KANSAS CITY, Mo. — September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. In hopes to bring light to the issue, the Kansas City Artists Coalition is hosting an event called "Words Save Lives."
Words Save Lives is a Kansas-wide event founded in 2013 by Marcia Epstein, that serves as a platform for artists who have been impacted by suicide.
They are invited to gather and find healing through various creative expression like poetry, dance, comedy, music, etc. Kansas City is the only event branch in Missouri.
Jen Harris, KCAC's exhibitions director, says the event has given so many people a place to grieve, including herself.
Harris lost several friends, including one from high school, during the pandemic to suicide.
“I don’t think there’s anything more powerful for grief and suffering and struggle than art,” Harris said. “Being able to share what I’ve gone through saved my life.”
Harris says no one is exempt from the impacts of suicide. In order to move forward, she believes the first step to finding a solution is allotting more funding to mental health services.
“We need to stop being afraid of talking about mental health as a culture,” Harris said. “It’s not benefitting anybody to remain silent about it even in the slightest. And there’s a lot of people suffering that don’t need to be suffering.”
The second step is to continue breaking down stigmas and misconceptions surrounding the topic.
“We now say completed suicide, instead of committed suicide — it’s not a crime. It’s a solution not a problem," she said. "And we want people lot stay on this side of life, but we’re not going to further stigmatize people within their grief or within their attempt.”
Pasju Kubert is one of the performers planning to take the podium this weekend. He will be reading an excerpt from his multimedia project that discusses the topic of suicide.
Kubert says he has dedicated the rest of his life to guiding others, after life dealt him a deck of cards that often felt unfair.
He knows all too well what it is like to have the weight of this world come crashing down.
“Let me hold the world up for you, let’s look at it, let’s make it lighter for you so you can breathe,” Kubert said.
Kubert grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, as the only gay, Black child in his adoptive family.
In his adult years, he tested positive for HIV and was diagnosed with cancer three times. Through years of self-reflection, he found meaning where there seemingly was none.
“There’s no reason for these things to happen unless I’m supposed to piece it together, identify it, acknowledge it all — the positive, the negative, the intuitive, the unavoidable, the base logical reality and move forward and tell my story,” Kubert said.
Cicely Jones, another performer who almost lost her best friend to suicide, says she hopes the audience will walk away from the event with more vigilance and a personal commitment to making our society a safer place.
“A lot of the things that we have in our culture, we don’t realize that it’s triggers for some people,” Jones said. “I hope that it just doesn’t sit with them for that night, for that evening, I hope it continues the next Sunday morning.”
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