Letters We Lived Through: The Stories No One Wants You to Tell

Society doesn’t want you to talk about suicide. They don’t want you to speak the words, to name the thoughts, to show the pain. Because if you do, suddenly you’re dangerous, broken, or a problem to be “managed.”

I know this because I lived it. My first suicide attempt came when I was 10, and I was institutionalized as a result. You’d think a place built to help kids in pain would actually address why we hurt, but they didn’t, not once.

Instead, they isolated me, they medicated me, and they punished me for speaking my truth. Mentioning the thoughts that nearly killed me risked making me stay longer, risked making me disappear into the system, and it happened over and over. Multiple institutionalizations, each one teaching me the same thing: hide this part of yourself, shame it, carry it alone.

As an adult, the same pattern repeated. After an overdose, I went through the 72-hour suicide watch process which was cold, clinical, and empty. A process that does nothing to heal, nothing to save, only teaches you how to vanish inside your own suffering.

This is the reality so many of us carry; the shame, the silence, the loneliness, and it doesn’t end there. As a life coach, I wanted to speak openly about suicide. To show others they are not broken, that there is power in truth, but even that runs into walls. For example, Pinterest, like many other sites, won’t let you search the word “suicide” without shoving 988 information in your face. Standard resources? They feel like checkboxes. Like the bare minimum someone threw together so they could say, we did something.

Even telling a therapist, a friend, someone you trust can escalate to armed officers showing up, cuffs, and forced isolation. This doesn’t help and it definitely doesn’t heal. Instead, it teaches you that your very existence, your thoughts, your pain, is a liability, a secret you must bury.

And that’s why I started Letters We Lived Through.

This is a space for the letters we never received, for the words we weren’t allowed to say, for the stories we had to hide. It is a rebellion against the silence, against the shame, against the systems that fail us. Here, your voice matters and your pain matters. Talking about suicide is not weakness, it is bravery.

If you’ve carried these thoughts, if you’ve felt invisible, if you’ve been silenced your whole life, this is your space. Share the letter you wish someone had written to you and speak the story you’ve been told is too dangerous to tell. Because the truth is revolutionary, and someone out there might survive because you were brave enough to speak.

Every story matters, including yours.

Share your letter here