Stephen tWitch Boss died by suicide last week less than a mile from his home in Encino, CA. That was just up the road from me, working in Irvine at the time. The apple news buzz on my phone, usually innocuous, hit me pretty hard this time. A punch to the gut, not another nuisance Teams chat notification from my work team, another spam text or anything like that.
Twitch made it to 40, but couldn’t go further, old habits and issues bubbled up and got the best of him, and I know how that feels. Fortunately for me and my family more importantly, I continued onward and learned a couple things about myself in the process. Well, so far. And in the week since his death, so many who were positively impacted by Twitch, more than he ever could have known or imagined, are shocked and saddened that he could not also move onward, find hope and support to keep dancing the delicate steps of life.
At the core of this and many similar losses, our lack of social emotional education (SEE), behavioral sciences, mental health discussion and study in our school systems and society. We need after each of these tragedies to spend less time on Why or What Happened but more time on What Now – What Next?
What can we do differently in our lives and in society to prevent future events from occurring. No more PE classes, our collective physical education level sure its not great, but more SEE or SEL classes and both our minds and bodies will be healthier. Our collective mental health grade is an F-, off the scale, six feet deep. Failing day after day in so many ways. A systematic, seismic shift and change is needed, including a revamp of our K-12 educational system. Then on a more personal and grassroots level – each of us play a role, we create the environment around us and by daring to act on helping those around you, a difference is made one at a time. Sometimes the best help you can provide is showing that you are weak and need help also. Or simply being present and open, empathetic, supportive. We all need this, and we will only survive together. Be kind, be attentive and lean in, you can be the difference, and you won’t regret it.
In my mental health journey, I learned how to open myself up – that was my critical first step, no longer being ashamed and boxing up my flaws and challenges, also accepting that we are not in this alone and that with others, I could change, I could be something different that I had been or thought I was destined to be without hope for repair. I will repeat this time and time again to anyone who will listen. I did nothing but fail for 42 years alone and will do nothing but work to thrive every day that remains, with a team approach. I know that. We need each other, the love, energy, wisdom, support, confidence, care, the kindness to make it. I wish Twitch could have opened himself up to others, instead he was engulfed by the true black hole surrounding all of us, mental health.
Stephen is the latest on my list of supernovas (bright stars that emitted immense energy for so long and in so many ways, only suddenly to be extinguished, another bright exploded and lost). I don’t understand how we are still blinded by the light, unable to see what we need to focus on. Stephen Twitch Boss was hurting and didn’t know how to open up to heal. And on the other side of the coin, we didn’t create the conditions for him to be comfortable to say and show his true self. We are currently all unequipped to reap different outcomes and that is a chilling truth. Twitch is 1 of 5 in the US that die by suicide every hour of every day. A trend whose frequency and reach are only growing. We need to see the mental health pandemic that is lit up in front of us, all around us, inside many of us.
[Some of this I wrote fresh when the news hit around lunch time on the 14th, as writing is a great release for me in times of trauma. The remainder I wrote either on the plane back home the 15th or on December 19th once I got back to my routine and at-home life back under control. I write to heal personally. I hope to create learning for others too – just perhaps help one other person. I ramble because this is so meaningful to me, all I can think of most times, because I am not well much of the day, many days. We all have to fight every minute for what we have.]
I’m Twitching, convulsing, I’m sick, I’m healing and I’m oftentimes feeling hopeless, unable to see anything but darkness or so high that I’m entranced by a perfectly brighter than deserved future full of love. Diurnal swings daily, momentarily, constantly all with that horrible ringing in my ears – feeling mentally broken and full at the same time. As said very well by many today, you never know the battle someone is fighting internally. This is a common refrain we hear when shocked by a loss like Stephen Boss’s suicide.
A tough day today for many. The hits keep on coming, I’m in the bathroom at work crying, knowing how Twitch may have felt to do such an unthinkable thing to himself. Knowing how he must have felt for so long, so often when the outward appearance was a bright and beautiful smile, exacting movements and actions in direct opposition to his true feelings and self-image on the inside, nothing of that dark sort to be sniffed or seen by anyone. A physical and emotional master choreographer. Then the unimaginable hurt and surprise, shock, despair felty by his family. The upside-down letdown and inadequacy feeling he must have had, for his last day was the only one he would ever truly let anyone down, yet he felt every day leading up to his death was not enough, one failure and letdown after another. Mental health conditions have a terrible way of making things completely backwards from reality. Twitch was a bright light, shining star, thriving under the bright Hollywood lights, against the odds, way beyond what many may have ever thought possible even after So You Think You Can Dance fame. Yet he felt such internal struggle, darkness and hopelessness. He dug success out of the Alabama dirt and now we will bury him there. Now he’s gone, at his own hand with the assistance of a firearm. Another supernova suicide.
