Welcome to the Starter Girlz podcast, the show dedicated to the Starter Girl. She's an achiever, she's a creator, she's a magic maker, she's a dreamer and she is doing all the things. I'm your host, jennifer Loehding, and welcome to this episode, all right, so welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Starter Girls podcast. I'm your host, jennifer Loading. I'm so excited about my guest today. I think she's going to bring a wealth of knowledge to you guys, so it's going to be good.

So she says that after learning that her father took his own life 35 years after he died, she had to re-greave his death for the second time. She needed to process this new kind of loss and come to terms with the fact that he had had a mental illness and was suffering in silence. So she turned her pain into purpose by working as a crisis counselor and mental health advocate. She says her goal is to share content and spark conversation to help in the stigma of suicide, one story at a time. She's an author, a nationally syndicated columnist, a three-time survivor of suicide loss, a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project. She's also a storyteller with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and a mental health advocate. So, lisa Sugarman, welcome to the Starter Girls, we're so excited to chat with you today.

Oh, thanks, jen, I'm excited to be here.

This is going to be great, so all right.

So one of the things about Starter Girls I always like to talk about, you know, if we're bringing content to this show, we're trying to help make women that are in leadership positions whether they're entrepreneurs or leader in their company, leader of their home, whatever that is to be the most effective in all the areas of their life, and I know that personally, even in our house I've talked about, you know, mental health is a big thing. Right, it is a big thing, and we personally haven't shared it. You know openly in podcasts, but I've talked about it in different areas of my life that we struggled with some of it in our own home. So I know the value of the importance of it, but also, for so long, the stigma that was wrapped around it. So I'm really excited to chat with you and hear your insight on this. But I want to open up really quick for you to give us a little bit of background into your story. You don't have to go into you know major details. Just lead us up to this how you got into this.

Yeah, sure, so I've always been a content creator in one way or another. Early in my career I was a newspaper reporter, wrote for magazines, I did a lot of marketing and PR, like lots of different kind of content creation. And I kind of found my niche in the parenting space for about, I would say, 10 or 12 years, wrote a bunch of parenting books, was very active on lots of the bigger parenting sites like Today Show, parenting and Healthline Parenthood and Grown and Flown. And, as you said, about 10 years ago I had, I guess, a revelation, a learning and knowing that my father had actually taken his life and this was something I learned 35 years after his death. So it really just it gutted me completely and in every way and it really kind of shut me down.

For a period of time I was kind of going through the motions in life, doing what I needed to do as a mom and doing my job and those types of important day-to-day things. But on the inside it just kind of shattered me and it was during that whole kind of rebuilding and processing and just trying to kind of make sense of it all if there's even a way to do that I kind of found my way to mental health advocacy. I found my way to storytelling. I mean, I've always kind of told stories in the columns that I write and the books that I write anyway.

So it wasn't like that was a very hard stretch and I just kind of started putting all of my attention in that mental health bucket, trying to both understand kind of that suicidal mentality and that mental illness mentality and also trying to bust apart the stigma of it all Because, like you said, like it doesn't matter where you are, who you are, what your beliefs are, you're going to be touched by it in some way. And right now, even though the stigma has changed for the better, it's not quite as as taboo as it used to be. It's still there and we need to do an awful lot more work. So I've kind of rededicated my life and my work to changing that whole narrative on what it means to be mentally ill and what it means when someone takes their life and everything that kind of goes together with that. So that's what I'm putting out into the world now.

Yeah, and it's a lot. And I think that when you talk about mental health, we talk about the stigma. You're right, it has come a long way. But I feel like it's like when we found out my daughter needed to do gluten-free. It was like at the time we found this out it was kind of a nobody knew what gluten-free was, and then now you go everywhere and it's on the menu. It's everywhere, right, and I feel like that's sort of kind of the way mental health has talked about.

