Youth Suicide

WOW!! It's been a long time since I have used this format. I wasn't even sure I remembered by login information. But, here I am. I wish it was for a different reason, youth suicide is a heavy topic. A topic that most people hear about, feel bad that they know someone who took their own life, vow to make a change, and a week later it is business as usual. That needs to stop.

Yesterday we learned of two, yes TWO, students that committed suicide in our district. And today I learned that the teenage suicide rate in the state of Colorado is DOUBLE the national average. How did that happen? What is different about this state than others? While I can't answer those questions, I can tell our story. I will not stop telling our story until something changes. Many of you know bits and pieces of our story, but not the entire story. Our entire story is way to long for this post, so I will give you a brief view.

Being a military family means lots of moves to new locations, schools, and making new friends. My kids know all to well what it is like to be the new kid. It's not fun. Especially as they got older. We got spoiled in NC. We were there for 9 years. That's a long time for a military family to be in one spot. The Army said it was time to go and we moved to Colorado about 2 years ago. As in previous moves I searched and searched and searched and searched where we should live, where will the boys go to school. We had high schoolers when we moved to Colorado. That is a beast we had not had to tackle before with the military moves. We had to deal with different episodes of bullying through the years, but nothing like we have seen here.