Thursday August 22nd 2024
This View has been written by the ‘Lothians Speak Their Name’ group.
Lothians Speak Their Name was set up as a project to create a quilt in memory of people who have died by suicide in Edinburgh and the Lothians. During the first six months of this year 49 incredible people came together in workshops, or worked by themselves at home, to create squares in remembrance and celebration of the lives of the loved ones they have lost to suicide.
The quilt we have stitched together is a beautiful, powerful and poignant tribute to all those people. Much more than the way their lives ended, it remembers – with joy, and sadness, and huge amounts of love – the way they lived their lives. So often, deaths by suicide can leave those bereaved feeling a sense of stigma or shame, and unable to talk about the person they lost. We are called Speak Their Name because we believe this is all wrong, and that we should keep telling our loved ones’ stories and remember the lives we shared with them.
Alongside creating a beautiful artwork, we came together as a community: Not one that we would ever have wanted to be part of, but one where we all understood – unspoken – what everyone else has been through. And for those people who had never been able to talk about their loss before, this sense of unity and support was invaluable.
The quilt is about to start touring around venues throughout Edinburgh and the Lothians.
We know that 792 people in Scotland took their own lives in 2023. Men are three times more likely to take their own life than women. And the numbers of deaths by suicide are 2.5 times greater in areas of extreme poverty (National Records of Scotland). We also know that those bereaved by suicide are 65% more likely than other bereaved people to make an attempt on their own lives. This project is not just about offering support and – hopefully – a safety net for the suicide-bereaved, but also to raise awareness of the numbers of suicides, and the impact it has on those left behind.
What we really hope is that when people see the quilt being displayed, it will start conversations about mental health and about suicide. We know that the answer to preventing and reducing suicides will include providing many additional resources in the supportive and therapeutic services. Through this project we have got to know people in many fantastic charities and other organisations who are likewise doing great work to address these issues. But despite this, the number of people dying by suicide continues to increase. So we also want to spread the very simple message that if we try and meet people with kindness rather than impatience or rudeness in our everyday lives, that might make the difference between someone getting through the day okay, rather than feeling even worse than when they started.
We believe it’s not too optimistic to hope that this quilt might save lives.
You can find details of the tour on our Facebook page HERE.
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