An easy and appropriate way to start the conversation with children about loss

Why I wrote this story ....To give insight to children who have lost a friend or loved one to suicide. It was on Father's Day, 2015, that I sat down with a pen and a note pad, and started writing this book. As the morning unfolded, so did this story. I had been participating in Survivors After a Suicide support groups for many months, and I felt that I was writing this story, both out of respect for my Father, as well as for my own sense of Fatherhood. I had lost my Father to suicide 50 years before. At that time he was 50 and I was 18. Now I am a father and a grandfather as well. In 1965, when my Dad died, there were no such things as "support groups" to aid people who had experienced such a loss. I learned early on, that, for most people, the subject of suicide was conversationally taboo. I learned to think about it as the "S" word.

I am dedicated to helping our society come to grips with the "S" word, and I am working to be an active participant in how that will occur. I wrote this book as a means of opening the conversation between adults and young people who have experienced the loss of a friend or a loved one to suicide.

The number of known deaths by suicide, in America, are going up each year. Over 43,000 suicides were estimated to have occurred in the U.S. in 2015. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that that leaves our country with somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 new survivors annually. Survivors need our support and help. To be a part of that help and support is the goal of my story.