Well - Read

I wrote a story about suicide early on as a reporter in 1981. A reader wrote me a letter I have to this day about her 20-year-old son committing suicide. “It is very hard for a mother who raised five kids and knew when they were a month old that they were sick. And when they got to be 18 did not know.”

I have never forgotten those lines nor a story I read about a man’s son who committed suicide being the “victim of a minute.”

So, when I had the opportunity to read “Why Did She Jump?” by Joan Childs and interview her, I knew it was right up my alley, as I have an interest in grief. She wrote that it’s strange that, when you lose your parents, your mortality smacks you in the face and you realize poignantly that you’re the next generation, but that is much harder to lose a child and relates a friend’s baby monitor registering every “whimper, cry, kvetch, grunt, gurgle and breath” coming from the crib, but finding it harder to help once children become grown up. When it comes to grief, Childs is an expert speaker who knows how to reach any audience. A psychotherapist for nearly 40 years and a woman who has personally known and overcome grief in her own life, Childs is both inspiring and informative.

A mother of five and grandmother to nine, married and divorced four times, and a clinical social worker in private practice for nearly 40 years, Childs thought she had experienced or seen it all. But nothing could have prepared her for the death of her daughter, Pam. A psychotherapist, Pam battled constantly with bipolar disorder until one fateful summer day in 1998, when her demons overwhelmed her, she plunged to her death from a 15th-floor balcony at age 34. Even with their combined credentials and medical knowledge, Pam still could not be saved. Childs tried with both professional and maternal efforts to help her daughter, but had no clue she would take her life. The disease became her executioner, she wrote.

Childs said six million people suffer from bipolar disorder and that it took 10 years for Pam’s diagnosis because bipolar mimics other disorders. She said it receives a stigma, but “it’s a disease like cancer or anything else.”

Pam became the driving force behind Childs’ latest book, which brings hope to anyone struggling with grief from the loss of a child or loved one to mental illness. Her book is so inspiring it’s been optioned for a movie by Zani Entertainment Media Group, and is currently in pre-production, perhaps being filmed in New Orleans.

Fierce and tender, Childs’ compelling storytelling gives an insightful yet sensitive look at her daughter’s life dealing with bipolar disorder. Peeling back the layers of pain and despair, she takes readers through the dark days of grief and guilt she felt both as a mother and as a frustrated professional who doesn’t understand why more hasn’t been done about the disease. With brutal honesty, Childs recalls how the lives of her entire family became entwined with her daughter’s illness as they watched her sink deeper into a place where no one could reach her. It is a powerful story of courage, hope, acceptance, and finally, forgiveness. Childs reflects on her daughter’s many accomplishments, in spite of her illness, and sees them as Pam’s legacy to the world.

In spite of many personal losses, Childs “walks the talk”; she lives life to its fullest and maintains a level of energy and passion at age 76. She said she is a kindred spirit to those who have dealt with similar situations. “I realize that nothing is forever and that life has no guarantees,” she writes. “I live life in the moment, for nothing is forever.”

Childs ignites passion in others to find their own path to courage, healing and hope after the heartbreak and struggle of losing a loved one/child to suicide or any other cause of death.

Childs reminds that no one goes through life without losing a loved one. Perhaps the best we can do is remember what we had and not what we lost, Childs wrote.

She said there is no right or wrong way to grieve. “You can be a victim or survivor. I wasn’t going to be a victim,” she said. Childs said she chose to be a phoenix and decided to morph her life into purpose and passion. She suggests moving on and not staying stuck.

“Grievers are nocturnal,” she said.

“I loaded my guilt gun every night, aimed it toward my heart and pulled the trigger until my soul bled to death,” she wrote. She said it was an abyss of despair and recovery and survival. Colors were gone. “I had sight, but I didn’t see,” Childs wrote. “I heard, but it was difficult to listen. The music was gone. I couldn’t hear the birds. I couldn’t see the trees and I couldn’t feel any joy.”

“Grieving is the healing feeling” is a slogan she uses. Childs said she’s gone through the years unwittingly along the stages of grief, and adds that you have to have forgiveness.

After many years, she can now see her daughter in paintings, poetry and music, smells her in flowers, sees her in butterflies, rainbows, clouds and seagulls, hears her in laughter of children, and feels her in breezes. She watches movies wondering if Pam would love or hate them. Her father remembers her graduations with paternal pride and hope in his heart. A doctor, he could get seats at any sports game, tickets to Broadway theaters and seating in restaurants in 10 minutes, but he could not save his daughter either.

She said she took the John Walsh position on speaking out about the issue. “My fingers touched the keyboard with my soul’s instruction,” she wrote. “ I had nothing to do but show up at the computer. My heart wrote my story.”

She has made appearances on the shows of Oprah Winfrey, Mark Wahlberg, Maury Povich and Montel Williams.

For more information, visit www.joanechilds.com.