The What Savvy Said Podcast
Internet big sis, fashion lover, mental health advocate, and manifesting maven, Savvy (@whatsavvysaid) shares her weekly tips, stories, and conversations for living an elevated life.
The What Savvy Said Podcast
What It's Like To Lose A Parent To Suicide
Today's episode is one that's been on my heart for a while. If you're in this season, please know my heart goes out to you. You are not alone. You'll get through this one day at a time.
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Hello. Hello friends. This episode has been on my heart to record for awhile and I've put it off. I've wanted to do it when it felt more, I guess, seasonally appropriate, which doesn't necessarily make sense and does make sense if you follow in mental health awareness month or week is, or even just to kind of coincide with the anniversary of when my own father passed a. But this week as I was walking, as I was on my daily vitamin D intake, a walk, I just had this inkling that I needed to sit down and record this. It was this quiet, whisper. it's something I find is a regular part of my everyday life and even more so recently as I've making time to get quiet. But I had this inkling that I just, I needed to sit down and record this for you. And then I got on the blog. I looked at. And the backend numbers and this postal trend every now and again this episode is going to be an extension of a blog post that I've already written. So there's some things that I'm probably not going to cover now, but will be available in the blog post. So I will link that as the show notes for stay, if you want to kind of dive into it. But as you can see. Maybe some things that I shared initially, whenever I finally felt ready to kind of address and acknowledge more. So with my platform that I had lost a parent to suicide, but I noticed that this particular post was trending and that just kind of reaffirmed it for me. So we're sitting down to talk about it today, but if this is your first episode with me, if you have not joined the WSS community, my name is Savannah. I am the savvy behind what savvy said. There's a lot that I could tell you guys today. There's a lot that I could kind of sit here and talk with you about. And I'm happy to always do a follow-up episode. If there are questions that you guys have. If there are things that. You want to know? I can't imagine that you're, ministerially in a place to ask questions yet. I wasn't. But today I really want to just chat as though I'm sitting across from you and it's somebody who can kind of guide you through this season of your life and what that looks now growing up for me, I really had no idea that like a mental health situation was going on. In my household, I was very much an artistic kid. I was somebody who was really trying to find my own place in the world and just kind of. Learning, I guess the boundaries of whether or not I was introverted, extroverted, and just trying to find me and what that looks like. I didn't have any idea that I was super intuitive and that I was really responsive to other people's energy, but I did grow up with a father that had more than one health scare over the years. Like it wasn't. Uncommon for me to be put in a situation where I thought, okay, well maybe he's not going to make it out of this. Like, that was a very realistic aspect of my life from the age of six on. And so when I was a teenager, there was some kind of incident with medicines. I don't know, you know, whether or not that was like an intentional situation. But for me, And there were a few more skill scares over the years, but for me, I really never had any idea that having some kind of mental situation going on with something that my brother struggled with, I knew that there was like alcohol going on, but that honestly wasn't something that was insane. Like it wasn't like some kind of alcohol abuse. that I ever noticed, I think it was one of those times where it was kind of more of a side of the depression and flowed with it. And so I just, I had no idea. And my parents separated when I was young and they, they did a fairly good job of really never speaking poorly about one another, which was something that I really benefited from it. Incredibly thankful for, because I could hold my parents in a high regard and I kind of got to live a little bit more of the ideally childhood illness then I might have otherwise a lot of it was broad just because of certain situations in my life that I'm sure we will talk about later in other episodes throughout other things. But I had, I didn't have a lot of inclination that this was a thing. And so when my father passed, I learned a lot of stuff, a lot of things that nobody ever bothered to tell me. And I remember thinking in that time and that week, because in my instance, it was a case of we had a scare and I was put in a position to potentially intervene, but everybody around me was saying, All of these different things. And I no idea what I needed to do. And everybody who had outside knowledge stronger than me, of knowing this experience, wasn't telling me any different. And that was something I kind of had to reconcile was once we got to a situation where my father had passed by his own hand, I had to kind of look at it and think, okay, I can sit here in this moment and I can. Step one in this grieving process that you're in, you can start to blame yourself. And at that point, my thought was, I can't do that. Like that is not a burden I can take on myself right now. Because at any point in time, if somebody wants to hurt them, They're