Cait Maddan’s free downloadable guide called “How to Hold Space for Suicide Talk” is just one key part of all the work that she does. As a doula with a focus on suicide, suicide ideation and the grievers who are left in the wake of a death, Cait does work that matters to us all. Where can we go to talk, in addition to 988 the suicide hotline? Why does it matter to make space for this topic and for chronic ideation? How can grievers be supported? By all means, let’s move out of silence and stigma and have this conversation.

⁠https://www.facebook.com/caitthedeathdoula/⁠

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Dianne Hulltt, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. Today I’m talking with Kate Madden of Aware Care Library, and Kate and I actually spoke before on episode 107. So welcome back, Kate. Thank you. I love the work that Kate does. Kate has a big presence on social media. She’s, um, at kate.

deatheducation. Kate is spelled C A I T, but Kate really has, you know, you can talk some about your background, Kate, and tell us how you got into this work, but Kate’s real focus in the, in the death field is around suicide care and suicide conversations. And I think it’s a really, really important topic.

And I feel like I haven’t done enough Best life, best death episodes about suicide. I feel like we need to say it more, talk it more, be aware of it more, know that people ideate about this. And especially this time of year, this is going up in December of 2024. And there’s just, there’s a lot of anxiety and frustration in the air.

So with that long introduction, welcome Kate. 

Cait Maddan: Thank you. Yes, you touched on so much already. The holiday season is here and it is, um, the grief is walking alongside it. And so people are really feeling all of the feelings, of course, um, and uncertainty. So grateful to be having this conversation now with you.

And like you said, there are not even remotely, not just your podcast, but anyone’s podcast, not enough episodes and information specifically about the topic of suicide. Um, that’s actually something I do each month is peruse the internet for suicide specific content to give my members. Each month, it is more difficult to find up to date, um, non clinical, just regular information.

So I’m so grateful to you to have and hold these conversations and for your listeners to also take the time to spend with us. 

Diane Hullet: That’s so interesting that you find there’s not that much information in some ways out there. As you said, that’s non clinical, that’s just kind of neutral. And yet, again, I find that Everyone is touched by suicide, whether it is through a community suicide that happens or somebody very close to you.

And so it is so important for us to all kind of, I don’t know, just speak it, just say the word and talk about it and know it’s there. Um, tell, you know, tell us a little about you, Kate. How did you come to this field? 

Cait Madden: Yeah, it was actually through life experience, um, directly related to suicide. Ten years ago, my best friend chose to end his life, and that was not the first suicide I had experienced.

Ten years prior to his death, my cousin also had taken her own life, um, but it was a different relationship. She lived out of state, we weren’t super close, she was older than I was, and our family was, um, very silent around her death, and so it was very much, this is what happened, closed case, we’re not talking about it.

Ten years later, my best friend, uh, dies by suicide, and I’m catapulted into darkness and grief and confusion and guilt and all of the emotions. And I’m left with shattered pieces, and what I noticed in all of those shattered pieces was deep fear. I was moving beyond grief at times and into death anxiety.

And it was really alarming because I wanted to think about my friend’s death. I wanted to analyze it from all these different aspects. Why did this happen? Where did he go? Could I have stopped it? I had so many questions, but I was actually afraid to think about it because I believed if I thought even the word death in my head, that it would bring about my own death.

Now years later, side note, I will come to say for anyone listening, I realize that there is such a thing as death OCD, which I lived with, um, and have overcome. And so that was definitely a moment where not only was I in grief and had death anxiety, I also was getting acquainted with death. death OCD. And so, um, very much had to walk that path.

Once you’re in the path of grief in that, uh, I heard someone actually talking about grief recently. It was, um, the death of their partner. And she said, once you’re in that tube of grief, you can’t go back. You can only go forward. And So there I was going forward, and what I found is in amongst the shattered pieces, I was really curious.

I did have a lot of questions. I was wondering things. I wanted answers. And I wasn’t willing to just not get them. So I went to the internet, as most of us do in these times, and started searching about death, and Afterlifes and just anything I could possibly find, um, and during that search, during that time, this was over a period of years, I found death doulas.

