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Health & Fitness

There Are No Coincidences.

Life brings challenges.

My Life took a different turn in 1979 when my mom, Ellen Weber, died by suicide. Survivors of Suicide Loss, the Crisis Line of the Fox Valley, Suicide Prevention Services of America, and Survivors of Suicide Attempts all grew from that death.

It started with me as a survivor, meeting and joining with other survivors, and my heart remains with survivors first and foremost.

Now, a generation later, my daughter rises up as a survivor and grabs the reins for this event in the name of all survivors.

While I was in Washington, D.C. this week, as a member of the Steering Committee for the National Lifeline (1-800-273-Talk), politics reared it's head in the State of Illinois. The D.C. Meetings were all day Thursday, May 30, and most of Friday, May 31. 

On Tuesday, May 28, my daughter, Jen Slepicka, called me at work to tell me that the State of Illinois had just notified her that "all sky lanterns were banned in this state."

That was FOUR DAYS before the Sky Lantern Festival Celebration for SPS!

Along with many leaders in the Yorkville Community, she set forth to ask for a one-time "pass" or, put another way, to be "grandfathered in" since this event had been created 8 weeks before the ban. 

If you have followed her blogs, you know how hard she has worked.

State House Speaker Tom Cross and State Rep Kay Hatcher were contacted early on. Both called back and spoke to me directly and tried to help.

Many calls later to many others, many emails and letters that even went to Governor Quinn and President Obama, many pleas from many people, the call from the State Fire Marshall came.

The answer was still "no".

While Jen has worked and worked and come up with alternative solutions that still are legal and safe for the environment, the irony of this has not been lost on me.

Survivors remain at the heart and soul of this work.

Friday mornings meeting centered on how Crisis Call Centers could better help both survivors of suicide loss and survivors of suicide attempts.

It took me back to when the word "survivor" was even foreign to me.

Through the years many of us have created survivor groups, survivor conferences, and survivor divisions as part of national suicide prevention groups.

We started hotlines in the '80's when this country was much kinder and gentler to social services. I always come home from this particular national meeting invigorated and brimming with knowledge.

There is a part of our Government that still works hard on behalf of social services and, suicide prevention in specific. 

Unfortunately, as many know, our State of Illinois as a whole is NOT user friendly to mental health or education.

But individuals who work in that system ARE trying hard to make a difference. Tom Cross and Kay Hatcher are two of those people. As I write this, I am not a Democrat or a Republican but rather an American and a survivor of suicide. 

The battles in D.C. for money and energy were mirrored here at home.

Jen Slepicka, my daughter, a survivor of her grandmother's suicide, fought hard on behalf of survivors and on behalf of Suicide Prevention Services of America.

This event is important to her as a survivor and mirrors the depth of feelings that all survivors carry. Our most important goal as survivors to live on for "them" and to remember "them" and to walk in memory of "them" and to launch or hold anything that helps us and others remember "them".

If we don't speak their name, tell their story, and hold their memory up to others, then it's as if they never lived. And THAT will never happen as long as just one survivor continues to breathe. 

The magnitude of tonight's event, no matter what is held or launched or done, is the determined, loving force of survivors coming together.

We will NEVER forget...We move forward in memory and love...

www.starsofhopefestival.com 

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