" Andrea actually gave me the best, worst gift you could give somebody. She taught me what it was to be left behind. "  - Elaine Lindsay

Fatima Bey: 0:09

Bienvenidos a MindShift Power Podcast, el único podcast del mundo creado para empoderar a la próxima generación. Soy su anfitriona, Fátima Bey, la MindShifter, porque construir el mundo del mañana comienza con las conversaciones que tenemos hoy. Bienvenidos a todos. Hoy nos acompaña Elaine Lindsay, de Ontario, Canadá. Es la fundadora de Suicide Zen Forgiveness, y hoy tendremos una conversación muy amena. Así que, Elaine, ¿por qué no te presentas y nos cuentas sobre ti?

Elaine Lindsay: 0:46

Bueno, gracias por invitarme, Fátima. Te lo agradezco mucho. Me conocen como la Pollyanna oscura, y a medida que avancemos en el tema, seguro que la gente lo entenderá. Soy, supongo, una friki de la informática y un hacker que finalmente tuvo que prestar atención a lo que considero el mejor y el peor regalo que me dieron en mi vida, y eso fue de mi amiga que murió cuando yo tenía 16 años. Se suicidó, y así es como llegamos a donde estamos hoy.

Señor Fátima: 1:20

So what is Suicides and?

Elaine Lindsay: 1:22

Forgiveness. What is it? Suicides and Forgiveness. The podcast is for guests who want to share their story, because when you share your story, it lightens your burden. And we talk about suicide loss, we talk about suicidal ideation, we talk about attempts, we talk about mental health, we talk about all the conversations that are difficult, that people don't want to have and I've actually coined it's conversations that we need to have daily so that people understand just how prevalent suicide is.

Fatima Bey: 2:06

It is very suicide. I mean, it is very prevalent Conversations. You said Savations. Yeah, I like that and that makes sense to me. So you have a podcast and I have seen you on other people's podcasts talking about this. I have seen you on other people's podcasts talking about this and you've become a champion of this topic and very good at it, and so tell us your story of how you got into this.

Elaine Lindsay: 2:34

Okay, thank you for that.

Elaine Lindsay: 2:36

Y sí, de hecho empezó cuando probablemente tenía menos de cinco años. Hay algo que nadie supo hasta mucho después en mi vida y era la ideación suicida. No tenía nombre, no sabía qué era, solo sabía que si quemaba mi tostada o se me caía algo, una de mis opciones siempre era, bueno, simplemente podía irme de esta vida. No lo sabía, no todo el mundo pensaba así. No tenía ni idea de dónde venía ni de qué se trataba. Unos años después, trabajé en una institución mental. Ahora tienes que entenderlo. Tengo 69 años. Cumpliré 70 en noviembre. Soy un baby boomer. Así que viví hace mucho, mucho tiempo, cuando las cosas eran muy diferentes. Tenían un Dios. Perdóname, pero esa estúpida canción que hablaba de estar encerrado en una granja de locos es como la llamaban, y tenía 12 años cuando empecé a hacer voluntariado.

Elaine Lindsay: 3:41

By the time I was 15, started volunteering by the time I was 15, they actually hired me for summer. I was a lifeguard for adult training unit, which was kind of funny because I'm barely five foot two and some of the people I was trying to coax into a pool were six foot six and in a couple of cases mean as snakes, in a couple of cases mean as snakes, but I found a way to get them to do what I needed them to do in a way that was fun for all of us. It was really important to me. It's January 1st. We are so excited, and on New Year's Eve I was babysitting and so was my friend, but she was babysitting her late aunt and like old, old aunt and uncle, and I didn't want to call her. I had actually picked up the phone and slammed it down because I didn't want to get her in trouble. That next night, when I went to the concert, I couldn't find her. I couldn't find any of our friends and I walked around in a bit of a stupor. And I'll admit back then I was a wild child. Okay, I did drugs, I tried drinking Don't like the taste of alcohol so I was high on something stupid. It was an Alice Cooper concert. Of course I was on something stupid. It was an Alice Cooper concert, of course I was.

Elaine Lindsay: 5:07

An hour into the concert, a guy that we knew came barreling towards me and said please tell me, it's not true, this can't be happening. We didn't have cell phones or pagers or anything like that back then, and I lived at the edge of town, so it took me a long time to get anywhere too. I said what are you talking about? He said, oh my God, andrea's dead. What are you talking about? So she took her life and I slapped him as hard as I could. I don't know why I slapped him, it just I didn't want that to be true. What came out of his mouth, but part of me, because I couldn't find anybody and because, on top of everything else, I was high, suddenly knew that my life as I knew it had ended and I didn't know where to go from there.