The word popped up and of course, um, it’s expanded at current recording time of 2024, um, in the field, but at the time there weren’t, there wasn’t a lot of conversation on the internet quite yet about death doula work, but there was a little bit. And I was curious because. Two months after my best friend’s death to suicide, as I’m in this deep grief, my, I get a call from the hospital, and my grandfather is, um, there, and he’s got pneumonia for the second time in two weeks.

And he says to me on the phone, he said, I need you to get up here right now, Kate. And so I go right over to his bedside, and it’s just him and I, and he’s 89 years old, and he says, I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore. We’ve, we had been caregiving for him for years. I don’t want to burden the family anymore.

I’m, I’m tired. So I sat with him and I listened and then he said, I want you to call the family in. I want you, I want to tell them about my decision. I want to start dying. And so I called the family up and we’re all around his bedside. And what I noticed during that time, his death took four days, um, from start to finish, if you will.

And what I noticed is I was. Going towards him going towards the death and dying and the rest of the family was, you know, doing their own experience, but it was farther away and very fearful, and I was still curious. And so I just was observing myself during that time and after that time and really thought death do the work that has me curious.

And, uh. Maybe I could do that. So, um, that’s kind of a little bit about what brought me into this space is life experience, observing myself being around death. And though there was lots of fear and lots of grief, there was also lots of curiosity and leaning in to that. Um, so then I started to I’m going to be talking about hospice volunteering, which was an incredible opportunity because hospice volunteering gives you a little experience in all these different areas of death.

You get to sit vigil with someone who’s taking their last breath. You get to go to the senior fair and talk to the elders about pre planning. You get to make caregiver phone calls of the bereaved and just exposed me to a lot of different areas in the death care space. And so after that, I was like, I have to take a death doula course.

This is me. This is me. So, thanks for asking. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, it’s so, hearing someone’s story like yours is always just so interesting because the threads for people who walk in this work are so common, right? That sense of, I leaned in, I got curious, you weren’t freaked out, not that you weren’t sad and upset and concerned, but you just We’re able to lean into it in a way that not everybody does.

And yeah, I totally relate to that. And so, so then how did Aware Care Library kind of come into being? How did, how did you move into what you’re doing now? 

Cait Madden: Oh, that’s so interesting. So, Of course, the death care space is so vast, as you know, and there’s so many different directions to go, quote unquote, with the work.

And there’s so many spaces that need care and people there filling in gaps. So it’s, um, no matter where you find yourself in the death care space, there’s plenty of work. Um, but I, I, so I started off initially not Having the suicide conversation, though it was maybe lightly there and I would throw up a post every now and again and I would be willing to talk to people about it.

It wasn’t a focus. I really started, um, by advanced care planning, um, helping people prepare for their death and then sitting with them either virtually or in my local community. Um, I even at one point was helping other death workers build a presence for their social media. So a whole community. whole range of, um, services and care.

But then one person, another death worker said, I want you to come help me with this thing. And I want you to talk about suicide because that’s what you know about, Kate, you’ve, you’ve had your cousin’s death and your friend’s death. Like, just come talk to us about what you know about suicide. And that was.

Such a light bulb moment for me. It was like, I do have a lot to share on this conversation. I have a really unique way of looking at the topic without panicking, without automatically assuming that by talking about suicide, it’s going to cause a suicide. And I acknowledge that it’s so steeped in stigma that nobody’s having these conversations.

What ends up happening is through having them, we extend lives rather than shorten them. Everyone thinks, oh, the second you talk about suicide, it’s gonna prompt the person that’s thought about it to go do it. Well, the person’s already been thinking about life and death and suicide, so by us allowing space for conversation, it’s actually giving their pressure valve a little opportunity to blow off some of that steam to have a release and stay, potentially.

So, um, I really took that, that invitation from my death worker friend that had hired me for a workshop to talk about suicide as an invitation to go deeper in that space. So I started really actively, um, posting online and talking to my community. About suicide specifically very directly using the language suicide in each post and what I kept finding was I would get community guideline violations and horrible comments from people and posts taken down by the platforms and I was like, whoa.

