My name is Betty. I was born and raised in California and now live in Oklahoma. Oklahoma is now HOME to me.
I have a wonderful husband and two daughters,six grandchildren, two stepsons , one stepdaughter and seven step grandchildren.
Life has been good to us . However!!
I can't say my life is happy or I will ever know happiness as I once knew it ,as I will carry a saddness for my third daughter I lost to depression in 1993 at the age of 16 and it broke my heart.
There will always be an empty place in my heart and home where she belongs and her absence is sometimes hard to bear.
In fact when I lost my youngest daughter , my whole family fell apart and my older daughters went their seperate ways , away from me, taking my grandchildren with them . Suicide destroys more lives than the one who died from it.
The pain and lonliness they seek to be released from is passed on to their survivors leaving them alone, confused , asking themselves why? What could I , should I have done ? Alone as the stigma behind the word suicide causes one to feel abandoned by friends , family , neighbors , co-workers as they avoid or change the subject, expect you to go on as though nothing happened , expect you to 'get over it' .
You find you no longer fit in , you see everything from a different set of eyes , you continue to silently grieve and find you can't "get over it" you need to talk about it , hear the persons name, remember them , but there's no one who understands and you wonder if you truly are alone and perhaps even losing your mind in grief. There is a link to my daughters memorial site attached to this site.
Please visit it , read her story and sign her guest book.If you or someone you know has also lost someone ,my heart goes out to you.
For those who have not personally been touched by this tragedy, I hope you will come away more aware of the seriousness of depression , it is a disease that destroys lives just as sure as if it was a cancer .Take nothing for granted.If you see signs , seek help , If you're a parent , Please don't brush it off as just being a teenager, most of us parents never saw the warning signs .From my broken mother heart to yours it is awareness that will hopefully prevent one more tragedy in someones family.
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