For so long it was sort of this wasn't even a thing, nobody talked about it, right, like nobody brought it up. And then now it's. It goes both ways. I mean, I think we need to address it. It needs to be something that needs to be open and it needs to be a place where people feel safe when they have these conversations. If they know they're struggling, they know where to go and we need to talk about it more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because when we don't talk about it is when that toxicity kind of creeps back in, and when it isn't mainstream in the way that you would talk about cancer or the way you would talk about someone who was you know it was injured, it's like it makes it something completely different and unique and something that people feel super uncomfortable talking about in a way that you would just never talk about. You would never talk about someone having a heart attack in the same way that you would talk about someone taking their life, because there's no, there's no tabooness around it, but it still exists, with mental illness and depression and anxiety, and even though people are getting a little freer with it, it's not nearly where it needs to be.

Why and what is your take on that? Like why we feel it's such a tabby thing, because I feel like I have my take. I, you know, I think it's we're we're taught for so long that it it, we look weak, right, like if we don't have it all together. It's this whole message of I'd love to know, like, what your take away is on that.

I think, I think it's part of that, I think it's the optics, I think that's exactly what it is. I think that in the world that we live in, and in particular in the country that we live in, there's just this, this perception that we've got constantly just keep soldiering on and keep pushing forward and just sucking it up and dealing with it and toughen up, and it's it's this mentality that's just kind of permeated our culture and it's made it impossible for people to to, to not feel shamed when they say I need to take a day off of work because my mental health is not great. Or, you know, I need to help a family member because their mental health is not great, you know. Or we in any way disclose the fact that we might not be okay, like it's never been okay in this country in particular to not be okay.

And so, yeah, you're right, there's a complete weakness aspect to all of that and you know, it's like the people who go into work and I used to be guilty of this, I was totally guilty of this like going into work not feeling well, because you know, we're all kind of playing the martyr in some way of well, you know, I have to show that I can handle it, I have to show that I'm tough enough, I have to show that I'm not weak, and all that does is create this culture that frowns on, you know, frowns upon being mentally not okay and and that's crushing people, because it's this idea. Well, if you don't show up today, even though we have all these, these things, like you know, mental health days and sick days and whatnot, well, somebody else is standing in line waiting to do your job, who's not going to call out sick or who's not going to complain. So I think, I think there's there's this perception and there's this perception to.

You know, among among children and and within families. Like parents don't like the way the optics look if their child is is, you know is dealing with a mental illness, because maybe that's a reflection, or they think that's a reflection on their parenting, which of course it's not at all a reflection on someone's parent, you know it's it's it's. It's interesting to me to see how people interpret mental illness and and why they think it's such a negative, where you would never say that about any other kind of illness.

It's. It's so interesting too because I feel like this is a conversation, like you know, like I had this with my kids at different times, because we've dealt with it in our house and I've always been at the mindset that I don't really care how it makes me look. I just want my kids healthy, Like I just want my kids. I want my kids living their best life and being, you know, optimal. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but being able to work optimally, right, Right, Be effective and be able to be happy and all those things.

And I recognize that.

You know you made this point about in there about how the optics you know with parents and so often they get hung up on this idea that it's a reflection of them and bad things happen to good people all the time. And you know, sometimes, yes, there are certain things that our parent, you know parenting does reflect off on, or maybe habits or behaviors. We do know that things you know we were taught as young. They carry over into our life later on. But I do think we have to release our ego right. If we want what's, it is apparent we want what's best for our children to thrive. Remove that and say it's really about how do I help the child, you know, and so there's so much to that.

Yeah, we could do a whole conversation just about that. But I mean, yeah, it's true, it's unfortunate because the only ones who are really suffering in that case, yeah, are the children or are the people who are dealing with the mental illness, because they just needs to be cared for and acknowledged and treated and respected the same way that you would any other kind of an illness, and it's still getting really skewed, and that's the thing that we need to change. So that's what I'm out here trying to do.

Yeah, and you do this through your writing, the storytelling and then all the other work that you do as well. So, yeah, it's a hard. It's a hard thing to do. I admire you for that because I do think it's. I think it's probably most of what happens in our lives on a day. I think that a lot of you know I don't like to make light of illnesses. Like you know, I'm talking physically, other illnesses, but I think a lot of there's a lot of mental stuff that's manifest, manifested in these things as well.