I am very heavily censored in this conversation, and I wasn’t used to that. I had spent a lot of time on social media prior talking about life and death, but when I talked specifically about suicide, it really caused a reaction among, uh, among the watchers, if you will. And so I, I, I said, Oh, this is, there’s something there.

And so initially the aware care library, my membership, uh, was born out of censorship. I needed another space that I could go outside of Instagram and Tik TOK. That just allowed me to not. Uh, write suicide in code. I have to type an exclamation point for eyes in the word suicide just to like, get it to stay on social media without a violation.

And what I found was once that little space was set up and I, I, I launched it to my audience. I said, what do you guys think about this? Would anyone join this? Do you want to do this with me? And I had 70 people at signup and I just was like, Oh, there’s something to this. I have to have this conversation.

Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. You have to have this conversation. So if somebody becomes a member, what do they get out of membership? Yep. 

Cait Madden: That’s a great question. So what you get out of a membership is I host a weekly peer space every Sunday at 6 p. m. Eastern Standard Time. There is a peer space where we talk out loud about suicide.

We talk really candidly. We use the word suicide. It’s for people that live with chronic or recurring suicidality because what we’ve found is our society thinks suicide is often this quick decision. It’s a challenge. Only teens suicide and young people. But what I found was, and actually, um, backing up a little bit to my time in hospice, I walked alongside a gentleman who was 81 who died to suicide while on hospice.

He had had enough and felt like he was burdening his caregivers and wasn’t able to access medical aid in dying and so did suicide. He was 81 years old. Um, and so I just thought there’s a whole conversation of so many folks. that live long periods of time alongside their suicidality that don’t have outlets for it.

They can’t talk to their therapist really honestly because therapists are, of course, licensed, mandated reporters and they have to hold that position for good reason, um, but it often doesn’t allow for space to talk openly about things that really need to get discussed. And, um, so. The peer spaces allow people to do that without threat of, um, some sort of incarceration or hospitalization after the fact.

They also with their membership get a digital library. So remember at the beginning of our call, I said, um, you know, I’m scouring the internet each month for content. I curate, uh, Specific elements that I add to this digital library that I’ve found throughout the Internet that are free of religion.

They’re free of clinical jargon. They’re just very neutral, easy to understand non carceral, uh, educational bets. And then also people get a digital creation by me and what that creation is, is like the workbook. And if you go back to the episode that we filmed last time, um, folks will be able to hear a little bit more about the workbook that I have.

Um, but. You know, they get items like that. So digital downloads and this is good for personal use or professional use. I have both therapists and clinicians and as well as, uh, folks that are in their beds every day because they’re unable to leave the home. Um, so there’s just a range of humans that access this.

And then the final thing folks get is a private discord. where once again we have a space free of censorship that we can just talk really openly. I found talking out loud is the key to, quote unquote, suicide prevention, if you will, keeping people, um, here with us. 

Diane Hullet: I’m just fascinated by, it seems so obvious to me, and I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before, but I’m fascinated by this piece that you, you cannot talk openly with your therapist about suicide ideation without them needing to report that or put you on a three day hold type of thing.

So how, yeah, where’s the space to explore and kind of just sit in a place where people see you and get you. And that’s what you’re creating with these online forums. So, say a little bit more about the online spaces that you’re creating. That’s once a week at this point. Is it all kinds of different ages of people without, I mean, obviously you, you have to talk with great confidentiality, but.

Cait Madden: Yeah. So we’ve actually, we’re coming up on a year now, um, of doing these weekly peer spaces. It actually started at the end of December last year, which was such an important time to, for me, I just felt so active. Um, I was quite activated a year ago. It was right after the holiday season or like lingering out of the holiday season as we moved into the new year, and it was so dense then too.

And so really, I was quite activated, um, and now a year later, I’m looking back like, wow, what had started as me just thinking a few people would show up has really grown to have quite a lot of people now. core people. It is labeled as a drop in space and you don’t have to, fun fact, you don’t have to be a member of the Aware Care Library to join us.

