Amy Kathleen Lee

I was giving a QPR training, sharing stories as I always do. When I shared the story of the night my daughter attempted suicide, the night I asked myself, Who do I need to be to help her? Something shifted. During this training, I told the room I wanted to validate my daughter, not judge her for not coming to me sooner, not punish her for being in pain. I wanted her to know she wasn’t in trouble, that her pain mattered. After the training, a woman came up to me with tears streaming down her...

That conversation shook me. I often work with parents navigating their teenager’s mental health crises, but this was different. This was a mother holding on for dear life while carrying the unbearable weight of her adult child’s pain. It reminded me how many parents, siblings, and loved ones live this same story every single day.

“I didn’t know what emotional pain was until it was too late. And now my son is gone.” Because that is the reality: we don’t know. We lose people because we don’t know.