going to do it regardless of your intervention. Like they are going to find a way you can do everything you can and you can, they can get help. I canceled my, my father's psychiatrist appointment. Like that was, uh, a thing that I had to do as a part of the process. And going through that time, I really had to go through the phases of it because sitting in that moment, there was nobody who could give me any kind of anything. Like. You hear, I'm sorry, a lot. You will never hear. I'm sorry. More than you will when like somebody passes away because nobody knows what to say. And it's really, I have no words for you right now. This sucks. If you need somebody to sit with you while you stare into space, because you have no words right now, I'm a girl like that is pretty much the best that anybody can do for you right now. And that's fine. You kind of have to find your own way. I watched a lot of Reba. I watched a lot of funny stuff. I found that I wasn't necessarily more sensitive to certain things, but I just, I found that things definitely took a different things. Definitely took on a different meaning for me, it was maybe a month after 13 reasons why I come out. And of course that sparks like a whole other conversation. In those moments in that like in the week and the months and the time afterwards, I realized that grieving in this particular instance is a different process than it is when you're grieving something else. And for me, especially in this particular situation, you know, I lived in Atlanta. I didn't see my dad a lot. There wasn't that like every day, like regular kind of, you know, interaction in your life. It's the like getting in the car for the long road trip and you're like, oh, I should call and check in on oh eight. Like those kind of things. The cues that you don't realize that are built into your life were there, but step one of this process for me. And I wouldn't imagine it is true for a lot of people is just kind of reconciling who. And what, you know, a lot of that initial process is kind of second guessing things is, did you miss stuff? Did you really know this person? What were you missing? In every single moment of that, when you start to kind of take on the burden of it, the best gift that you can give yourself is to remind yourself that therapies like they are no longer suffering under the weight of this, trying to fight, trying to find a breath, like not feeling smothered, constantly. They are at peace. And I mean, I talked about depression. I will be talking about depression more and upcoming content. And it's definitely something we chat about with like, in-depth in this, but also lightheartedness here because I really want this to be a space where you kind of feel like you can take a big breath, but in that process of being so underneath it, I don't, I think that people, people want to say, well, get help or ask for help or do whatever. And. For some people when you're depressed. So much of that process is convincing yourself that you're perfectly fine. Like you aren't in a place to even acknowledge that you need help. And there's some people who they just can't convince themselves anymore. They've been trying to fight this for so long and their demons are so heavy and they've just found no way around it. And you have to start to kind of. Forgive yourself and forgive them and just realize that right now you can let go. Like you can let go of the fact that they are no longer here. And then you have to kind of acknowledge the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Like this is not a sign of whether or not you are a good or bad person or you're. And how you showed up in the world. I was lucky enough to not have to go through a lot of my father's things. I really did not want to have to go in the trailer. I was very thankful to have family that kind of helped with that whole process, but even in the like stuff that we found, like my father had written his pin down for his debit card from me. Like he left me everything that he could, that would make it so much easier for me. I never doubted that. Like that was never a thing for me. I have to think. And I have to remind you that, like this isn't the time where it's, they're doing this because they didn't love you. This is nothing to do with you. They might have loved you more than life themself, but they could not fight any longer. And I remember my grandfather saying like, just how much, like my father had my father loved me. And that was something I never doubted. So. As you're trying to take those first steps before you can even begin grieving while you're reconciling who you thought you knew and what you thought, you know, and just the entire situation of it all. Or mind yourself to take a deep breath, remind yourself that right now, in this moment, it's going to take a while for you to kind of process it. And unfortunately we can't change it. Like we. Choose to do better. We can choose Solice and we can choose to see the science. We can choose to be more proactive in other ways, but we can't take back what we did know. We can't reeducate ourselves to go in the past and we can only move forward from this space. So give yourself permission to practice grace with yourself and just acknowledging that like, You weren't left behind because they didn't love you. It's because they could no longer fight. And once you can kind of reconcile that step, you can start grieving and you can start going through the process of saying, okay, you know, I'm really walking through all of these steps. I'm angry, I'm happy. I'm completely in