Elaine Lindsay: 5:52

By the end of that concert, some other people, two of my other friends, showed up, and by the end of the concert, some other people had to take me somewhere because they couldn't send me home like that. Some other people had to take me somewhere because they couldn't send me home like that. You see, back then things were a little bit different too, because my friend was Jewish and I was Catholic, and in the Catholic religion the worst sin you can ever commit is to take your own life. The other thing is it was 1972 in Canada, it had just turned 1972, and attempted suicide was still a crime. Oh wow, I didn't know how to go home and tell my parents. I wanted to protect Andrea, I wanted to make sure that nobody said anything wrong about her or made fun of her, and that permeated the next four years of my life. I managed to tell my parents, who, of course, didn't react the way I thought they would. My parents were very good people, but I could not reconcile what had happened.

Elaine Lindsay: 7:08

Little ideation. I now knew what the hell that meant, and what was going on in my head was that I was going to do what she had done. I knew at that point it was only a matter of time. The next four years were spent either getting drugs, drinking and, every evening, sitting in the cemetery. Whether it was snow, whether it was summer didn't matter.

Elaine Lindsay: 7:28

Sitting there like a lump waiting for answers that never came, and that's the hardest thing when you're young is not being able to get answers to something. That is really like driving your brain round in circles. I mean, it's bad at any age, but when you're young you're just learning about all these things. You're a biological pot of soup. All these hormones are doing weird things, your body's doing weird things and then to have to have these thoughts. It is absolutely horrific and in all honesty I didn't deal with it well. Mostly.

Elaine Lindsay: 8:11

I would think the suicidal ideation had a lot to do with that. Our other friends seemed to move on. My parents had to take me home to Scotland for six weeks because they thought that might help. They didn't understand what was going on, they had no idea of what I was going through and in fact they took me back to Scotland, which just gave me a whole new host of friends to meet and drugs to get and drinks to have, so that I could be numb there too, because the most important thing for me was being numb. I learned just two years ago that in fact I basically mentally just took the train back to 12 years old and stayed there. Took the train back to 12 years old and stayed there Mentally. I had no concept of finance or money or any of those things, and I stumbled through life that way.

Elaine Lindsay: 9:07

One quick thing I'll insert there four years after Andrea died, I was crushed between three cars in front of her grave. I swear that she's the reason I'm still here. Somebody put the fur hood up on my coat so my head didn't split like a melon, lost part of my leg. I was seven months pregnant. I lost my child. I had multiple breaks in both legs. My skull was fractured. I had all kinds of internal injuries. The next five years were spent in and out of surgery. I'm now bionic, which is kind of cool.

Elaine Lindsay: 9:43

All of this to say, it took me a really long, long time to get to a place where I could start to understand what was going on. But in all that time, every time, I came to the edge and let me tell you there were a lot of them. There were a number of times I went over, but I'm a really good actress, so never got caught. Well, except once in the hospital when they were pumping my stomach. They give you charcoal and then pump your stomach. I had all kinds of excuses. I don't know that they bought them, but the horrible thing is nobody said anything. Nobody asked me any questions. Nobody went any deeper than oh well, you're breathing again. And what I took from all that?

Elaine Lindsay: 10:36

Finally, in 2018, kate Spade and, a week or two later, anthony Bourdain took their lives and all of a sudden, it was you know what Andrea actually gave me the best, worst gift you could give somebody. She taught me what it was to be left behind. So every time that I got close, every time I did one of those stupid things, andrea was in my ear saying hey, do you really want to do that to your family? Do you remember how upset you were? You're still a mess, and that played in my head all the time.