Last month, a mentally unstable young man at my alma mater shook me in similar fashion when he took the lives of three University of Virginia football players and injured two others. He did not take his own life, instead once the shooting stopped and only the haze and odor of gunpowder and smoke remained, Christopher Jones Jr. casually skipped off the bus that brought he and his classmates back to Charlottesville from a school trip to DC. He vanished for a day only to turn up closer to his home a day later (thankfully he was soon caught and is awaiting trial). In time we will learn more about what caused that tragedy in Charlottesville, unlike Twitch’s death. I shook and twitched reading about both tragedies like a few other moments earlier this year. D’Sean Perry, Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler – we need to take action in your names to grow from also, we must learn from your tragedy.
I see the UVA football homicides and Twitch’s suicide very similarly on a number of levels, even though many of us would argue differently. The firearm angle is one connector – common weapons of destruction in each case, and in both they are just a causal factor, not the root cause. The root cause, the lynchpin in both of these tragedies like so many others, is mental health. That is an invisible weapon stronger than any physical object, possessing nuclear strength. So many we have lost to accidental drug overdoses, those are suicides in my mind also – escapes all the same; and at the core of escape is something inside of us, overpowering, that we cannot defeat. The drugs another weapon, like alcohol, or a rope, a gun, food, things we use to quiet or feed the beast, unable to quiet it. That beast, that root cause of so many troubles is mental health, characterized as trauma, emotional abuse, anxiety, depression, etc. of which we can find deeper root causes leading to those symptoms, but we are not equipped to do so. We do not have the collective attention to drive tools, focus, faculties, playbooks, or stamina. Yet.
Note that a causal factor, different from a root cause or the primary factor that leads to an event, is secondary in nature but leads to a more significant impact of the event, a greater severity or frequency. So, understanding causal factor(s) is important when it comes to mitigating future recurrences, especially when the true main issue or root cause may go unsolved or is difficult to contain/alleviate.
From a mental health standpoint, this can get tricky. Another reason we are afraid to take on goliath. Not only is he so strong and large, he has many powers we don’t fully understand beyond brute strength and endless stamina. Where and what are the true targets, the inputs vs the outputs, the cause, the effect, the follow-on effects from causal factors or related, dangling weak points.
Think about early childhood trauma (physical, mental abuse, abandonment as examples) as a causal factor making a person’s mental state much less stable (fears or scars deep in the subconscious drive action, thoughts, decisions in ways we don’t fully recognize). They don't directly cause you to lose control, but they can make you more likely to do so and/or the situation much worse when you do. These unresolved traumas are causal factors to those events, applicable to many tragedies when we talk about homicides, mass murders, or suicides, drug overdoses and things may appear linear but then they get muddled. That same childhood trauma, can be a root cause of mental illness or can be a causal factor, making a genetic predisposition to mental illness much more severe. Then the actions of tragedy that we see, like a mass shooting, the root cause is mental illness, with causal factors of trauma and a weapon. Yet the trauma is also a root cause of mental illness, that is the root cause of acquiring the weapon as a wrongly-interpreted symbol of protection or security. Dizzying. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here is how I would map this one out. Regardless of the agreement or accuracy here, we see the inability to decouple these things. We must go after all of them, and in my perspective, reducing guns is a quick-win way to mitigate further tragedies while we buy much needed time to build a plan of attack against mental illness.
Back more specifically to the way I see both Twitch and the UVA football murderer. They had mental instabilities, mental health issues, however you want to frame and describe that – they were not mentally fit or healthy and that is the root cause. Before killing three bright lights on that bus in Charlottesville, Christopher Jones Jr. said ‘why are you guys always messin with me’ hinting at the fact that they made fun of him, bullied him (similarly brought to light by one of his family members in the aftermath of the shooting). Or at least he thought that was the case. Time will tell. But we know Christopher Jones Jr. had shown many signs of anger management issues and lashing out throughout his childhood and expressed that the divorce of his parents at a young age left a very painful mark on him, one of the worst things that ever happened to him (that was his trauma). Shortly before the UVA shooting, he purchased many firearms to feel secure, unfortunately that false sign of security was a causal factor that turned a momentary lapse into a mass murder scene. Given his mental instabilities, Christopher Jones Jr. in my opinion should never have been allowed to acquire or possess a firearm. For Twitch, I don’t know if there was any signal to point to, or debate that he should or should not have been allowed to possess a firearm, but I know if it were much more difficult for him to acquire one, or if he didn’t have a firearm, we might have a chance at seeing Twitch dance one more time.