denial. Like I think the first, first step of being in denial and reconciling the all kinds of. Go in the phase of it, because I think in that first few weeks, being able to give yourself the space of denial or at least just not fully living in it can be really helpful in the sense that you're going to be surrounded by a lot of people who don't know what the hell to do. And they don't know how to help you. And they don't know what to say. And they might say all the wrong things. And personally I'm of the belief. Like I hate funerals guys. There's nothing. I went to three in the span of when my dad passed, one of my friend's dads passed and then my uncle passed like three months later and it felt like a wash and repeat situation like that. There's nothing about that time that ever. Seems to be more than just an occasion that put people in a space. Like I've never been to a celebratory one, if you have, that's amazing. But a lot of it just literally getting through all of the stuff, sorting out all of the things, helping everybody get from point a to point B and kind of. Giving yourself, the grace, so that in a month, you know, when people disappear that you can start grieving. And I think that's when the process really begins. I'm not somebody personally who tries to live in my emotions for a really long amount of time. I find that for my own mental health and just for my own balance, I try to give myself the time and the energy, like I will. But like, all right, we can sit in this for this amount of time and try to move past it. And then we can go on and I do that in little spurts and I find it's a lot better than falling in a hole and having to dig myself out. But when you lose a parent like this, it's not like. You have the opportunity to say goodbye. It's not like cancer. It's not like you're having a car accident. It's not it's. I think those things of you can't blame this person. You can't blame that person. You're stuck kind of in the middle of figuring out. Okay. I have no one to blame. I could choose to blame myself. But that's not going to serve anything. So how do I reconcile the situation right now? Like how do I make peace with it? How do I find all of the joys that this person in my life had? How do I celebrate them? And how do I acknowledge all of the beautiful moments that they had and all of the things that did bring them joy in their life. And then how do I honor them? How do I move forward? How do I live my life? In a way that would make them proud and you kind of have to take those steps from there. But I think the biggest piece of ice that I can give anybody who's in a situation right now, whether you're a day into it, your weekend to at your six months. Until you give yourself permission to get out of that state of reconciling who they were and what you knew and forgive yourself for whatever role you feel as though you played in the process, until you can get out of that. You're never going to move forward with a grief process. And that's the biggest thing. So. I wish that I could sit down and have coffee with all of you. I, I, like I said, I don't know that I would make this episode a billion years long guys, because I don't know that I can tell you anything other than right now is going to suck. Like this season is going to be very weird. Nobody's going to know what to tell you. They're all gonna try to want to tell you things. And there they have no idea. And if you're a friend of somebody who's lost a parent to suicide, The best thing that you can do for your friend right now is literally just deal with them. Sit with them, help them to make sure that they're not blaming themselves, help them to process the things, help them to tell the joyful stories about their parents, help them to live in remembering the things that make them happy about remembering this person, watch the comedies with them. If they want to watch the scary movies, watch those with them. Just let them have the space to kind of. be there, go through it. And on the other side of it, things will get a little bit more normal and you won't want to sit not anymore. And you'll start to feel as though it's not weird that you're just sitting at a table when your, a life has completely changed. Like. It's a balance and it's okay right now, if you're in a place where you can't live in that normal, like you feel really weird about the fact that you're sitting at dinner and nobody else has had their whole life shift. Give yourself that space and time. Try to make sure that you're aware of how long you give yourself so that you don't stay in that space forever. And if you're the friend, don't be afraid to intervene and just be like, you know what? I'm just going to sit with you. Like, that's, that's what you need right now. That's all I can offer. I don't think anybody can offer you anything else. I'm literally just going to say. Now I do want to end this episode on a slightly more positive note, because I don't want ever try to leave you guys in that space where you're energetically, just like, go, Hey, cool. I'm down. Like, this is where we're leaving the day I am creating more content or not. I'm really excited about it. And a lot of that's going to be on YouTube and Instagram. We'll see how it goes. I'm really just of kind of pay attention to the energy of what feels appropriate, but. If you are in need of a space and you want to hang out with, you know, just being real and growing, and healing and feeling safe and moving forward with your life. And maybe you're not in a place right now where that reflects in your friend group. Maybe