Savings Circles - Asset

So I started this Savings Circles program at: http://www.momentum.org/  My first class was on budgeting, my second class, on assets.

We started with, what is an asset? OK, I can do this, I know what this is, in terms of finances.

Then we turn the page and the next question is, "While I'm reading this story, I want you to start drawing."

What is on the page? It's my life, in two years......

The instructor tells the story and I start thinking about teaching DBT skills in schools, owning a truck one day, living in a home, swimming, and then I remember.....

I've been here before, and I've dreamt this before, and I've accomplished my goals before, and been where I've wanted to be in my life before, and it all crashed and burned on me. Just like my goals and dreams always have done before.

WHY AM I DOING THIS AGAIN!!!??? I'LL JUST LOSE IT ALL AGAIN!!!

Tears begin to stream down my face and I get up and leave the room to go to the washroom. I recover my composure and go back to the classroom.

We talks about five asset areas:

1. Finances
2. Connections
3. Skills and Knowledge
4. Basic Needs and Services
5. Sense of Self

I set goals and look at what I need to work on in these areas.

1.  My Sense of Self. (Always a struggle for me)
2. Basic Needs (Definitely an every day struggle)
3. Finances 

Now I need to go and make S.M.A.R.T Goals for these.

Suicide effects 6+

It was Monday, April 19, 1993 when my mom and I were sitting and watching the evening 6 o'clock news. It was around that time that the phone rang, my mom picked up, and I heard the change in her voice.

It was the day that I learned my cousin shot herself. She left behind three teenage children, and a husband.

To say that suicide affects only six people, is absolutely false. I had attempted suicide, and saw my cousin not long before she took her life. I blamed myself for a while for not seeing the signs, but how could I? I lived in Alberta, and she in Saskatchewan. She was a mother and wife, and I was an 18-year-old spending time with her daughters, not her.

I saw the effects the family went through afterwards. The broken relationships that went on. It was a devastating and long-lasting effect, that continues on until today.

Her children never got their mom to be their at their weddings, the birth of their children, to be by their side for the joys and failures.

But I can't speak to what they went through, for I am not them. I can speak to the effect this had on me. It cost me a relationship with one of my cousins, it costs me when I think that suicide might actually be an option for me.

Her suicide, affected 3 children, a husband, sisters, parents, grand-parents, cousins, and grand-children, and many more. So to say that suicide effects six, is a bunch of statistical false bullshit if you ask me.

Until this day, my cousins cannot speak of her death, and the circumstances that surrounded it.

I write this today, because this is what is on my mind lately. I have had another suicide in my life, of a dear friend. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the funeral of dear Michaela, I found out of her suicide long after she was buried and remembered. I had to grieve her death alone, and find some way to come to terms with it.

That is also, something I am struggling to do.

Please remember there IS help out there. And if you are planning to take your life, there are MANY people who would be affected by your death. People, you never even thought cared.

You can get help in Canada at: http://thelifelinecanada.ca/ 

 In U.S. at: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

 If you're part of transgender community: https://www.translifeline.org/

Crisis Text for U.S. and Canada: http://www.crisistextline.org/

LGBTQ youth: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/