The Emma G. Rose Story
Fourteen years ago, on March 8th, Assembling Ella Author, Emma G Rose lost her cousin to suicide when her cousin was still a teenager.
For many years, the month of March was an annual agony Emma endured as the trauma of her family's painful loss washed repeatedly over her.
To this day she still remembers receiving the phone call about her youngest cousin's suicide all those years ago. For her, the shock was so extreme that she recounts full months if not years when she was consumed by it.
Hearing that her cousin, who had seemed like he was on the top of the world just like any normal kid preparing to graduate high school, was now gone was more than she could process.
That's when the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention became such an important organization to Emma. They showed up when her family needed them the most and they provided resources and connection to a community of people who had lost a loved one to suicide. Because, sadly, there's a whole community of people who have and will face this kind of loss.
Through their support Emma G Rose was able to channel her pain and trauma into her contemporary fantasy books that she started writing as a way to confront the trauma lingering so heavy in her mind. Writing provided a safe way to explore her pain while having distance and control over the outcomes.
Her first book Nothing's Ever Lost is where she first confronted the moment after her cousin's death. She said writing that scene was the hardest thing she's ever written but doing it was a form of catharsis.
She said after the loss the pain was always there and that writing allowed her to take, "this thing that was real that had happened to me and my family and people I know and love and it became a story I could control because it was my story so I could say he immediately regretted it."
She argues that a lot of people who have survived a suicide attempt often express feeling immediate regret and so it helped her to creatively project that feeling onto her cousin. It gave her control to say he felt that way, because that's how she wanted him to feel. Writing became a form of therapy where she could escape into the fantasy world she crafted.
Emma said that writing her first book and sharing that story with her family was therapeutic in a way that ultimately led to her mission of telling stories that aren’t just meant to be fun stories, but are meant to cultivate healthier ways of looking at the world while making hard things a little easier for people to talk about.
That's why this past March she decided to take her work around suicide prevention to another level by using her books to give back to the organization that had been there for her fourteen years ago to start her on her journey to the mental health advocate and author she is today.
Her March campaign fundraising in the name of the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention is just one example of how deeply she lives her mission to help people learn to cope in the face of suicide and general loss.
Emma G Rose is a frequent speaker for high school and college students where she stands on stage and says the words, "my cousin died by suicide," and then she knows what always comes next. Every student in those rooms gasps all at once because they can feel the pain of that experience.
She said that no matter what school she speaks at, her heart always breaks because she is always greeted off stage by a child who has suffered losses that allow them to connect across the shared experience. In these interactions she delivers the same message the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention delivered to her: you are not alone.
Recently she spoke about her work author and her experiences at a middle school only to find that they responded with their own stories of trauma too.
In honor of the impossibly hard work Emma G Rose does we are asking SHE readers to consider multiplying her efforts by making a donation to the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention.
The Emma G. Rose Interview
After fourteen years of writing her way through the grief, Emma has refined her messaging around suicide prevention, mental health care and storytelling as a coping mechanism.
Have you found peace through your writing and your advocacy work?
This is really interesting because I wrote Nothing’s Ever Lost and I thought that was it, that was my catharsis book. I was going to write this book and I was going to feel better. Then as my family read it and started to tell me how it made them feel, I was like okay I got this, I did it I feel better.
Every year we’d get to March—my cousin died on March 8th—and I would be a basket case. I couldn’t eat I couldn’t sleep it was like the trauma was happening all over again and every year I was like, it will get better, but it didn’t
So then I wrote Assembling Ella and it's the story of a teenage girl who lost her brother when she was six years old. She’s now about to be older than he was when he died. She is just struggling the whole story, learning to live with and build your life while making room for these big feelings.
It wasn’t enough just dealing with the immediate grief I needed to deal with the long-term repercussions of that too. I think just now in the last year or so, and it’s been 14 years, but I finally feel like I’m at a place of peace and can finally talk about my cousin with joy instead of just sadness and anger.
Do you think the rest of the world should get better at recognizing suicidal ideation?
What I think the world actually needs to get better at is recognizing pain before it becomes suicidal ideation.
If you're struggling because you're anxious all the time, if you're struggling because getting out of bed every day feels like a chore, you need help then!
Lets not wait until we get to suicidal ideation.
Let's start with good mental health care at the very beginning and that’s where we as a society need to get better and that’s where the healthcare system needs to get better.
You typically don’t get treatment for mental health until you are way past the point of danger. It's like watching someone's cholesterol go up and up and not saying anything until they have a heart attack. It’s ridiculous! We need to do better!
What was it like for you to loose a loved one to suicide?
I was shocked, you don’t realize how shocked you can be by words until someone says something like that to you.
It took me months if not years to experience the emotions fully.
I would do anything to get away from them.
That was the beauty of writing for me. I could take this thing that was real that had happened to me and my family and it became a story I could control because it was my story so I could say he immediately regretted it.
A lot of people who have survived a suicide attempt often express feeling immediate regret and so I could put that on my cousin and just decide that that’s how he felt, because that’s how I wanted him to feel. I don’t think you get that feeling other than with therapy and so writing became my therapy.
What Would Your Message Be To Someone Who's Lost A Loved One To Suicide?
However you're dealing with it is how you’re dealing with it and that’s okay. The worst thing that can happen here is that you allow the loss of someone you love to also end your life, whether that’s through following in their footsteps and making the choice they made or just refusing to live anymore, refusing to go out, refusing to grow. That’s the worst that can happen.
The best that can happen is that you look at this and you say, yup this hurts, yup this is awful, yup I wish this didn’t happen but what am I going to do next?
What am I going to do with this feeling because ultimately grief can be destructive. It can break you down, it can put you in the corner and turn you into an ogre in the dark or it can give you the tools to do something else.
What would your message be to anyone having suicidal thoughts right now?
I think my big message is you could always do it tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be right now! In the meantime maybe talk to someone or maybe write something or just do anything else because this is a decision once you make it you can’t undo it, but anything you do before it you can undo. You could go to therapy once and decide it's not for you (seriously starting therapy can be as easy as clicking here) you can talk to a doctor about medication and then decide no, that’s not what you want. There are lots of other options that you can test and try and see because this is the one choice that you can’t take back so try everything else first. I can’t tell you what to do, but we really want you here. The world’s better with you in it, whether you believe that right now or not.