When Nyana Sabharwal was 13 years old, her mother committed suicide. But it would be 23 years before she shared this fact with a good friend. The spark behind the reveal? Her friend had just lost her father to suicide.
The process of sharing and processing their experiences with each other led both women to realize that there were many other people in a similar position, but without safe spaces to turn to for healing.
“Suicide in our country [India] it comes with its load of stigma. You see it in whispers, you see it in people’s angry stares, you see it in people’s body language,” Nyana says. “And it’s frequent, it’s deep, it’s chronic, and it results in a lot of embarrassment for both the family , as well as the person who is at risk.
“We talked about the importance of sharing this loss with people who really understood the loss, because [my friend] I was talking to a lot of people and I didn’t feel like I was getting the kind of understanding and comfort that I needed,” says Nyana.
And so, in 2018, We Hear You was born, founded by the two friends and their therapist, as a free monthly support group for people dealing with suicide loss.
duel safely
“My family, my friends, they tried to comfort me. But I felt like they really couldn’t understand how I felt.”
A, who prefers not to be identified, thought he had it all: a good career and a happy marriage with dreams of starting a family. The sudden loss of his wife after six years of marriage sent him into a spiral of disbelief, anger, guilt, and isolation.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” she remembers wondering. “She I was wondering if she deserved to continue living…how can I stay if she’s gone?”
Losing a loved one to suicide is extremely distressing and difficult to grieve alone, but being with family and friends may not help as people react and respond differently, Nyana shares.
“We may hear responses, like ‘leave it behind’, ‘move on’, ‘there’s nothing you can do about it.’ Things we don’t want to hear,” he says, adding that people may have meant well. .
In a support group like We Hear You, members are encouraged to talk and listen without judging.
“There’s a natural bond that connects in that grief… We make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. We don’t force anyone to do it, though,” says Nyana. “We don’t ask each other personal questions. We don’t give advice, we don’t give opinions. It’s just a place to share.”
For A, her first session in the support group brought relief. “I felt safe. There were shared experiences, shared pain, shared grief. There was no judgment,” she said.
Meeting others also eased the crushing feeling that he had been marked for tragedy. “As human beings, we always think we’re special. But listening to everyone, I realized no, I hadn’t been ‘marked’ for this. I hadn’t been ‘chosen,'” he shares.
“I felt supported and I hope my sharing has helped others,” he says. Although his grief continues to come in waves, he has begun to find solace in the memory of his late wife, both happy and sad. “It’s a lonely journey, but I have to do it. We all have to find our own answers,” he says.
We Hear You sessions are held on the first Tuesday of every month; ever since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, he has been holding his sessions virtually. On average, there are around 30 members at any given time.
In the first few months of starting We Hear You, there were no attendees. But gradually, as word spread throughout the mental health care community, people began to arrive. “There were people who had been silent for decades, 30, 40 years,” says Nyana.
“What we usually see is that people have started to rewrite and share the story of their loved one who passed away… And I think those are signs of healing,” shares Nyana. “We’ve seen people who have said they have closure, they’ve understood their ‘why’.”
A safe space for everyone
In 2019, one person committed suicide every four minutes in India according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India records.
Before starting We Hear You, Nyana went to London to learn about Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SOBS UK), a non-profit organization known for its support of people who have lost loved ones to suicide.
“They taught me how to run a support group, what to look for, how to create safety parameters…because it’s a unique grief,” Nyana recalls. “I learned that those left behind are also at risk for suicidal thoughts. So we needed to be prepared to know [if] someone was showing the signs.”
When Nyana learned that suicide is generally considered preventable, “it just shook me to the core,” she says. “As a survivor of grief and loss, I’ve always thought there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“And when I heard about the first answer… that we could actually keep a person [at risk of suicide] safe and get the help they need…that was the catalyst for starting Safe Space.”
Established as a separate entity from We Hear You, Safe Space India focuses on mental health awareness and education, with a special focus on training people to become “suicide first responders”. “It is essentially knowing how to intervene, or talk to someone who has or expresses distress or suicidal thoughts, [to] keep that person safe and get them the help they need,” says Nyana.
Anyone in a community can be a first responder, whether they’re people who work or volunteer at crisis helplines, medical professionals, counselors, human resource managers, teachers and parents, it adds. The workshop is led by instructors certified by the UK’s National Center for Suicide Prevention Education and Training. So far, Safe Space has trained 180 first responders, from doctors to parents to helpline operators.
Reflecting on her experience, Nyana notes that getting to where she is now required her to “overcome my own shame at the loss I had as a child of a loved one, which I mistook for something I needed to hide for years.”
“When I’m talking to someone who’s having suicidal thoughts, I say, ‘Look, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen it firsthand. And it’s something I don’t hide anymore.'” she shares.
Owning your own story is one way to overcome stigma. “We own where we came from and what got us started, we acknowledge that we understand. We acknowledge that you are no different than anyone else, just because you experienced pain or saw something so horrible and tragic.” .”
Nyana and her co-founders hope to spark conversations about mental health and suicide, and help people in distress see hope. “[We don’t] look at suicide as ‘[help] the person does not take his own life’. We see it as creating a life for that person worth living,” she says.
This story first appeared in our better worldMental health Serie.
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