You know, and I've talked about that in health, that when I was talking to somebody in a previous show she was talking about something she had gone through and she had taken up exercise, bodybuilding, particularly to help her get through. She had been had a home invasion, was sexually assaulted and was going through the traumatic you know the peak, all the stuff that comes in the aftermath of that. And she said she took up exercising during that time and then became a bodybuilder and she said she don't, didn't know she would have done had she had not had done something to get through that right.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's a hard thing to get through and you got to find ways. You know, find ways and there has to be more talk around it. Because I think that if we get into this mindset that we're not dealing with it, then we're sort of compartmentalizing and saying I don't have this problem when we really do, and it can manifest into so many different ways. It can plague our health, our well-being, all the areas.

Yeah, that's one of the things that is the hardest is when people try to just kind of tamp it all down and try to just lock it away. The thing about that is I mean, look, you know what happens to a radiator if you don't bleed it, the old fashioned radiator, it's just going to blow up and it's going to be catastrophic Kind of like. Our system is designed the same way like our physical system. Our mental scaffolding in there is created the same way that it's going to fall apart if we don't let what's in there out. And at the same time we have to be willing to be vulnerable, because if people aren't letting the world know what's going on on the inside, they can't get help from the outside. And there's a whole world out there with resources and support and people in places that are available. But if you're not acknowledging that you need those things, well then you're going to be stuck in the same spot because no one's going to be aware of it.

So yeah, it sounds like it's a vicious cycle, or it can be.

It can be, yeah, it definitely can be.

Yeah, I remember when my daughter was going through some stuff we had to pull her out of school and I remember there being. It was so hard actually navigating the school. She was still in high school. It was so difficult at the time navigating that because she was in a different placement where she was reporting into a different facility and they were supposed to be getting her work and giving her credit for being in class. But it was so hard to get the two different organization in the district to work together at the time.

And I remember being just so frustrated because it was like, have you all never dealt with this before, like if you never had a kid that went through depression, like you don't know how to deal with this. I mean just it was such a crazy time and I remember going back to what we said a few minutes ago. The only thing that kept going through my mind is I just want my. You know I want my daughter healthy and well and thriving.

How do we make this work, like, how do we get to a common ground where the interest here is the child? It is let's get the kid, help the kid get what she needs to get done and put making all these other things so hard, you know. So I feel like you have your work cut out for you because it is. It's a tricky thing.

Yeah, in a lot of ways. I mean there are a lot of people out there who are just resistant to it because it just it isn't. It isn't what they're used to, it isn't where they feel comfortable. I think it's hard to be vulnerable. It's scary, it's very uncomfortable and people aren't really sure how they're going to be received when they're really open and honest, because a lot of people just don't want to hear that someone's not okay A because it makes them uncomfortable and it makes them feel funny about what they may not be okay with. And also, too, they don't know how to react to it. They don't know how to respond, they don't know what to do.

So I think that there's a lot of education that needs to happen with us as human beings, just around the concept of vulnerability and what it means to share and how much do we share and how do we do it. And then people need to be taught how to receive it, how to hold that space, and it's really not that hard to learn how to hold space for someone. It's really just a matter of listening. You're not there to necessarily solve somebody's problem or fix whatever it is that's wrong. You might just be there just to listen, just to take it all in, just to validate what that person's going through, or maybe you can offer them some directions, some resources or some other kind of support. But it's not as hard as people think it is, and when I think people can connect with that, I think that's when things will start to change even more.

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This is so good. You brought that up because I saw a post. I followed the holistic psychologist. I love her work just because she puts a lot of, I think, real raw stuff out there.

And she put something up the other day about Theo Vaughn. I don't know if you know who he is. He's like a comedian, he's a hilarious, but he was talking to a UFC fighter and he was interviewing me. He has a podcast and it's a crazy show. It's not, it's nothing like what we're doing here, but the UFC fighter was talking I don't even remember which fighter it was, but he was talking about some past trauma. He was actually crying on the episode and Theo just basically sat there and was like just held space, didn't say a word, just let him have his moment. And the holistic psychologist had actually praised him for holding space. And you are so right. That is so hard, I think, for a lot of people to just be quiet.