you need a little bit more solitude or a little bit more controlled. Come hang out with us on YouTube. I would love to have you as a part of our community. There. I'd love to have you on all of the places we are on Instagram. We're on YouTube. We have the blog, all of the things. I definitely know that there's some more stuff that I went into on the blog about this specific topic. So again, I will link that in the show notes for you and because I'm a big believer and practicing gratitude. I think that that's a huge part of just being able to. Mentally click back into a good state. I think we're going to end up. So with that, because it's the foundation of everything, of how I manifest things of how I shift my life of how I really just am able to live in a more positive space. Most of the time gratitude is everything. So first thing that I am super thankful for is money mentality. Make-over cause I know that like letters, but I always want to say this wrong. So I've been following Amanda Francis. I feel like forever now it's not forever, but I recently signed up for the course and I will talk all about how I manifested that next week, but I've been going through it. And for me, one of my favorite things about the course, because I will be doing a review on this later, is that it's not just about money at least. In the way that I'm experiencing it, because I really felt the need to just kind of dig into my own life and to make those shifts and to have that space and to really heal internally. And I needed some stuff to help me do that. And so in this course, these women, all of the women who are in the Facebook group, just kind of being a part of it has been so. Helpful in this season for me, I have definitely come out of what I would like to call more of a funk, maybe a bit of a depressive episode. I don't know that I want to claim that necessarily, but it's definitely not been my best space. And I will be talking about that more on YouTube soon, but like coming out of that and healing right now and just having this space as a part of my day, having this content as a part of my day, Really giving myself the time to just heal and to be like, you know what? I've done these things for a really long time and in whatever capacity I've done them and they don't work for me. Like it's, it's fine. That works for everybody else. It doesn't work for. So we're not doing anymore. Like that. It's a gift that just to be able to say that out loud, but I really been enjoying her course now. I believe she only opens it maybe once or twice a year, maybe twice a year. I think it's only gotten open. It was only open once a year. I don't know that she's going to open it again before the end of the year, but you never know. But she does have drop the motherfucking money struggle available right now. So I will link that in the. Description of this episode, if you guys want to check that out. Cause that's definitely been big for me. The second thing on my gratitude lists is my daily walk. I've really been trying to get my movement back up. I definitely put on some depression weight, and I'm not, I'm not somebody who's like I have to lose the weight, all the weight right now, but I don't feel my best. Like I don't feel comfortable. I'm not really happy with it. So the easiest way for me to do that, Uh, my steps to have a workout that I love, I'm starting a new workout plan because I've really like with the pandemic and everything else. I kind of gotten out of the rhythm of doing my weight plans and I keep wanting to go back to like the ones that I've done. And I feel like I'd die after the first day. So I'm starting a new plan, but I'm loving. My daily walks. It's finally sunshiny here. I like that I can get some natural vitamin D and it's just really kind of pouring into my energy. I mean, cause the other thing that I'm realizing in this season is it's very, very important for me to have quiet time. Like I need more quiet time than I thought I went through a phase of having things on all the time, watching things all of the time, kind of always having something rotation. When I would take a break for things I would watch YouTube, I would have all of those things. And now. Especially in the season appealing, I'm realizing how important it is for me to protect my own energy. And sometimes that. With just ocean sounds or really quiet space. Like I just, I'm so precious about my energy right now, especially while I'm healing, but even more so as I'm really looking to manifest and shift some big things in my life. So my daily walks are huge. Part of that. That is where this podcast came from. It's just giving myself the time to a intentionally spend with people who really fill my cup, whether or not that's like a podcast. From Emilia. And, you know, I think I'm going to listen to the drama Queens podcast today. Uh, it really depends on the day, but like even sometimes it's just listening to music or nothing like having that quiet time. And my vitamin D walks, those are major. And the third thing on my gratitude list and the final thing for the day is taking a break from alcohol. It did an episode, I think, two episodes back kind of talking about my relationship with it and if I'm completely. As am I body functions, especially healing my hormones actually, and kind of coming on the other side of that, I definitely learned how my body thrives and how my body's like, yeah, no, we don't play that game. And I do not do well with sugar, anything that my body processes as more on the sugary end. So like if I had like bread and wine at night, it's