So if anyone’s listening to this right now and they’re like, I wish I could just like try that or see what it’s like, you can, you can just email me and I’ll send you the link. So you don’t have to be a member to access that piece. The Discord and the Digital Library are specific to members, but the Peer Space is for everyone.

So it’s really interesting because what’s happened over the last almost year, year now is we’ve formed a core group of people that week after week find themselves there. And so it’s no longer just Kate anchoring the space. I’ve got so many other humans there with me. And the, uh, ages definitely range. It is an 18 plus space.

So usually the youngest person to date has been a 20 year old. And we have folks all the way up into their 60s joining us. I would love to invite and have a conversation. Anyone above 60 as well, join us, but it hasn’t come to that quite yet. Um, yeah, all ages, all backgrounds, there is a very big community of, um, like trans and LGBTQIA plus community, um, Being a white person myself, I don’t have as many, uh, black or people of color or indigenous folks, but there are certainly plenty of people that do attend, um, and are welcome to, but we do, we see a range of who is in attendance and they’re welcome to attend.

their background of their life. Everyone’s coming in at different places. We have some single parents. We have people that have money and are able to come in from that space. And we have other people that might be threatened with losing all that they have in the next week. Um, though many folks that join the space aren’t in what we’ll call like acute crisis.

Like I am. actively in this mode. Um, again, it really is more for like that chronic recurring suicidality where people have just been living with this since they were 14 years old and have wanted to die for many, many years because of life circumstances. Um, So that’s kind of interesting because it does have more of, um, I’m going to use the word mellow, and I say that word because that was actually, um, a testimonial that someone gave once.

It’s a more mellow space where the crisis is in the room with us, but it’s not screaming at anyone, and more, as this person said in the testimonial, we’re all talking about this friend that we walk alongside. 

Diane Hullet: That’s incredible. You also recently did a group for people who, you know, kind of a tea time for people who had experienced someone dying by suicide, and you wanted to make space for those survivors as well.

Say a little bit about that. 

Cait Madden: Yes, that was so incredible. That was actually my first time really having a space. space for those of us that have had folks die to suicide. Um, it, it, this is the year on October 18th, I celebrated 10 years of my friend’s death. And I say celebrate because that’s really what we did at tea time.

Uh, folks were invited to join me with a cup of tea or any beverage of their choice because as I joked, my friend would have wanted me to have some tea. some tequila for him. Um, but we all brought our drinks for ourselves and then a drink for a person that would be kind of with us in spirit, if you will.

Um, and we, we read poetry together. We said our person’s name out loud. We talked about whatever we wanted to talk about as it related to their death and their life. It was such a healing space because so often, not only is living with suicidality stigmatized by the society we live in, the grievers of those who have lost and had someone die to suicide are also involved in that stigma because of The society we live in.

So, uh, you know, um, like I saw with my cousin’s death many, many years ago, she died and we couldn’t even talk about it because it was so taboo and so hushed. And there was some religious affiliation to in that time. So what will the religious folks say about the manner of death? And so it didn’t give us an outlet to even process or like talk out loud where other deaths, you know, if our person had died to cancer or, um, some terminal illness, that would have been much more acceptable to talk out loud about.

And so the tea time was just a wonderful opportunity for us to bring light to those that we loved, honor their truth, And the method in which they died. And, uh, I felt joy, actually, when my friend’s death anniversary came about that same week because I had honored him rather than just letting the day pass me by.

Diane Hullet: Okay, that’s just so amazing. I think creating spaces for people to come together around this are so important, whatever, however, they’ve been touched by it. This is so important. You, um, we talked also at the beginning before we hit record. We were kind of saying, let’s let’s say some actionable items for people like what are some.

What are some things that we sitting here, we listening can actually do around this topic? 

Cait Madden: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought this forward, because a lot of times we think action has to be like actively talking about suicide with others. And though that’s really valuable and we can work up to that point, we don’t have to start there.