In both cases a firearm caused more havoc or severity of impact – in Twitch’s case, perhaps he would not have been successful in ending his life, or it would not have been so easy to end his life without a gun and as a result he kept going, things took a turn for the better out of sheer luck or circumstance. Maybe he would have found 5 more minutes to live, and his wife or someone else could have helped drive an inflection point, just as Tanya Trotter did with her husband Michael Trotter – she begged him for 5 more minutes to live, 5 more minutes to love – pleaded with him not to end his own life. She succeeded, and look at them now. The Ware and Treaty, but if he had a gun at his possession, perhaps that wouldn’t have been the case and it would have just been a solo act and not a powerful duo, The Loss and Widow. The story of the Trotter’s and their music, The War and Treaty is something to behold, their music and their love for one another and their story will change your life. Without a doubt, Tanya’s voice changed her husband’s life. It only took 1 question at just the right moment.
Sometimes just a few seconds is all it takes to make a difference, really, it can be as simple as a guy in a tow truck coming along at just the right moment and telling you to move on. I say this because I was at a terrible low once and had pulled over on the side of the highway, the hood of my car up, looking as if I had car trouble and was fixing something. But I sat there for about an hour, contemplating walking around the front of the car out into the right hand lane and ending my life, run over by a tractor trailer because I had somehow clumsily slipped while trying to fix my car. But a tow trucker, doing his job and then some, pulled over and asked me if I needed help. I said I was fine, made up a story about overheating and needing a few minutes to add more coolant, and he moved along. But about 45 minutes later he came back and realized I wasn’t just struggling to put more coolant into my car. He was angry, probably because I wasn’t the first rodeo he had seen, so he made sure I got off the side of the road and on my way. That may be all it took to keep me on this earth. And if I had a gun that day or many others, who knows if I would have used it instead of walking out in front of a semi-truck, but I didn’t have a gun, the tow truck shooed me along, and I am still here. The shine on the car may not match what’s under the hood.
An aside question: Does a gun make it easier to complete the most horrible deed of ending one’s life? Do stats support this? Suicide ‘success’ rate or lethality rate for firearms vs. other means – that data exists and YES 9 out of 10 suicide attempts with a firearm result in a death. The rate of death or lethality of other means of suicide drop dramatically when looking at all other methods – ranging between 5-66%. So without a gun, Twitch may still be with us and then comes the brighter statistic – more than 90% of people who attempt suicide but live, do not go on to later die by suicide. That is their rock bottom, wake-up moment, their inflection point. And without access to guns we could have many more of those moments. So guns are not a good thing clearly when you look at it from this perspective.
Suicide lethality rates by method and failed attempts - I thought about that a bit on the plane ride back from LA to Boston last week – and next thing I know, I was watching one of my illest, illmatic, darkest favorite movies, A Star is Born. Any time I'm on a plane I watch that one and Roadrunner as a reminder of how far I come. Late in the movie, while talking to his therapist in rehab, we learn about Jackson’s failed suicide attempt when he was 12, pulling the fan out of the ceiling with the rope he used and his body weight hanging. He would not make that mistake twice, he would not be part of the 90% which have a happy ending (sorry for the giveaway but who hasn’t seen that film really). We can talk more about that film on another day, it strikes me for so many reasons, the harshest in the similarity I feel with forty-three year old Jackson Maine – successful in his own right, but a Tasmanian devil, sick, broken, a master of disaster, million-pound anchor drowning the true bright light, beautiful, perfect as a human can be, star in Ally his wife. My wife of 19 years is my Ally and my greatest ally in this world, I hope she knows what she means to me and what I will do to write a different script moving forward. Something I would have never thought of or believed in until this year. I am so thankful and grateful for her.
