aware of most of my shadow messages; and had healed them to a great degree.So, seeing them in MJ’s journals was kind of like deja vu for me.I found it curious that these 20 years of journal entries were so repetitive. They were each written like it was the first time she had noticed. It appeared as if she didn’t remember that she had written about the same theme a week (and a year, and ten years) earlier!Here I will paraphrase the key repetitive themes that I recognized:<ul><li>“I am afraid to retire because I don’t have enough money to sustain myself. I’m afraid I’ll become destitute, and die alone and penniless.”</li></ul>Our father always struggl

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ed financially, and his language about money always suggested it was in very limited supply. He had demonstrated that he was cheap (well beyond frugal) — with allowances, groceries, family entertainment — you name it. MJ and I subconsciously adopted those messages: never enough money, so be cheap — even though we had both been far more financially successful than our father. The account statements we found in MJ’s home indicated her retirement savings were well over $1 million. Letters from her investment account manager assured her she was well-suited financially to retire whenever she chose to do so, without any major lifestyle changes. But her subconscious “never enough money” message was more persistent than her financial advisor’s words. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had saved ten or twenty million.<ul><li>“Nobody will ever love me. I’m unlovable.”</li></ul>MJ had been married for about ten years. Her husband divorced her because MJ had always been a control freak, and he grew damn tired of being controlled. She had dated a few men, but nothing seemed to work out for her (perhaps for similar reasons?) Turns out over-controlling is a compensatory strategy for feeling out of control. She felt unloved and unlovable. Growing up, our dominant father often intimidated us with his anger to demonstrate that he was in control — not us. Punishments and groundings were a way of life for us. MJ and I both took on that unlovable message because we never received the love children have a right to expect from their parents. We were subconsciously needy of love beyond that which anyone could fulfill. And thus, every relationship ended as a failure.<ul><li>“I’m the smartest mind in the room.”</li></ul>As I read this frequent theme, it seemed oddly disconnected from reality. MJ had worked among some of the world’s brightest marketing minds in two separate premier consumer products companies, both renowned for their marketing prowess. Don’t get me wrong, she was smart, self-motivated, and successful. But this clearly was a grandiose ego message that went beyond what you’d call normal. This is overcompensation for “not enough” messages received throughout childhood. Regardless of how good our grades, or sports performances, or how well we performed our household chores, we got criticism rather than praise.<h1 id="8ba1">The big cover-up</h1>MJ had never become aware of these self-limiting messages. While she journaled about their effects near-daily, she never got to understand the messages at the cause. Though she had people in her life who could have held a safe space for emotional exploration, doing so would have required that she trust and become vulnerable; and momentarily drop her carefully cultivated persona. She never did.Looking at the bark of a tree, you’d never know that termites had been eating away at its core for ten or twenty years. But when a big storm comes along the tree no longer has the strength to remain standing.MJ’s big storm was being fired from her job. One journal entry in the last month of her life was this: “I’m a failure on so many levels.” Another said “How can (my brother) Bob be so happy and positive, when he’s gone through a bankruptcy, a foreclosure, and a divorce all in the last year… and I’m sitting here with pain and depression and failure?”<h1 id="1c07">The valuable message</h1>As I reflected on MJ’s journals and her self-limiting messages and contrasted her suffering with my own emotional healing journey of the previous ten years the clearest message emerged:Vulnerability is absolutely fundamental to emotional healing.We both had years of pain and emotional suffering in our lives. Lucky for me, I had discovered a way out that MJ never did.When I discussed my thoughts and feelings in weekly circles of men over ten years it took letting down my guard and becoming vulnerable. Without trusting and feeling the safety of the circle I could never have opened to the support that was there for me to examine and heal my deeply buried, self-limiting messages that so closely paralleled those of my sister.Rest in peace, Mary Jo. Thank you for showing me the contrast between the liberating effect of vulnerability; and the personal hell of not doing so.If you’d like to receive occasional reflections about expanding your happiness and transcending your suffering, please join our growing <a href="https://a85pnnhh.pages.infusionsoft.net/">Life as an Art Form community.</a></article></body>

Depression Need Not End Like This

A Surprising Gift from My Sister

A knock at the door. I answer, and two men wearing suits are standing there. They introduce themselves as policemen, confirm my identity, and ask if they can come in.

Oh shit. What did I do to cause a visit from the cops? The last couple of years of my life flashed through my mind like lightning. I can’t think of a damn thing. Nervously, I invite them to come in. We all remained standing.

Them: “We regret to inform you that your sister Mary Jo passed away today.”

Me: “WHAAAT? No, you must have the wrong person.”