Don't need to fix it. They don't. They sometimes don't want to, they just they need a moment to get it out and that's all it is is a release right. Like they, just need the pause, and so Thank you for bringing that up, because I think that is such a hard thing for so many people to be okay with.

Yeah, it's uncomfortable. I mean we feel almost compelled to have to somehow direct the conversation or how to interject in a way that we don't hijack a conversation. I know that for me in particular, all the training that I went through as a crisis counselor with the Trevor project really kind of completely reformed the way that I Personally hold space for people, not only people who call me on the lifeline, but people in my own life, my family, my friends, people kind of in my own community, and it really taught me how to just put the person I'm listening to, his agency, first, like what they need, what they want it's not about me, it's. We're also inclined to say things like oh yeah, I know, I mean, like that totally happened to me, I get it I like.

Here's my experience, and while that can be valuable in certain situations, it absolutely can be, most often, when someone is sharing something, that's that's really that that either traumatic or Challenging for them. They just want to get it out of their head, they just want to get it off their chest, and and they don't necessarily want or even need a response, they just want someone there to listen, and so that's. I mean, I do so much of that day to day and it really isn't as hard as people make it out to be. I.

Think it's so good to that right there, because just that part you talked about right there, because I always feel like and this is Actually something I learned in my coaching is how to, you know, do active listening, but also Anytime, I think. I think that let me say this I think, as humans you said this in a way that I feel like we try to Simpho empathize with somebody, and the way we do that a lot of times is by saying, oh, I know what you mean.

I've been but but listen, all of our, all of our experiences are relative to us. Our pain, we feel it and I've learned that through coaching and I and I will say this to my clients a lot I will always say I'm not gonna pretend to say I know how you feel, because I don't know how you feel your. What may be painful to you may not be near as painful for me, right, exactly. I'm never going to assume that I know how you feel.

I might say that, oh, I can feel the pain, like I, you know, Like, or I can feel that this is hard for you, or this hurts and I can feel it, like I get chills, like I can feel it, but I don't know what you're going through. And I always like to be abundantly clear about that, because I think when we get come from that and I think this is good in all areas of our life, not just in grief, but even when we're working with clients, our children, everybody when we come from a place of where we try to put ourselves in their shoe, we almost invalidate their feelings. We almost give them a reason now to say, oh Well, maybe I shouldn't be upset about this, that I'm upset about, right. But when we just hold the space and we sit back and we just go, let them have this, this is what they're going through and it's hard, right, yeah, but it for them, it's so powerful.

Can be.

Yeah, it certainly can be yeah, so thank you for sharing that.

I think, of course lesson is so important in all Areas of our life. It's not just about going through a moment where somebody's having grief or crisis. I think it's anytime. Somebody even has a frustration that that's important, because when we come back to dealing with human beings as a whole, when we start pretending to say it drives me nuts I'll see this even on people when they post I know what you mean, I know what you mean and I know they're trying to find commonality, as I like to say, but you don't know what they mean because you're not walking in your shoes.

Right, right, you know I I talked about they just talked about this a lot when I was Talking in more in the parenting space, yeah, about how impactful it is. You just think I mean, I know you, you're a mom, you have kids, I'm a mom, I have two daughters and one of the most important lessons that I learned as a parent and I wished I learned it earlier was just to shut the Hell up and listen to my kids, because I was always, you know, we're, we're parents. I don't want to say it's just a mom thing or it's just a dad thing. It's a parent or a caregiver thing to want to be there to Help, to support, to listen, to guide, to fix the stuff that's broken, whatever that might be, Right.