Something that rings in my ears constantly: In the UVA football case, without a gun, we may only be talking about a fistfight and three lives would not have been lost. I see guns as amplifiers of events, and control over those amplifiers until we solve the crisis of mental health is a path I strongly believe in. The gunshots are ringing out to us so loudly as a causal factor we must address, just like the ringing in my head from tinnitus. Every day the ringing grows louder but we look for ways not to address the problem. I use white noise or music, society uses the next media story to look away. Currently it’s a nationwide artic bomb storm, what a name to drive attention and fear, panic.
There are more guns now in the US than people, and each year more suicides than homicides where guns are used. Not many people understand that more guns take the life of the person holding the gun in suicide than in any shooting that results in a death or multiple.
There are nearly 2 mass shootings in the US every day yet there’s 5 suicides an hour.
And every 22 minutes, a suicide with the use of a gun occurs. 64 suicides by firearm occur in the US every day.
Then there’s also more and more people with significant mental health issues each day – that number approaching 33-40% of us.
So, like they say in football camp, look to your left and to your right, one of you probably won’t be here for long. Brutal but true. And more true as long as guns are so accessible in the US. You can do this sad exercise from a mental health perspective anywhere you go, we are all hurting and the one hurting the most is likely the one who you can least recognize it in. That unmistakable smile like Twitch, that person who lights up the room, is so caring and wants to ensure everyone else is taken care of. And what they can do to themselves and/or to others is devastating. The risk is widespread and mitigating the risk is necessary as sustainable, systematic solutions to solving the mental health pandemic will take the equivalent of ants climbing mount Everest.
With respect to mental health, I started paying attention to things in January when Anthony Bourdain’s AI voice and a gutted David Choe spoke to me on a plane. Watching the documentary Roadrunner at just the right time in my life, close to what I thought was my final days and chapter in a hopeless dark road. Again, something so insignificant, random and timely - I was incredibly lucky, listening and attentive, honestly for once during a quite significant period of my life. Now I didn’t want to let anyone down, didn’t want to let myself down any longer. I wish Twitch had thought of that before he ended his life at the Oak Tree Inn. He may have felt weak and afraid, but with his allies and team, he is strong as an oak tree – we all are if we can see that we do not exist singularly but are organisms that are part of a bigger, single system that need one another to thrive and survive. What cuts so deeply is the many who looked up to him, found inspiration in him and now may be feeling like they also don’t have a chance – we must help them. We will never know Why when it comes to suicide, Miss USA Cheslie Kryst who died by suicide in February of this year framed things perfectly as I found out through reading about her, the most important question is Why she said? Many times that is the case, but I will now say the most important question is What now? What will we do from here, how will we react and change, because we know enough about the why – mental health is hurting all of us, we can see that clearly whether we want to or not, that is why. Lets do something about avoiding the next why cycle in this regard.
When I say Roadrunner and my ah-ha moment in January was significant, almost 12 months later it feels like a total inflection point and birth, death, transformation, dark-low and starry-high all at the same time. Clean high for once also. An instantaneous and ever constant diurnal, a dramatic shift and shock to the system, from which something completely new and strangely old, meaningful was awakened and showed up. I am so grateful for this and I hope I can share it with others, avoid the next Christopher Jones Jr., before he causes harm to others, or Twitch and so many others before they cause harm to themselves . For them and so many others that love them or feed off of their love, light and energy. All suffering from the same issue.
So, it was Bourdain the world-traveler and adored chef, philosopher, admired addict that I so identified with and felt connected to in a unique convoluted way. Then Miss Universe, USA, a world-beater strong black and beautiful inside and out supernova Cheslie Kryst. I was listening more and more, using my brain and breaking things down on my own level and looking around with a different set of eyes and perspective. Then over the next few months the knocks grew loudly - a few young bright college athletes I felt connected to, and I knew I was not moving just on my own accord any longer. One of them, I could have helped if I wasn’t so wrapped up in my own disorder back in the days when I lived here in California. She was right down the street and went on to become a national champion and soon-to-be Stanford grad, but she is a light that we lost this year too – Katie Meyer.
Now, more about Stephen Laurel Boss. I keep going back and forth in circles but that I cannot help. There is so much in between I’m leaving out but that’s not the point either. The point is on another 13 I feel a horrible twitch down to my core. This has been an incredibly incredulous year for me, one where I’ve realized I don’t have the vocabulary to properly express what the last 365 days have truly been in my life and in what I’ve witnessed and believe now. This has been a blue whale year in terms of mass and volume. Entropy has been created, expanded, dissipated, and destroyed, overwhelming all at the same time.