Elaine Lindsay: 11:13

Y finalmente, en 2018, comencé un podcast. Se llamaba "Keep Breathing", porque no sabía cómo llamarlo de otra manera, y era un poco torpe, y solo le rogaba a la gente que hablara con alguien. No te quites la vida. Te lo digo de alguien que ha pasado por eso varias veces: no lo hagas. Y no sabía cómo transmitirlo. En 2021, cambié el nombre a "Suicide Zombies and Forgiveness" por algo que aprendí en un parque de zombis, lo cual fue una tontería, pero la gente no entendía que era un podcast serio, así que lo cambié a "Suicide Zen Forgiveness", porque necesitas llegar a un estado de calma para poder perdonar todo lo que te ha sucedido. Y, más importante aún, y por favor, escucha esto si no escuchas nada más: perdónate a ti mismo. Hacemos lo mejor que podemos, tengamos la edad que tengamos, y castigarte y darte vueltas a preguntas que nunca tendrán respuesta no ayuda a nadie, no ayuda.

Fatima Bey: 12:31

Quiero retomar. Quiero retomar lo que comentabas y el hecho de que tuviste muchas ideas suicidas antes de que tu amiga se quitara la vida, lo cual influyó mucho en tu reacción. Quiero hablar de eso porque no es algo de lo que la gente hable, pero creo que es algo que ocurre. Creo que es algo que ocurre, y no solo cuando te suceden cosas a otras personas, y esto va más allá del suicidio. Cuando vemos que algo horrible le sucede a alguien a nuestro alrededor, y en este caso fue un suicidio, conecta con esa parte de nosotros que casi estuvo ahí, y eso puede ser más traumatizante que el evento en sí.

Elaine Lindsay: 13:13

When you were Absolutely, when you were Sorry, go ahead, sorry, that guilt, it doesn't matter that it didn't happen to you, the fact that you were there or you are so close to that person, you feel like you should have been there. There was always a feeling that, oh my God, I could have stopped it, I could have picked up that phone. But you know what? That's not true. When someone is ready to go and you haven't reached out, there's nothing we can do at that last moment. There is nothing, and that's why it's all about the. Let's get people to talk, let's talk about this Because, let's face it, okay, as a teen, I didn't want to talk to my parents. I didn't want to talk to my parents about anything.

Elaine Lindsay: 14:06

First of all, oh my God, back then, when she, they were so square and were so oh my God, they were so righteous and so Catholic and all the things that I was not interested in when I was 15 and 16 years old. And any kid will tell you the same thing. I mean, you don't necessarily want to tell your parents there is a piece of you that does but you need them to ask you in the right way. And you know what I've learned. I'm a mom, I'm a glam ma and no, that's not a speech impediment. I have learned the hard way that we do want to talk. We just need to know that somebody's listening. That is safe. And as a teenager, even as a young kid, as whatever, I don't necessarily want you to fix me. I just want you to listen to me. You listen with your ears. I don't want your mouth open, Like put duct tape on your mouth. If you're a parent and you want to talk to your kid, duct tape your mouth shut and give them a sign saying I will listen, yes.

Fatima Bey: 15:17

That's something I say on here all the time. We need to listen to our youth. We spend a lot of time lecturing them and telling them what they should do and blah, blah, blah. But none of that matters. If we don't listen, it really doesn't, because they're not listening to us, unless we first listen to them Absolutely. If we have great and wonderful and right things to say, it does not matter. We got to listen, and not only that, but we don't always understand. As adults, we don't always understand them and sometimes we just can't. We didn't grow up in the world we're growing up in. We can't understand them. So we need them to tell us, but that can't happen unless we listen.

Elaine Lindsay: 15:56

That's so true, and I get the fact that things are are monumentally different today than they were when I was a kid and every generation there are differences. Okay, I get that. This, now Gen Z and whatever came after it, is the single fastest spurt in time of everything from technology to food to everything that we knew has morphed into something else, and it's at such a speed it's hard even for young kids to keep up with what's going on. Imagine for some of us old people and you know, I've been here for over six decades yeah, yeah, but you're more tech savvy than me, so I think you got some on us.

Elaine Lindsay: 16:58

Well, yeah, the tech savvy came from you know you spend a couple of years in the hospital. You've got nothing else to do. So computers were a lot of fun, but it's got to be intimidating for kids to deal with all this technology, to have to deal with all the changes that are coming at them like bang, bang, bang all the time. It's so incredibly terrifying that I think, even more importantly, that's why we need to listen. Yes, yes, because if you don't understand it, you know most kids do understand a lot of it. Some of it is assimilation. It's just the way it works with the world. You know you come along and you get the latest stuff because everybody else does. But there is a gap between every generation and the only way to get past that gap is to build a bridge, and that bridge is listening, and I wish I'd come to this so much sooner.

