This week, the Centers for Disease Control released a report that said that suicide rates in the United States have risen nearly 30% since 1999. With the issue of mental health in the news so frequently lately, I am looking for guidance from Parker Palmer’s essays on depression. He describes how his friends’ attempts to cheer him up often made him feel worse. He concludes “One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person’s pain without trying to ‘fix’ it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery” (63).
Palmer, Parker. “All the Way Down.” Let Your Life Speak. Josee-Bass, 2000, p. 58.