It is with great honour that I’m able to express my sincere best wishes following the launch of Suicide Bereaved Community. It’s so important that those affected by suicide receive the support they need in a timely manner and are able to access a range of support, as it’s well known the various impacts bereavement by suicide can cause.  Gloucestershire County Council Public Health and the Gloucestershire Suicide Prevention Partnership have a long standing and collaborative relationship with some of the team behind the Community and we’re keen for this to continue. We’re excited to see the future activities that the Community as whole arranges and wish it all the best for the future.

In her wonderfully insightful and challenging poem, The Hill We Climb, the young American poet, Amanda Gorman, speaking at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, said:

‘When day comes, we ask ourselves where we can find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry a sea we must wade.”

For those bereaved by suicide, whether recently, or sometime ago, these words may find a disturbing resonance. So often there is ‘never ending shade’. And, reflected in the poem’s title we recognize there is a ‘Hill We Climb’, often daily.

Not in the singular, but side by side with others who may also have shared a similar experience. And it points to an idea that is at the heart of the Suicide Bereaved Community (SBC). The simple and profound notion that it is ‘we’, not just ‘I’, that is significant to carrying our loss in ‘a sea we must wade’.

In carrying our loss, we are enabled to ‘connect’ to others in an important way; through ‘being’ together, through walking and talking, through a common activity, through online chats. All of these activities can enable us to ‘be present’ with each other, not just in talking and listening, but in companionable silence – offering ourselves to each other in the present moment, aware of our frailties and vulnerabilities, but confident of mutual support. I very much hope that through this, both the SBC community and individuals, will grow in strength and resilience.

SBC asks us to think of new ways in which our sharing can be explored in different contexts, but with those who ‘truly understand our experience’.