Elaine Lindsay: 18:06

I do say I am a super slow learner, so if anybody's going to repeat the lesson it'll of my grandkids tells me that somebody bullied them or somebody did something, the heathen in me wants to just go after that person and annihilate them. I'm just being honest. That's who I am. Okay, I am mother bear extraordinaire. Okay, I am mother bear extraordinaire. I have to take a pause because I have learned, in pulling all the things together, even from when I was a kid. Andrea's suicide made such a difference. I understood over time that my parents didn't know how to deal with this, that my parents didn't know how to deal with this, so expecting things from them wasn't really fair. I had to give them a little more information.

Fatima Bey: 19:14

I think what you just said, is very, very key when we're dealing with stuff, really hard stuff, and we are still trying to just figure it out ourselves. Sometimes, especially when we're young, we expect our parents to be that answer, or the people around us, whether it's your parents, whether it's your auntie, siblings, whatever. We expect them to be there for us and to be that answer. And the truth is, they may not know how to be the answer, and so we have to be able to figure it out anyway. And I want to point out the fact that you have taken your pain and turned it into purpose and that's why we're having this conversation and for listeners out there, especially my precious youth, my young adults and teens, the pain that you're going through you can also turn it into purpose.

Fatima Bey: 20:06

Puede que no lo hagas en los próximos cinco minutos, puede que lo hagas en el próximo año, pero puedes tomar la decisión de no quedarte sentado bajo el dolor, sino que lo tomarás y harás algo con él. Y eso es lo que Elaine ha hecho. Ha tomado el dolor de lo que ha pasado, lo que ha experimentado, su propio dolor, el dolor de su amiga, y ha decidido que lo hará. Encontró una manera de ayudar a los demás, y esta mujer ha tenido muchas conversaciones, no solo en este podcast, que realmente han cambiado vidas. Es muy evidente que las personas que entran en contacto con ella experimentan un cambio de mentalidad, lo cual es hermoso. Dicho esto, Elaine, ¿qué les dirías a los jóvenes que están pasando por un dolor que no saben cómo afrontar? ¿Cómo pueden convertir eso en un propósito?

Elaine Lindsay: 20:59

Primero, todo está bien. Sea lo que sea que estés pasando, ya sean sentimientos, si te hirieron, emociones o dolor físico, recuerda que pasará. Pasará, esto cambiará. Es algo temporal. Nada, nada es para siempre, excepto la muerte, y no quieres una solución permanente para algo que es temporal en el momento. Pase lo que pase en ese momento.

Elaine Lindsay: 21:34

If the person that you fall in love with rejects you, that is horrible pain. If you break your leg, that is horrible pain and all of those things. To the person that's suffering, it is the worst pain in the world and I get that. But you have to take a nap. Go take a nap. If it's not bedtime, you can't go to sleep for the whole night. Go take a nap, because when you wake up from even a short little nap those first I don't know 10 to 17 seconds you're a blank slate, there's nothing there. Okay, you can choose to go forward in a different way. You can choose to put whatever was driving you nuts behind you and make a different choice. And it's just, it's like this special little eraser you get that's going to allow you to put things behind you.

Elaine Lindsay: 22:47

Y una de las cosas que realmente me ayudó con el tiempo. Sé que parece una locura, pero es sentir gratitud al principio o al final del día. Siempre pienso en tres o cinco cosas por las que estoy agradecido, y hay días en los que puedo decir que estoy agradecido. Simplemente estoy agradecido por poder decir que estoy agradecido. Esos son los días no tan buenos. Otros días sí estoy agradecido.

Elaine Lindsay: 23:19

Last Thursday morning I went to the front window. It was bucketing rain. It was kind of ugly out. I get to the window and there's a hummingbird like right there. I was ecstatic. I was like six feet off the ground by that night. That was the top of my list of gratitude. Oh my God, I saw a hummingbird like up close. Yeah, they're hard to catch With geraniums in my living room. That was why. But that kind of thing being thankful for the fact that you can get out of bed, that you can open your eyes and take a deep breath I'm thankful for my bionic parts and I'm really thankful on the days where it takes me less than 15 minutes to get out of bed. That can be a big accomplishment on certain days.

Fatima Bey: 24:10

So what I'm extracting from what you're saying right now is being thankful. We hear that from people all the time, but being thankful can actually be the very thing that helps you to get an edge over when you're really feeling down and depressed and you're really feeling all the negativity from whatever your stuff is, and that it's just that little bit that pushes you towards betterment.