They confirm her name and address.

Holy shit, can this be true? My sister, two years my junior, had always been healthy and involved in life. A well-regarded leader of many Sierra Club outings, and a member of the leadership group of the new-age church we both attended. It was difficult to imagine that she had passed away “just like that.”

The cops gave me a few moments to process this, adding a few details like “she died at her home” and “her body was found this morning.”

I suppose my eyes were as big as saucers, and my jaw dropped. After I’d had a few moments to process my shock and compose myself, I asked what had happened.

“A neighbor called the police this morning when they heard her car running in the garage for a long period, and she didn’t answer the door. We had to break into the house. It appears she took her own life. We found her sitting in her car, with a garden hose from the exhaust pipe into the closed window.”

“We have moved her body to the morgue. We suggest you contact them, here’s the number.”

“She left a suicide note on her kitchen counter. Here are the keys to her home. Here’s our number, in case we can help or if you have further questions.”

They extended their apologies and left me with my shock and tears.

I was positively dumbfounded. Mary Jo had always projected an image of happiness, success, and independence to everyone she knew. To all outward appearances, she was living a vibrant life. She seemed to have every reason to live. Why would she take her own life?

The back story

Our birth family had never been close. Love and nurturing were never our parents’ strong suits. They had both come from dysfunctional families. They managed their own family the best they knew how, but they were in way over their heads. I, my three brothers, and one sister came away from childhood with deep emotional scars. (Though none of us realized that for many years.)

Consequently, my siblings and I had gone about our lives completely independent of one another. We came together only at Christmas time — up until the time my mother died. Otherwise, we rarely saw or talked to one another.

Mary Jo and I had a slightly closer bond than we shared with our other siblings. She and I had created reasonably fruitful careers and “successfully” hidden the effects of our childhood wounding from the world, while the others had struggled with finances and bipolar symptoms.

When I was at the lowest point in my life — ten years prior to MJ’s passing — I had been contemplating suicide after a series of emotional traumas. I had called her out of pure desperation, to seek her advice. What she suggested at that time started me on a new path in life — one of deep emotional healing and spiritual growth.

I owed her my life. I wished she had given me the same opportunity to help her.

MJ had earned bachelor's and master's degrees in marketing and business — with neither encouragement nor financial assistance from our parents. She had built a successful brand marketing career with two different Fortune 500 companies. After 20+ years in that field, she grew tired of the pressure. She left an executive position to study horticulture.

Following her studies, she landed just the job she had envisioned — landscape design work for a prominent local landscaping company.

This is what I knew about Mary Jo. It gave me exactly zero insight as to why she would take her own life.

Investigating the ‘why’

I was driven to discover why my only sister, and someone so widely regarded as a successful, independent woman, would ever commit suicide.

I gained valuable insights from 20 years of daily journals I found at her home, and from talking with people who seemed they should know her.

Her most recent journal showed that several months after starting her first job as a landscape designer she was fired. Though she loved drawing landscape designs by hand (as she had learned during her studies), the company required she master a landscape design computer application. She could not “get it” no matter how she tried. After several months, the company dismissed her. It was the first time in her uber-successful business life she had ever had such a setback.

I hadn’t known about that. Turns out, few others did, too.

I called her minister, who was a personal friend of mine. I thought perhaps MJ had sought her counsel with her big job setback. Nope. The minister expressed surprise and sadness and spoke of the contributions MJ had made at the church — doing her planning and organization work with eagerness and professionalism.
Her journal showed she had been seeing a psychologist weekly. Her counselor was the wife of one of my friends, so we had a passing acquaintance. I called her to share about MJ’s suicide; she was aghast. She was professionally reluctant to share anything about their sessions together until I appealed to her as a friend, and promised to hold our conversation in complete confidentiality. Then she acknowledged that MJ had been expressing some depression recently, but nothing the therapist interpreted as a precursor to suicide. She had no awareness that MJ had been fired, and was surprised that MJ would have withheld that in their prior session.
Her journal indicated she had seen a well-known psychic on occasion; most recently, about two weeks prior. I had had some prior business dealings with this man, so I called him. He too was astounded. “Bob, just a few weeks ago I had told her I saw a wonderful job offer coming soon! I can’t understand why she would leave with that ahead of her!” Her journal showed that she had, in fact, received the job offer. But she was afraid of failing — as she felt she had in the prior job. So she turned it down.
In her suicide note, MJ named her best friend the executrix of her estate. I called to share what had happened and seek her insights. She was aghast; the rest of the conversation was punctuated by sobs and deep sighs. She and MJ talked by phone every week. She had no idea MJ had been fired from her job, nor that she was feeling any more depressed than “normal.” (I would later gain greater insight into that ugly truth as I consumed her journals.)