I have said dog years many times when work was difficult, sustained high volume and demanding. But in all truth, I was lying then just as I was about so many other things, pretty much my entire life since the age of about 12 or 13 when I learned how to be a great liar. I’ve never really been challenged a day from a work standpoint. Surely, I wanted to project something different that people would like. Likely trying to fit in again and empathize so others felt supported, or we could rally around something together. I would be lying if I didn’t say work is a 2-4 hr job for me most days, even though my presence at work may regularly be 10-12 hours. Or maybe I’m working a full day but only 20% thinking about what I’m doing vs other things. The math works out, feels about right. Maybe I’m just efficient, better than I should be, maybe I’m something else – careless, haphazard. Maybe I’m all of those things just as we all are, complex, not a magic pill or bullet or one thing. Hell, I’m writing this now during lunch, while contributing to a virtual meeting, revising a report and observing an operation in the plant all at the same time. But what I just read and how I feel, that is much more difficult. I just want people to be happy.
Turns out that is continuing to be more and more difficult, and more and more will never have that chance.
I remember seeing Twitch Boss for the first time watching So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) with my wife, a talented dancer in her own right many moons ago. I still hear the jingle and truly was mesmerized by the talent at times, others just zoned out. Mia Michaels, my wife always loved her creativity and style, those performances really moved her. Mercy. Twitch made you double-take, he was a first-look guy without question - I had never seen anything like him, what a talent, and what a good-looking man, shining personality all packaged up into one. He was like everything you could roll into a Hollywood hit. It was clear he would go far, nothing could stop this meteoric rise. I believe this was in 2008, so he was 26 at the time, I was 28 or 29.
He was a superhero in the movie Perfectus – that hurts to read. Perhaps he couldn't live up to image he had for himself, never attain the image and expectations others had for him. Perhaps we will finally take notice, see that so many bright lights have burned out all around us.
When I read deep and wide about Twitch after learning of his death, at least outwardly he got it, you can hear a lot of wisdom listening to him on a podcast from Lewis Howes in 2016, November 13, 2016 from youtube to be exact. 2220 days prior to his death 53,280 hours.
I listened twice, once on the way up to LA from Irvine, another on the plane ride home. Its worth spending two hours and attentively listening to what he had to say at that time and put it in perspective of what just happened, what many others thought of him. You can almost hear when he believes what he is saying and when he is trying desperately to convince himself. You can also see it.
He felt slighted by his father, and forever more was traumatized inside, had something to prove, had a fire to achieve what he did in spite of, not because of. He was driven by doubt, his enemy like most of us, was himself. The scars of early trauma plaguing him at every success. He also spoke of the disease of more, perhaps pushing too far and setting expectations too high, losing himself in the process. Ego, a silent killer along with doubt a horrible combination. David Choe is the professor of ego and the disease of more. All of this is so greatly connected it is scary.
From the Lewis Howes podcast Twitch said this:
“I have always been that type ‘Don’t tell me what I won’t do,’” Boss said. “I remember talking to [his father] outside of his work in the parking lot and telling him ‘Hey, I’m joining the dance team. I’m going to need some shows and some money to get supplies’ and he went on this tangent…I was like ‘Oh, that means I’m really supposed to do this then.’”
I totally identify with this response to abandonment and the trauma it can bring at a young age – I will show you, or I will go directly against you. I will rebel against you at all costs whether it brings me joy or not, that is not the point – the point is to go against you.
In the Lewis Howes podcast I related and so believe the greatest, struggles, threats will always come from within. The enemy is within, self-created more often than not, the me you can’t see is the dark assassin. Many of us feed the dark wolf, I loved the two wolves story as so eloquently put by Lewis Howes yet I had no idea where this came from. Hello wiki yet again…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Wolves
I found that the two wolves story originated as wise words from a Cherokee Indian and I thought about Geronimo again, another comeback story I would like to see written. Reparations for all, that is a hope, even if they pale in comparison to what is truly warranted. Sometimes its just enough to move forward and on.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
As all things must evolve, this story of the two wolves should as well. Yes we all have 2 wolves inside us and the decisions we make, they make us, and they shape us, but we also are all part of a wolf pack. The pack feeds, the pack protects, the pack teaches, the pack supports. Any wolf alone will die in the wild, for the challenges are too great for any wolf to make it alone. Open yourself up to your pack, they are waiting to feed you, they want to.