not going to play. What happens? Is it six hours after my body? Completely like digests and like burn through it. I will wake up like 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM like clockwork and I'm up. Like my body's like, no, this doesn't work for me. So I know that physically, it just doesn't really vibe for me. It doesn't feel like something that's authentic to me, but I also just find that it doesn't really serve best for my mental space. So I'm not ready to say that. I've never, ever, ever going to drink again. Because I don't want to put that kind of pressure on it. Like we're planning a trip to France next year. There's potential that I might want to do a little bit of champagne tasting, but I might be at the point where the champagne tastes like rubbing alcohol. So I'm just trying to put it in that same category of, I'm not really feeling it. It doesn't really serve me. I'm quite okay with it having an extended break and in less. There are some reason that like, it's the only thing that I'm craving at the moment. A lot of times it probably means I'm craving something else. I can't imagine myself being in that position. So I'm really grateful to give myself a break. And if you guys are really struggling with your mental health right now, and you're kind of in that place, I know a lot of us are really at a season of transition right now. And. We kind of gave ourselves a lot of grace made excuses, lived in a space of just kind of trying to survive the last year. That last bit of grace has kind of gotten us to the point where like, all right, something has to change. Like we have to do something. And I've definitely found that, you know, giving myself the space and time to heal, be being less present for everybody else, just not answering shit, kind of going AWOL I'm available when I need to be available. And I put energetic boundaries in place for everything else. My like auto email reply is my best. Doing all of that along with making sure that I'm getting like sunshine every day, you know, drinking more water, trying to eat more vegetables and getting my like dietary habits back on track. But also, you know, taking a break from a substance that doesn't really serve my gut health. It doesn't really serve my mental health. It's just not really helping me at all. So highly encourage you to take a break from alcohol. If that's something you. I have not chosen to do for yourself because first thing that happens is you take a break for a month and you're like, okay, cool. Like I learned something about myself, but giving yourself the gift of not having it for awhile is major. All right, guys, I love you. If you are in a place right now or your mental health is complete trash and. And you're really struggling. I know, I know I'm telling you right now to reach out to a friend is probably not going to serve you because maybe you're in a space where you just haven't felt good for a while and you don't know what to do about it, and you don't know that something's wrong, but you know that something's not right. So maybe that set for. Is to call a friend and just to schedule going to lunch, or maybe it's to reach out to a one 800 number. I will include some of them in the description for this episode as well, whatever it is that feels like it's going to work for you. And it feels like it's going to be a step for you. And it feels like maybe it's just a little light peeking behind the window that you're letting into your life right now. I encourage you to take that. I encourage you to reach out. I encourage you to know that you are not. Alone that I love you. I'm so, so, so glad that you are here. You matter, you are a huge part of this community, whether or not you think that you are or not. I see your names and it seeing you guys as a part of the community, seeing you answer on stories, seeing you tell me about TV shows, you're watching all of that. That makes a huge difference in my day. I think. We think that people who have these big numbers on the other side, that like, it doesn't matter when you get a DM or you get a text or you get tightness something. But like we see it and it makes us, it makes it feel like all of the hard work and all of the negative days and all of the days that we feel like it's not working and that it's worth it. I just want you to know that I see you and that I'm so grateful that you're here and now I have to give you the other spills. If you have not reviewed the podcast, please do so on iTunes because it helps us boost and get other people to see us. If you want to hang out with me on Instagram, I am at what savvy said, I do weekly like motivational emails. So if you guys want to sign up for those, and that's a good way to like, an idea of what all content has been floating around. So if you don't like to spend a lot of time on social media, you tend to miss things. You shouldn't forget things. It's a great way to just kind of get a little boost in your week. that goes directly to your email. Inbox is a great way for me to communicate with you. And it means you can take all the time you need away from all the other platforms. I would say take time away from tech talk, but I don't really upload on tic-tac all that much, but new content is coming to YouTube and yeah, I hope that this episode. Helped you. I hope that if nothing else, that helps you understand in a new way and that wherever you're at, you know, that you are not alone anger. So very loved. I love you guys. It is a good day to have a good day, and I hope you all have a beautiful day wherever you are by friends.