Aside from her psychic, it seemed MJ had told no one about being fired from her job. I could only surmise that she was ashamed about having been fired. It obviously affected her deeply and shattered her self-confidence — to the point where she had turned down an apparently lucrative job offer. I would later come to interpret her job loss as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Messages from beyond the grave

From her journal entries, I found several recurring themes. Repeatedly, over 20 years of journals.

I recognized them instantly. Because they were messages that originated within our family. I had excavated those same self-limiting messages from the shadowy depths of my psyche over the prior ten years. Investing more than 1,000 hours in supportive men’s circles and dozens of deep emotional processes, I had managed to become intimately aware of most of my shadow messages; and had healed them to a great degree.

So, seeing them in MJ’s journals was kind of like deja vu for me.

I found it curious that these 20 years of journal entries were so repetitive. They were each written like it was the first time she had noticed. It appeared as if she didn’t remember that she had written about the same theme a week (and a year, and ten years) earlier!

Here I will paraphrase the key repetitive themes that I recognized:

“I am afraid to retire because I don’t have enough money to sustain myself. I’m afraid I’ll become destitute, and die alone and penniless.”

Our father always struggled financially, and his language about money always suggested it was in very limited supply. He had demonstrated that he was cheap (well beyond frugal) — with allowances, groceries, family entertainment — you name it. MJ and I subconsciously adopted those messages: never enough money, so be cheap — even though we had both been far more financially successful than our father. The account statements we found in MJ’s home indicated her retirement savings were well over $1 million. Letters from her investment account manager assured her she was well-suited financially to retire whenever she chose to do so, without any major lifestyle changes. But her subconscious “never enough money” message was more persistent than her financial advisor’s words. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had saved ten or twenty million.

“Nobody will ever love me. I’m unlovable.”

MJ had been married for about ten years. Her husband divorced her because MJ had always been a control freak, and he grew damn tired of being controlled. She had dated a few men, but nothing seemed to work out for her (perhaps for similar reasons?) Turns out over-controlling is a compensatory strategy for feeling out of control. She felt unloved and unlovable. Growing up, our dominant father often intimidated us with his anger to demonstrate that he was in control — not us. Punishments and groundings were a way of life for us. MJ and I both took on that unlovable message because we never received the love children have a right to expect from their parents. We were subconsciously needy of love beyond that which anyone could fulfill. And thus, every relationship ended as a failure.

“I’m the smartest mind in the room.”

As I read this frequent theme, it seemed oddly disconnected from reality. MJ had worked among some of the world’s brightest marketing minds in two separate premier consumer products companies, both renowned for their marketing prowess. Don’t get me wrong, she was smart, self-motivated, and successful. But this clearly was a grandiose ego message that went beyond what you’d call normal. This is overcompensation for “not enough” messages received throughout childhood. Regardless of how good our grades, or sports performances, or how well we performed our household chores, we got criticism rather than praise.

The big cover-up

MJ had never become aware of these self-limiting messages. While she journaled about their effects near-daily, she never got to understand the messages at the cause. Though she had people in her life who could have held a safe space for emotional exploration, doing so would have required that she trust and become vulnerable; and momentarily drop her carefully cultivated persona. She never did.

Looking at the bark of a tree, you’d never know that termites had been eating away at its core for ten or twenty years. But when a big storm comes along the tree no longer has the strength to remain standing.

MJ’s big storm was being fired from her job. One journal entry in the last month of her life was this: “I’m a failure on so many levels.” Another said “How can (my brother) Bob be so happy and positive, when he’s gone through a bankruptcy, a foreclosure, and a divorce all in the last year… and I’m sitting here with pain and depression and failure?”

The valuable message

As I reflected on MJ’s journals and her self-limiting messages and contrasted her suffering with my own emotional healing journey of the previous ten years the clearest message emerged:

Vulnerability is absolutely fundamental to emotional healing.

We both had years of pain and emotional suffering in our lives. Lucky for me, I had discovered a way out that MJ never did.

When I discussed my thoughts and feelings in weekly circles of men over ten years it took letting down my guard and becoming vulnerable. Without trusting and feeling the safety of the circle I could never have opened to the support that was there for me to examine and heal my deeply buried, self-limiting messages that so closely paralleled those of my sister.

Rest in peace, Mary Jo. Thank you for showing me the contrast between the liberating effect of vulnerability; and the personal hell of not doing so.

If you’d like to receive occasional reflections about expanding your happiness and transcending your suffering, please join our growing Life as an Art Form community.