Yes we need to ask ourselves every day, are we feeding the good wolf or the bad wolf. Also, count the wolves in your pack, look around and ask that question of your wolfpack one by one and ensure we are all feeding the right wolf. And be kind.
I read up more on Twitch while listening to the Howes podcast. He married in 2013 in Paso Robles, California. Wow, my favorite number again and my most favorite place on earth, one that has taught me so much and given me so much – the giving vines, like the giving tree I read so many years ago. Paso - what a beautiful place to be married. I’ve been there a time or 100. The diurnal – a beautiful concept and lesson I have learned.
Twich died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a Los Angeles hotel The Oak Tree Inn, less than a mile from home. Paso Robles – the pass of the oaks. This light passed on at the inn of the oaks. Twitch had left home without his car, which seems unusual to his wife. I know what that walk feels like, I made a similar walk more than twice in my life but was brought back by an angel or force I cannot explain. And I know my wife felt a similar terror because of my insanity in those moments. My god.
More from the podcast:
He talks about the ego and the chase in the business of Hollywood and struggling to ensure he stays true. Something all of us can focus on – what is driving us, what feeling comes over us when we look in the mirror, truly look for a minute – most of us twitch because we don’t like what we see. But it is NEVER too late to change that response.
The three truths: your last day on earth, everything has been erased, what would you pass on to the rest of the world:
“I am love, I have love, I deserve love. At the end of the day, love is what makes this whole thing happen, it’s the reason we are all here right now. We need to love, we need to be kind. We all have it within us, around us, and we deserve it, period. If I could hear that in my high school self, I am loved, that is what I was created from, I have it so no matter what anybody is saying (bullying reference which he mentioned earlier), and then I deserve love, no matter what is happening that may seem undeserved.”
Greatest adversity: me trying to defeat myself. You can defeat yourself before anybody can get to you. The inkling of an idea that you think is great, you may talk yourself down before even taking the first step up the hill on something. Something in you will keep you from success.
This ties into the one you feed again – those two hungry ass wolves. The one that takes you down, the one that lifts you up and moves you forward. We must feed the good wolf inside of others – show them what is possible, real soul food.
It’s a necessity, this is an adversity that most people have to deal with.
What is the thing that scares me the most? My only enemy – my dark wolf, the darkness inside me. My only real enemy is me.
On the Ellen Show – the biggest dose of happiness that one could get on a daily basis – maybe he lost that dose and needed it to keep positive in his own life (the energy from others keep him positive and moving forward). Or also more literally, losing that job and he felt like he was no longer growing and achieving more, even though he was still very very tremendously successful. This could have been a turning point where he felt an ego inflection point. Interesting to hear this.
You just can’t help to be captured by this energy, people generally have a love and Ellen creates such a powerful environment there. To be able to see that and feel that every day, wow. It put him in tears of joy regularly. People loving one another, hugging strangers, high-fiving, things we need. He felt part of the Ellen family, and now he was no longer. Maybe this is too much, but perhaps this was an emotional, positive energy void combined with a professional loss.
Ellen’s view is to always be kind, Twitch’s biggest learning from here. This couldn’t be more necessary when we consider so many fighting difficult internal battles. A small dose of kindness could be the difference. More than you will ever know. Be kind does not mean be fake, it means even in your tough moments let something roll off. Keep things moving forward. I wish he had thought of this.
Kindness is the ultimate gift we can all give. Important to hear this around the holidays.
Most grateful for in his life recently? His family – wife, daughter and son (he now has a second son whose name is Zaia which means light). We are all so grateful for the light he showed us. And I dearly hope we will learn from the loss of his light. Also, in the chase of trying to make so many things happen, he found himself getting away from his roots. Getting away from the things that cultivated him as a person – get back to who you really are. What I say on this: Take the time to evaluate what you are chasing, who you are feeding. Don’t get caught seeking out shiny objects, trying to be all these things for everybody else. Be who you are for your wolfpack, for the small team that loves and needs you, and most of all for yourself – be who you are and be comfortable to show who you are to your team. Be a partner and part of a team, a member of a company performance, not a solo act.
I wish Twitch had re-read this tweet he posted 2 months before his death:
There are so many other examples of how he truly was an inspiration and a bright light, but also held that strong-man disease – masking his weakness so well, thinking that he could just take care of everyone else without treating his own well-being. This happens far too often, and we must be attentive to this when dealing with mental health. What you see on the outside is often far different than what lies within – we have to be attentive, engaged and courageous – ask difficult questions, lean in and ensure you know how those around you are truly doing. Encourage that transparency in each other, empathize and create safe spaces to open up. That is how we can thrive together.
