In July 2008, I was sitting in a Starbucks when my phone rang.
My brother had taken his own life.
I had no idea anything was wrong.
There had been no moment when I understood what was coming. No opportunity to recognize what was happening and somehow intervene. There was simply life before that phone call, and life after it.
I've never forgotten the shock of that moment or the time that followed.
Over the years, I've been forced to revisit what happened to my brother many times.
Then, in January 2020, my father-in-law took his own life.
The grief was compounded. So were the questions.
Because much of what we commonly talk about when we talk about suicide prevention, particularly every September, didn't seem to explain either of the experiences I had lived through.
And by then, suicide wasn't something I understood only through loss.
For much of the past twenty years, I have also loved and fought for someone who has consistently verbalized that they no longer want to be here.
That changes the question.
It becomes more than Why did this happen?
It becomes:
Why does a human being reach a place where continuing to live feels impossible? And what might we be missing when we try to answer that question?
I started looking for answers.
By 2013, that search had taken me deeply into the world of neuroimmune disorders and the complicated relationship between physical health, immune function, infection, brain chemistry and behavior.
I became an advocate for families affected by PANS and PANDAS and other neuroimmune conditions.
Through PAE Kids SC, I traveled across South Carolina speaking at events, educating families, professionals and communities, and advocating for children whose medical and behavioral symptoms were too often misunderstood.
Eventually, that advocacy took me to the South Carolina State House.
I worked to advance H.3725, legislation that would have established a statewide advisory council on PANS and PANDAS to address research, diagnosis, treatment and education.
In March 2019, the bill passed the South Carolina House 109–0 before being sent to the Senate, where it ultimately stalled in the Senate Medical Affairs Committee.
It didn't become law.
But that experience reinforced something that had already become very clear to me:
Sometimes the answers are more complicated than the systems we've built to provide them. And sometimes changing those systems means refusing to stop asking questions.
My work expanded into mental-health advocacy.
Before mental-health outreach became my job, it was already a significant part of my life.
My advocacy began before 2016, but that year I became deeply involved as a volunteer with NAMI Piedmont Tri-County, presenting educational programs, speaking in the community and working directly with individuals and families.
In 2019, after the bill stalled, I realized that PAE Kids SC was too small of an organization to make the impact that I really wanted, and so I took on the role of Community Outreach Coordinator at NAMI Piedmont Tri-County with the hopes that being with a larger organization, I could enact more change.
Over the years that followed, I spoke throughout the community in schools, businesses, civic organizations and public events. I worked with families, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, government agencies and community leaders.
But I wanted to do more than talk about the need for resources.
I wanted to help build them.
I was instrumental in creating York County's first Mental Health Drop-In Center. I identified the need, developed the proposal, took it to the board, and made the case for why our community needed a dedicated place for peer support, connection, and access to mental-health resources. Once the idea became a reality, I worked alongside our other outreach coordinator and executive director to open and staff the center, where we worked directly with the people it was created to serve.
I also conceived and launched a countywide mental-health task force, bringing local leaders, community stakeholders, providers, and others invested in mental-health care to the same table. I developed the concept, rationale, and agenda, then organized and facilitated the first several meetings. The goal was not another awareness campaign. It was to create an ongoing forum where the people with the ability to influence change could have honest conversations about what York County was missing and what we could do about it, including better access to services, stronger community resources, and the need for additional treatment beds. The task force eventually continued beyond my leadership, but I remain proud of having created the framework that brought those conversations together.
I secured grant funding and led the development of a crisis and mental-health resource app designed to help people find those resources when they needed them.
I received awards for that work, including the 2023 Community Member Merit Award for my contributions to mental-health advocacy.
But one experience stayed with me.
When I eventually left the organization, I realized there wasn't sufficient momentum to continue developing the resource app.
The need hadn't disappeared just because a project ended.
So I built something of my own.
Find Support Today.
I created FindSupportToday.com to help people find peer support specialists, mentors, sponsors, advocates and other sources of support based on shared lived experience.
Because sometimes what a person needs first isn't another pamphlet or another list of organizations.
Sometimes they need to find another human being who understands.
My work in peer support continued in other ways as well.
I became a Certified Peer Support Specialist and a Certified Forensic Peer Recovery Specialist. I worked as an online Peer Support Moderator for Supportiv, facilitating anonymous group conversations for people who needed somewhere safe to talk. I also created content for ShareWell and continued working in peer-support communities.
I've now experienced this issue from more directions than I ever expected.
As a sister. As a daughter-in-law. As someone trying to keep a person I love alive. As a neuroimmune advocate. As a legislative advocate. As a community educator. As an outreach coordinator. As a peer support specialist. And as someone who has spent years building resources when the resources I thought should exist didn't.
And I still have questions.
All of that experience has given me tremendous respect for the people working in mental-health care and suicide prevention.
It has also made me much less comfortable with simple answers.
Mental illness can be a driver of suicidal ideation.
But it isn't the only possible driver.
Human beings are complicated. So are our brains and our bodies.
Mental illness, trauma, grief, isolation, physical illness, neurological and biological factors, substances, medications, relationships, environment and circumstances can intersect in ways that don't fit neatly into a single explanation.
I don't believe we help people by pretending otherwise.
I believe we help them by remaining willing to ask questions.
And September kept bothering me.
Every September, suicide prevention suddenly becomes visible.
Statistics are shared.
Graphics appear.
People are reminded to check on their friends.
We encourage people who are struggling to reach out.
Those things matter.
But my brother died in July.
My father-in-law died in January.
And people living with suicidal thoughts don't stop having them when September ends.
Families don't stop searching for answers.
People trying desperately to keep someone they love alive don't get to put that responsibility away on October 1.
The questions certainly don't disappear.
Mine never did.
That's why I created Beyond September™.
Beyond September isn't based on the idea that I have figured out suicide.
After nearly twenty years of living with it, studying it, advocating around it, working alongside people affected by it and losing people I love to it, I am more convinced of its complexity than ever.
Beyond September exists because I believe we need a larger conversation.
One willing to ask difficult questions.
One that respects what we know while remaining curious about what we don't.
One that listens to research and professionals, but also to people with lived experience and the families who have spent years trying to understand.
One that talks about prevention before a crisis.
One that helps people find credible information, resources and meaningful support.
One that continues looking for better answers.
And one that doesn't disappear on October 1.
Suicide prevention cannot be a one-month conversation.
For me, it never has been.
That's why I care.
That's why Beyond September exists.