We can start at really low commitment, um, low actionable moves. I actually have on my website, AwareCareLibrary. com, a free printable. Poster it’s an eight and a half by 11 page and on it in big letters is are you thinking about suicide? And then there’s little tags below Um that folks that might be can just take a tag and it has a thought about suicide something That’s really just neutral and reassuring that they’re seen and valued um, and then Like it does have my website on this as well on the tag.

So people are led to resources because a lot of times in our society, the one resource that we all lean on is call 988. And though that’s valuable to have a hotline like that. It cannot be the end all be all prescription of this is how we handle your ideations. This is how we handle this conversation.

Um, so a poster is a really easy way and I would say hang that at your local library. Libraries are great places to connect with on, on talks of mental health. Um, hang it at the grocery store. Wherever there’s a bulletin board in your local community, put this poster up. First of all, it’s going to get attention because it says suicide in big letters.

And then, conversation can go forward from there. Um, also things like bookmarks. I have free printable bookmarks on my website as well. And those specifically talk about suicide. Print some of those off and clip them and put them around your doctor’s office. Or if you’re having lunch at a cafe, put a couple on the table next to you.

You don’t ever have to know what happens to them. Someone could come pick them up and throw them in the trash. But you’ve kind of done your actionable part to start bringing them out into your community. And I guarantee whoever does come in contact with them will feel so seen and heard because as you keep reminding us, Diane, suicide touches us all in one way or another, whether we’ve experienced a death to it or not.

They say one death to suicide touches 130 people directly or indirectly. And as someone I just talked to on the phone the other day said, someone in their local community had died that was a public figure. The funeral had over 2, 000 people. So some suicides can touch thousands. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, wow. I can imagine that everybody listening has been touched in some way.

And if it’s really close, it can feel really hot for people because of the stigma because of the lack of discussion about it. And so I value so much, Kate, that you’re, you’re so You’re really like trying to shed a light on this. You’re really trying to say, it’s okay to discuss. It’s painful. It’s hard.

It’s complex. We can talk about it. And that matters so much. And the fact that you’re now also kind of bringing in this, uh, the grievers piece, I think is so valuable too. I do think that there are excellent hospices and local grief community places that often have a service. It’s often called like a suicide survivor group, right?

Which may be language that’s kind of changing. I don’t know, you know, the language around suicide is so important. And I would, I would say to listeners again, this, this idea of committed suicide is really old language. We really need to change that. It is not a commitment of a crime. It is a act of. Well, I don’t know, you know more than I what to say about it, but it is an act of pain and act of often isolation.

And it is much more, I think, just humane and beautiful to say died by suicide, died to suicide, than to use this old term of committed when it was illegal. It was literally illegal in some ways, which I think is where the stigma began, right? In very old laws. 

Cait Madden: I have no more to say because yes to that, truly.

Yes. 

Diane Hullet: Well, you can find out more about Kate’s work at awarecarelibrary. com. And I think that title is kind of purposely flying under the radar because as you said, there’s so much censorship about this. And you can follow her on Instagram, TikTok at kate. kate. Deaf education. And I want to point out too, again, this piece that you just said about 9 8 8, I’m so struck by this because I think this is a little bit potentially what psych hospitals do too.

It’s like, they’re really meant for crisis care. They’re really meant for stabilizing medication if that’s what someone needs. But the person is released still with the pain of what they have been going through and are still going through. And so That it’s like maybe a quick band aid, but it is not support for the wound underneath.

And so I just think it’s fascinating and, and quite shocking in terms of our mental health communities that we don’t have a better way of going forward with this. And so. Kate’s work offers a small corner, but a really important corner in the world and a corner that’s growing. So I encourage you to look up her work and take a, take a real glance at this and think about how this might be helpful for someone.

As you said, back on podcast 107, we did talk about what’s in the workbook that you have put out and a very important resource for people. 

Cait Madden: Yes. Thank you. I’m so grateful to be in this conversation and, uh, looking forward to connecting more on the topic in the future. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Thank you so much, Kate. As always, you can find out more about the work I do at Best Life.

Best death.com. Thanks so much for listening.