So our inclination is to be like you know, you're cutting your kid off mid sentence and You're you're trying to solve the problem or figure out the situation. And one of the things that I I started to do again later than I wished I had was say, Like, how can I help you? What do you need from me? What's going on with you? How can I help you? You know what do you need to say. And and when I did that in those moments, those were the moments when my girls would open up to me more than any other moment, because they knew I was just there To literally hold that space for them and let them say what they needed to say. So I think you're right in life we just we don't shut up and listen often enough.

Yeah, we just know you need to just be like. My husband does that to me Sometimes. He's like this I might, maybe we all should just be walking around and doing this.

Yeah, I don't I don't disagree.

It's a reminder.

Yeah, just shut up.

Don't talk. Yeah, just listen and don't talk, right, it's good.

Mm-hmm, it's hard because we do.

We always want to fix it and it is. And I'm not gonna say I'm not the perfect mom. I haven't always been the perfect mom. I'm getting better at learning to listen to them and let them have their space and you know, and sometimes you know they're freaking out and I just want to be like can we just calm down for a moment?

Sometimes they just need to freak out.

You're right, we just gotta let them freak it out out sometimes. That's right, yeah, I love this.

So so, yeah, so all this to say you know we're talking about, you know. I want to jump in this really quick, telling you know, talking about storytelling and why this is important and maybe for somebody who is in the business space I don't know whether you know, she's an entrepreneur or Maybe she's coming from corporate and she's looking to move into a space this importance, I think, of storytelling because I think it also goes back to this whole authenticity thing, right, which is so hard for a lot of us to be vulnerable and To share.

But one of the things I bring to this, as I, you know, I used to in my background with Mary Kay, 22 years in there we used to always talk about nothing happens until somebody sells something, and we also knew that nobody cared what you sell Till they knew why you did what you did, and so we were always really big on storytelling. So maybe we could, you know, share a little bit of your thoughts on that aspect of you mentioned authenticity. But maybe, if you have a little more you want to add in, that totally open to it, you yeah, I mean, I think it just goes hand in hand with being vulnerable.

It's it's, you know, allowing ourselves to be authentic. And I, and I think one of the big barriers I think people have in sharing their stories is that they're afraid that they're not gonna relate with anyone. We're always so isolated in our own heads. You know, mental illness in particular, parenthood in particular, marriage in particular, those are, those are just off the top of my head, big areas where I know that because I've been all of those things and I've I've had moments where I'm overwhelmed at either as a mom or as a professional, or just with mental health in general, and you're like nobody feels this way, nobody's, nobody's. This is crazy that I feel this way. No one's gonna understand, no one's gonna be able to relate, I'm gonna look ridiculous.

And it's only in those moments where we push past that boundary and that that place of fear and we do share our background or our lived experience, because we've all got a story and we've all got lived experience. We may not all have, you know, a story about suicide, loss, we may not all have a story about to caring for someone with mental illness, but we all have our own stories and experiences in life and, and while they're certainly not all the same, they they have similar aspects and they have connection points and and that's the reason why we share a story because, let's let's say, I share my survivor story with a group of people and I don't know where those people are, kind of on on that continuum of loss. Maybe someone just lost someone, maybe someone's years out from having lost someone. Maybe someone shares their story, maybe someone doesn't. But when I share mine, maybe there's just one small aspect of of how I navigated it or some of the things that I did for myself in terms of self-care, or how I Channeled my feelings into volunteer worker, advocacy work, or whatever it may be that that story, that one story, has the capacity to resonate with us in some small way. And when that happens, that's when my story has an impact on you or whoever else is listening, and they take that and they incorporate that into their life and and into their habits and into their routine and their thinking, and maybe it changes something for them, maybe it shifts something in a positive way or helps them cope with something More effectively, or or gives them an idea that they never even thought of.

So that's, you just never know how your experience and story is going to affect somebody else, and to withhold that from the world I think is doing everybody around you a real disservice, because we we can't gauge how our experiences are gonna, are gonna land on someone Right and what they may do for someone. So I think it's one of the most powerful tools we have kind of in our pocket and and it's one of the oldest tools we all have. I mean it's before, before we ever had TV or, you know, internet or any of the technology that we have now to be able to communicate with each other. We sat around and we told people stories and and that was how we made an impact. So I mean I I do it now as as often as I possibly can, just as a way of, number one, normalizing how important it is to do that, and number two, for whatever value somebody may find in it. And I that's why I think I think we should all be doing the same.

