Phoenix has bizarre crime.
The canals of Phoenix, Arizona are hunted by a serial killer.
People are like, well, are we safe? He's a sexual sadist.
2 grisly homicides.
I know I didn't kill anyone.
But solving these murders is just the beginning.
That can't be his first rodeo.
This is season 6 of American Nightmares: The Canal Murders. Coming soon, wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge.
Welcome to Notes from the Edge. This episode is different. September is Suicide Prevention Month, and I want to talk about suicide from a place I actually know. Hey there, I'm your host, Lisa Lacey. I'm not a clinician. I'm not talking to you as somebody standing safely outside telling people what they should do. I can only speak from lived experience and whatever earned wisdom I have collected from surviving myself more than once. My first suicide attempt was at 15. The immediate trigger was a boy who used me. He was the first person to make me feel that kind of devastation, but he certainly would not be the last. I was 15 years old, did not have the emotional language. I did not have the nervous system capacity or the life experience to understand that what I was feeling could change. All I knew was that I wanted the pain to stop. And I still remember being in the hospital afterwards. I had my cheerleading jacket still on, and they were trying to get charcoal in me through a funnel. And one of the nurses looked at me and said, Some cheerleader you are. I have never forgotten that sentence.
Imagine being a young teenager, having reached a point where continuing to exist felt impossible, and one of the adults responsible for caring for you decided that shame was what you needed next. The entire situation was mishandled. The following week, I was sent somewhere I hated. I felt contained, watched, managed, but I did not feel understood. I would eventually leave home shortly after. And that was not the last time suicide would enter my story. There were other attempts in later chapters of life, which is part of why I think differently about suicide prevention than a lot of people do. We get incredibly awkward around the word, around the issue. We whisper it, we panic, we worry that asking somebody about it will somehow plant the idea in their head or make them go do it. And we try to search for the perfect thing to say when sometimes the person in front of us does not need a perfect sentence. They They need somebody willing to just sit in an uncomfortable feeling or conversation. And sometimes, yes, hospitalization is absolutely necessary to keep somebody alive through an immediate crisis. I have also experienced what happens when you go to the ER and intervention stops at just containment, which is a locked door, a padded room, a 72-hour hold that may Interrupt the moment, but containment by itself does not tell somebody why tomorrow might be worth seeing.
It does not automatically heal trauma. It does not create belonging. It does not give somebody language for unbearable pain. And if the person comes out feeling more ashamed, more powerless, more misunderstood than when they went in, we have not solved the whole problem. You see, for me, suicide prevention has become way more intimate than that. Some days I have had to dig very, very deep for meaning. There have been times when I could not find some giant inspirational reason to keep going. So I stopped demanding one. Sometimes the reason was my work that I do with you. Sometimes it was somebody I loved. Sometimes it was curiosity of what's next. Sometimes it was me just being stubborn. Sometimes it was simply, I'm gonna go ahead and see what tomorrow feels and looks like. And then tomorrow became another and another and another, and that matters. Because I think we sometimes make survival sound too grand. We tell people to find their purpose, find their people, find your passion. But what if you cannot feel any of those things today, now, in the moment? Maybe survival does not need to be beautiful today. Maybe you do not need a 10-year plan.
Maybe you need the next minute or hour. Maybe you need the next cup of coffee. Maybe you need to sit outside and feel the wind on your face. Maybe you need some sleep or an ugly cry until your body shakes. Maybe you need to say out loud, I do not know how to do this today. And for me, spirituality has become part of how I survive. I search for spirit within me, above me, around me. I think about my ancestors. I think about whatever intelligence or force brought me here and whatever might still be asking something of me while I am here. I think of this life as a kind of school for being human, and there are days where I do not understand the lessons at all, but I still show up for class. That is my spirituality, and I'm not asking anyone else to believe what I believe. But I do believe we can feel completely alone without actually being abandoned by existence. And I also know that sometimes there is not another human being sitting behind you or beside you at 3 in the morning, and that is real. So I do not want suicide prevention reduced to just call somebody.
