At 25.

"I don't think I can do it."

"What speak it?"

"No, write it."

"It feels like bulls&%t."

"A bunch of lies."

I'm talking to my closest friend. And mentor. I'm in a world of pain. August 2012. Winter in the south. It's as cold inside. As it is out.

I'd been asked to do the impossible.

Give the eulogy at her funeral. On behalf of her family. That I'd never met. Whose only daughter had just died.

At 25.

A young woman I mentored. And deeply loved.

I didn't get to say goodbye. You rarely do. This. A chance to do so. To publicly put on the record how her arrival into my life was as powerful and profound, as her departure from it.

Who I was blessed to know. This brilliant, creative, carefree young woman. In ways most never would.

The pain was more than the heartbreaking grief. It was conflict mixed with guilt. “Why didn't I? I should have..." "If only."

But.

I knew I could never lie about the reality of what happened.

The truth.

She had a dark side. A fragile mind. Plagued with extreme sensitivity. Overwhelmed with inadequacy and comparison: never good enough, smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough. How she believed the world judged her through her eyes. Not their own.

When asking her mother what she wanted me to share on her family’s behalf, with more courage than I’ve ever witnessed. She simply said:

"Tell them. There is another way.

A solution. A different path."

To somehow make sense of the injustice poisoning the water we now tread. An unfairness too hard to swallow. That her life was not wasted. Not in vain.

Although the pain didn't ease. The crippling conflict did. Replaced by permission to speak the truth. Even the most painful.

Suicide. Is a way out.

I'd be lying if I told you differently.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15-44. Every single day 9 humans die. More than 150 attempt to. Behind each statistic is someone's child, friend, partner, parent, colleague. Someone who can’t help but believe the world would be better without them.

They're wrong.

But.

It isn't easy being human. Statistically, it's getting harder.

And life isn't fair.

At her funeral, I spoke my truth. The reality of darkness and light. Shadow and struggle. What we thought we could see and what we wish we had.

And then it happened.

Something I'm told doesn’t at funerals. As I spoke my final words, the crowd of several hundred sat in sober silence, collectively sighed.

And then. Applauded.

Not for my words.

For her life.

For her mother's courage in asking for truth. For the collective recognition that silence, secrets and shame kill more than suicide.

Her mother, against every odd, found hope in her daughter's death. 13 years later, still helping others to find theirs. Pain transformed into purpose. Loss into life.

Connection is an antidote to isolation. Sharing the pain may be an answer to halving the silence.

And talking about taboo topics. Shining light on shameful stories. Digging deeper than the denial, may be part of the solution to one of our greatest human challenges:

How to live and die, together. In a world that teaches us to do it alone.

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