Struggles, Suicide, and How Writers Can Start Spreading Hope

If you are in need of support right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. 

The Good, Bad, Ugly, and the Beautiful

Last week was hard for me. The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain by suicide have been hard to process for many. Whenever events such as these happen it is an awakening call to the world to acknowledge mental health and the struggles people from all walks of life go through everyday. 

We are in an age where it is becoming more important and prevalent to speak up about our internal struggles, and this is a good thing. Having support through struggles is a powerful help in overcoming them, and it is where we writers can participate. 

Being a writer means you have a platform where your words reach others. Your voice can carry through thousands, and now more than ever the world needs your story. People are hurting in public and in private, and the stories we write can be a help and comfort to those struggling in life—for whatever reason. 

You don’t need to be an expert in mental health or suffer from mental illness yourself to make a difference. You can help others by sharing your own particular struggles—giving hope to someone in the same place you once were—and, of course, by giving them a creatively crafted story to enjoy.  

Sharing Experiences

We don’t all have experience with mental illness, or even cancer, parenting, grief, betrayals, or broken homes, but we all do have experience with pain in our lives. Life cannot be lived without pain—physically or emotionally—and overcoming struggles is hard alone.  

That’s why I encourage you to share your story of struggle. This doesn’t mean you have to write an autobiography or memoir (though you absolutely can), this just means incorporating your unique struggles into your fiction. In other words, you add what you know—your experience with your particular struggles—into your story through the plot and lives of your characters. 

This incorporation is not hard to do, because it is already a part of the natural flow of how we write: our stories are shaped by our past, and the influences of those events make their impression in what we write. Just take a moment and reflect on what you have endured in life, how it has impacted your writing, and how it could impact your reader. 

You have the opportunity to give first-hand experience help to a reader going through the same struggle you did or are going through. We are in a perfect position to make a difference in the lives of others, and I can’t think of a better way my writing could be used than by helping people in need of support, hope, and truth.

Spreading Hope

In my first published short story, “Healing,” I was told by a dear friend she liked that the story didn’t just end with the struggle, but it ended with hope to overcome. 

Hope is a prominent device in storytelling. As a story begins and progresses the reader has hope that the protagonist will defeat the antagonist. Readers continue to read because of this hope—curious whether the protagonist will win or lose the battle.  

But often before the climax, a crushing blow strikes the protagonist which leaves them in their ‘darkest hour’ where ‘all hope seems lost.’ Then in the climax the protagonist overcomes the odds and defeats the antagonist—fulfilling the reader’s long-held hope of victory. 

Hope is what we hold onto when life hits us hard. We all grab a strong hold onto hope for better times. It is when hope leaves us that our ‘darkest hour’ arrives.

 Without hope, life is pitch black. 

Don’t leave your readers without hope, for the structure of your story and even more for the well-being of your reader. Give them something to hold onto, to look forward to, and when all is said and done, give them hope of overcoming their own struggles. 

It’s Not Just for Others, but For Yourself

My favorite books are those when I can empathize with the characters and their predicaments.

A story a reader connects with is a story with the power to make a difference.

Make a good difference in the world. 

Write truth and hope, and take your readers on a journey of wonder and reflection. 

It doesn’t matter what the struggle is you bring into your story. Whatever your journey has brought you through, there is someone who could use your wisdom and find encouragement in your shared experience.  

Yet it is not only others you’re helping when you write about the tough times—it is yourself. As I’ve said before, write what you need and you will be writing for the needs of your readers. 

Start with yourself first, and then move out to your readers. 

And when you get your first message from a reader expressing how you impacted them in some way—big or small—it will all be worth it.

You are a voice of hope to those in need, and whether it be mental health or physical health, parenting, grief, or relationships you have struggled with, you have the incredible ability to make a far-reaching, positive difference in the world. 

So be strong yourself, and share your journey of weakness and strength with your readers. 

If you are in need of support right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. 

Featured photo by Ron Smith on Unsplash