Sometimes you do need another person. Sometimes you need a professional person to help. Sometimes you need medication. Sometimes you need hospitalization. Sometimes you need a tribe or community or human connection, and sometimes you are all alone in a room by yourself trying to make it the next 10 minutes. And in those moments, I have learned to make the world very, very small. Not the rest of my life. Not the next 10 years or a year, not even tomorrow, just now. What can I do with now? Am I going to sit here and promise you that everything magically gets better? Life doesn't work like that, my friends. I have survived beautiful things and I have survived horrific things. I have rebuilt my life and then watched parts of it fall apart all over again. I have experienced psychosis and institutions and addiction and trauma and illness and loss and moments when I genuinely did not recognize the woman living inside my own mind. Yet I am still here. Not because I am fearless or special. Not because somebody handed me the perfect reason. I am still here because over and over I found one more reason Not to make a permanent decision inside a temporary state of consciousness.
And sometimes that reason was profound, and sometimes it's ridiculously small. Both counted. So if you love somebody who is struggling, do not be so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you say nothing. You do not have to fix them. You don't even have to understand everything they are feeling. Can you say, I am here? Tell me what this feels like. And just sit with them in their pain and be uncomfortable too. And if you are the person struggling, you do not have to turn tonight into the rest of your life. Give yourself less time to solve. 1 hour, 10 minutes, 1 breath, and another, and another. I have lived long enough to know that the version of me who wanted to die at 15 had absolutely no idea who she was going to become. She could not have imagined this life in sobriety and joy. On some days, she could not have imagined the people she would love, the work she would get to do, the stories she would now tell, the mistakes she would survive, the woman she would eventually become. She could only see the room she was standing in and the unbearable pain that she felt.
And that pain shrinks the horizon. My job now on the hardest days is simply not to mistake a disappearing horizon for the end of the world. If you are in immediate danger or you believe you may act on those thoughts, please get immediate help. In the United States, you can call 988, you can call emergency services, or go to the nearest hospital or emergency department. If you are somewhere else, contact your local crisis or emergency service. And if you are not in immediate danger, but you are still struggling, tell the truth somewhere— to yourself, to another person, write it down in your journal, in prayer, in meditation, to spirit, to your higher power, into the night if that's all you have right now. Just do not confuse this moment with your entire story. I am 50 years old now. And that 15-year-old girl in that cheerleader jacket could have never seen me coming, but I was already inside her waiting.
Hmm.
And what are you performing in order to survive or just get by? And what might setting that role, mask, or performance do to lighten your load? Just a little bit to make this ride easier. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey. When you find the answer to that, I will see you at the edge.
What if suicide prevention is about more than keeping someone alive for the next 72 hours?In this special September Suicide Prevention Month solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy speaks from lived experience about her first suicide attempt at 15, later attempts, psychiatric hospitalization, and the complicated work of finding reasons to remain when life has become unbearable.Lisa remembers arriving at the hospital still wearing her cheerleader jacket, being met with shame instead of understanding, and later experiencing psychiatric interventions that contained a crisis without necessarily addressing the pain underneath it. She also explores what decades of survival have taught her about meaning, spirituality, mortality, human connection, and making life small enough to survive one hour, one breath, or one tomorrow at a time.In this episode:Suicide prevention through the lens of lived experienceSurviving a suicide attempt as a teenagerWhy shame can deepen an already unbearable crisisPsychiatric hospitalization and the limits of crisis containmentTrauma, suicidal thoughts, and emotional painWhy asking directly and listening without judgment mattersFinding meaning when purpose feels impossibleSpirituality, ancestors, and feeling connected when physically aloneSurviving one hour instead of trying to solve an entire lifeWhy a temporary state of consciousness should not make a permanent decisionWhat Lisa wishes the 15-year-old version of herself could have knownThis is not a clinical guide to suicide prevention. It is one survivor’s perspective on what helped her continue, what did not, and why sometimes staying alive begins with making the horizon small enough to reach.If you are in immediate danger or believe you may act on suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 in the United States, contact emergency services, or go to the nearest emergency department.Connect with Lisa Lacy:https://LisaLacy.comWhat did you perform in order to survive?Welcome to the Edge.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.