Elaine Lindsay: 24:35

It's a little thing, but it gives you some dopamine. Yes, yeah, okay. And if you smile just to yourself, just in your room, as you're being grateful, you cannot look sad or frown or do any of those things when you're smiling. You just can't. Your face doesn't work that way. And it helps with the dopamine, and the dopamine I'm not pushing drugs here, but the dopamine does make you feel a little better and you get to bank that and you get to make the choice in that next moment to do something that makes you feel good, whatever that is for you. Well, elaine, how can people find you.

Elaine Lindsay: 25:21

Pueden buscar a la Pollyanna Oscura. Tengo el sitio web y el nombre de usuario por todas partes. Soy elainelindsay y también estoy ahí. Szf42.com es el sitio web de Suicide Zen Forgiveness, y también estoy ahí. También tengo el pelo turquesa. Así es fácil que me digan que la foto de la portada no tiene el pelo turquesa.

Señor Fátima: 25:55

You guys can't see her. But, yeah, thank you for coming on. I don't just want to end by saying thank you for coming on. I really appreciate you coming on and telling your story, and I truly believe that there's a lot of people listening who may or may not ever reach out to us who heard your story and had a little mind shift that made a difference, and to me, that's what it's all about, that's what I care about.

Fatima Bey: 26:20

Hearing your story, even just now, I was like wow, you're proof that we can turn our pain into purpose. You're proof that we don't have to sit under. We can choose to get over what we've been under, something I say all the time. It doesn't mean, oh, just get over it. It means you're no longer stay under it and you make a choice to climb over it and live and then say you know what I'm helping other people live too, and that I respect you so much for that and I really appreciate all that you put out there in the world and all that, all the people that you help, that we don't necessarily hear about, but I know they're there. So thank you for all that you do.

Elaine Lindsay: 27:01

Bueno, muchas gracias, y si alguno de vuestro público quiere a alguien que se tape la boca con cinta adhesiva y se limite a escuchar, que se comunique conmigo.

Fatima Bey: 27:11

Yeah, and she is a no bullshit person. I absolutely freaking love that about her.

Elaine Lindsay: 27:16

Well, thank you. Yes, I don't like bullshit, okay, and my kids always knew there's one thing you can't do. Do not lie to me. Yeah, I'm the same way I love my kids. If you get in trouble, that's okay, it happens, I'll get over it, but don't lie to me.

Fatima Bey: 27:36

Necesitamos más adultos como tú. Nuestra juventud, debería decir, nuestra juventud necesita más adultos como tú, que simplemente escuchen y comprendan, y hay muchas cosas que dijiste. Si yo fuera adolescente, me sentiría atraído por ti, simplemente porque entiendes y escuchas primero, y eso los adultos lo notan. Algunos de ustedes necesitan menos sermonear y más escuchar. Bueno, gracias por venir. Gracias, y ahora, un momento para cambiar de mentalidad. Para un momento que cambie de mentalidad, quiero plantar una semilla de pensamiento en su cabeza.

Fatima Bey: 28:12

Hoy escuchaste a Elaine hablar de cómo el suicidio de su amiga Andrea realmente le hizo sentir sus propias ideas suicidas, y luego apaciguó su dolor con medicamentos y otras cosas. Quiero que transformes ese pensamiento en una mirada a tu alrededor. ¿Cuántas personas a tu alrededor están apaciguando su dolor? No siempre son medicamentos. Podría ser con muchas otras cosas. A veces, lo que ves es a alguien apaciguando su dolor porque no sabe cómo lidiar con él de otra manera. Y aunque todos deberían ir a terapia, sé que es una realidad que no todos lo hacen, e incluso si buscas un terapeuta, es raro que encuentres uno bueno. Es un hecho.

Señor Fátima: 29:02

Dicho esto, podrías intentar ayudar. No necesitas ser terapeuta para ayudar. A veces, una de las mejores maneras de encontrar ayuda es escuchar primero. No interrumpas, no juzgues, no los mires como si fueran estúpidos o locos. Escucha primero, porque cuando escuchas primero, es cuando tus palabras pueden tener poder, y lo tendrán. Escucharte a ti mismo es solo una rama del universo MindShift. Explora más en FatimaBey.com y recuerda siempre que cambiar tu forma de pensar tiene poder. Nos vemos la próxima semana.