For Lily, With Love and Hope

Spring has sprung...

FINALLY, spring weather has arrived here in New Jersey and I am able to start training in earnest for the Overnight. This will be my third AFSP Overnight Walk--2007, 2008, and now 2010. Training is an exhausting, time-consuming, sometimes uncomfortable yet exhilarating experience during which you learn a lot about your stamina and your determination--not to mention how to soothe a host of aches and pains. In the past, I have trained in spring weather that was so unseasonably cold I had to dress as if I were going on a ski trip. On the other hand, during the 2008 Overnight itself, it was so hot and humid in NY that I could not keep my glasses on my nose--they kept sliding off! In future posts, I will regale you with stories about my training walks if I think you may find them amusing or interesting and hopefully pass on some tips to any first-timers out there.

But since this is my first posting to this blog, today I want to talk about what motivates me to participate in the Overnight. In the past I have walked in memory of my son Justin's friend, Lily Diana Karian, who died by suicide on December 12, 2006. Our team is called, appropriately, Walk for Lily. Lily had turned 19 that October and was barely three months into her freshman year at Tufts University. I will tell you more about Lily in later posts; she was a remarkable young woman and people should know about her and what the world lost with her passing. Participating in the Overnight in Boston this year will be especially poignant. Tufts University--from which Lily would be graduating in May had she not died--is located in Medford, a suburb located just a few miles outside of Boston. Lily grew up in Sudbury, a beautiful town located about a half hour outside of Boston. Because of the location, we hope to have a large team of Lily's friends, people from her church, and family who might not be able to participate if the Overnight were held in a more distant city. So in some sense I feel that this is Lily's special Walk.

This year, unfortunately, I am walking not just for Lily but for others as well. My younger son, Brian, attends Cornell University. During this school year, an unfathomable SIX Cornell students have chosen to end their lives by suicide. During one week in March two young men died, one on a Thursday and one the very next day, barely 24 hours later. The devastation wrought by such losses is beyond words.

Right now we have the tools to help many--but not all--individuals facing depression or other mental disorders, including those contemplating suicide. We need more research, and we need more outreach so that people who are suffering know that help is available and--even more importantly--know that there is no shame in seeking such help. Mental illness is an insidious disease, one that still carries a stigma. Many people don't think it's "real," that those afflicted should just "snap out of it" or "stop feeling sorry for themselves." But in fact NO ONE is immune from its devastation. As the President of Cornell University, Dr. David J. Skorton, has repeatedly told students over these last few painful weeks, "If you learn anything at Cornell, please learn to ask for help." This bears repeating, and you should repeat this mantra to anyone who you think may be suffering from mental or emotional turmoil: PLEASE ASK FOR HELP!!

If traipsing around Boston for a night in June will raise money to support research and outreach that will save the life of even one person, prevent heartache for even one family, I believe I will have done something worthwhile. That is why I walk. I hope many of you reading this will join me on my journey in whatever way feels right for you.

-Rhonda Silver, team captain of Walk for Lily