I love it. Well, lisa, I think what you're doing is great, and I think you know again I say it every time I have stories like this that it's unfortunate that we have to go through the things that we do, but I think the blessing is that is when you come on the other side and you can find a way to turn the pain into something that can help other people, and that's what you're doing here.

You're take, you know, your ability to take this and move it into a space for now. You can say here's some things that I've gone through, you know, and now how I can help somebody else maybe is navigating, some of those similar things, and I think, that's the beauty, and all of this is when you're able to do that.

Yeah, well, you know, I think Myself I can't speak for anybody else, but I feel like I have an obligation to do that like I I had something very big and very traumatic happen in my life and to continue on in my life and not take whatever I've learned from that or understood from that and and give it away in the hopes that it it can somehow benefit someone else. Like I feel like that's my Responsibility and that's kind of what that's. That's my why, and obviously you know to to Make sure that you know my father's suicide was was not in vain, just to to make something Purposeful from it.

I love it. I love it, lisa. I love what you're doing.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

So you've got a lot of resources. We talked a little bit about this off-camera, so I'd love you to share, you know, for you to share a little bit about that, because there may be somebody that listens to this and maybe they know somebody they're in a particular situation where they would like to get some more information.

Yeah, so that's one of the things that I've worked super hard on in the past probably six months or so is just completely redesigning my website to be that hub or that destination whatever you want to call it for mental health resources and support and content and videos and guidance. And One of the big, one of the big pillars of the website has become this mental health resources page that I have that I spent a lot of time Curating because I wanted it to be something very, very different than what you would kind of find on your typical Mental health website. You'd find, like your top, you know, call 988 or call the crisis, you know, call the crisis hotline of the crisis text line of the Trevor project or Samaritans, which, of course, are absolutely all of the places you should be calling. But there are also very specific needs that very specific Communities have and they need organizations, who, who can cater to those needs, like the BIPOC community and the Asian community and the Latinx community and the LGBTQ community and the parent community. So I wanted to take the idea of kind of a big catch-all mental health resource page and break it down by what I believe to be some of the you know, the bigger communities out there. So I broke it all down into 16 different categories.

So now, if you're a veteran and you're looking for mental health resources, you can go to my resource page and click on veterans resources or if you're in Canada, click on that link, click on European resources, or I have a link on there that also gives you. I think at this point it's about 110 out of the 195 different countries around the world and what they're? They're the equivalent of their 988 Suicide hotline numbers are an emergency numbers are. So I've all this information broken down by category and and that's where people can find, hopefully, the help and the services that they need. And it's all right there on my website At Lisa sugarman calm. You can bookmark it, you can share it. That's that's my goal is to have as many people have it in their pocket as possible.

Very good, we'll make sure to Lisa. When this goes out, we'll make sure you get that. You get tagged or whatever. Some people know how to connect with you and reach out.

That's great.

Of course, you know to our audience if you need resources. Like I said, if you know someone or you feel like you're in a position where you need some help, please feel free to check out Lisa's work and and her resource page, and so we so. Thank you so much for jumping on here and talking about a very important topic. I feel like this is an important topic and you know, sharing your, your wisdom and knowledge, and we appreciate you.

I am so happy to be here and and if it's okay with you, I just wanted to add one, one tiny thing at the end here. Obviously, my resource page is is something that everybody can can use and can can source whenever they need it. But if someone's in crisis right now, if they're struggling or you know somebody who's struggling, call the 988 crisis lifeline number. It's a number you can call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Someone will always be there to listen and to give you support. So that's just something that that everybody should kind of have on their brains to use when they need it.

Thank you for sharing that. By the way, appreciate you, of course. You guys, yep, and as always, you guys take care, be safe, be kind to one another and we will see you next time.