We all were truly blessed to know Twitch, and here is another reminder of that ever-present wolf, the enemy inside all of us.
Going back to the role of early trauma – you can see that he was always affected by his upbringing and his father and mother’s split, the strife, the strain on his mother, the lack of acceptance from his father. Many have similar internal traumas that are more impactful than consciously are known.
This last one, is where I want to end - 2750 people were touched by this simple message and 1261 passed it forward, 165 had something to say about it. He probably saved someone that day, but nobody could help him yesterday. Of those 2750 people, its likely more than 200 were struggling at that moment.
And at this exact moment of writing and contemplating all of this, nearly home after 5.5 hrs on the red-eye plane ride, just out the window was hope and beauty. I gazed out captivated by a cloud ceiling, so thankful for this beautiful day in front of me.
Everyone is in shock, a day after, a week after because of how surprising this was. He lit up the room. Carrying trauma, depression, anxiety, darkness – he still was able to turn them on for so many others.
Well, the mental health crisis - How bad is it? Lets get away from the details of this tragedy to understanding what we can do from here. From Why to What Now? Where do we go? To defeat a giant, study it first.
50 million in the US are impacted by mental health issues, over 450 million people in the world or around 20% of our adult population on the planet suffer from mental health issues
· 5% of US adults have serious thoughts of suicide, with 46, 000 suicides in the US last year (14 in 100,000 individuals). With the COVID pandemic, numbers are rising dramatically.
· My own personal statistics, over the last 20 years, I have seriously thought of ending my life at least 500 times, nearly acted on that thought a dozen times. I conservatively figure that I've spent 10,000 of my waking hours in deep depression, only on the inside of course.
Charming, upbeat, inspiring, kind, bringing joy to so many – we lost a bright light today is the headline. The problem I see is that we lose 5 of those bright lights every hour of every day in the US and more bulbs are going dim at a faster rate than ever before. That is the true stat for suicide in the USA – 125 people succumb to suicide every day. EVERY DAY, not in a pandemic that we address and move on from, but every single day, every minute so many are struggling while projecting a bright and beautiful light and smile. Inside they are fighting horrible battles that they will never win alone. So much energy is being expended to try and make it through a single moment, alone, until they run out of fuel, feeling there is no other way forward. 50,000 die by suicide each year in the US. This is the worst statistic of mental health, but there are others which are just as hard to process – the cost of mental health each year outweighs cancer, heart disease, all other forms of disease.
The emotional costs are staggering, but the financial ones are just as difficult to fathom. Nearly $10 trillion dollars. TRILLION. In relative terms, when you apply the VSL (value of statistical life) model, mental disorders are responsible for more total cost than any other disease group (almost 4 times the cost of cancer, diabetes or chronic respiratory diseases which each are about $2-2.5 trillion each, and mental health comes in just larger than cardiovascular diseases, both around $8.5 trillion in 2010 dollars (again that number doubles or triples when we get to 2030, a time and a place not far off).
Bright lights blind us from the ‘mental health crisis’ – we have not prepared ourselves properly, educated ourselves or our children, invested in the infrastructure to have anything but suicides and drug overdoses, mass shootings, rape, kidnapping and runaways to occur in the US.
We don’t see the light, we are not doing enough, we are not calling this a pandemic, an epidemic, we are not moving at warp speed to address mental health properly. We do not SEE that we need to take action starting at a young age – I go back to the Physical education example, I took PE every semester of every year of school from K-12th grade, but never did I take a social-emotional-education (SEE) class, not once. I learned a lot about cutting in wood shop, about cooking in home economics but never how to manage my feelings, express my emotions or know that we all rely on each other to survive. We don’t have the emotional, psychological tools or vocabulary to talk about things to one another, not to mention the facilities and workforce, the courage, the support needed to manage the cost of not building this capability at a young age throughout our society. I went to a high school of 1200, we had 1 guidance counselor, not a single social worker or psychologist. We had at least 5 PE ‘teachers’ and 11 football coaches. Something is not right here. What will it take for us to change the system – why learn a foreign language (4 years of German in high school) when we don’t know the language of our minds and thoughts in English?
What will it take? Look at the losses that we didn’t react to properly beyond a vigil or prayers for a few days?
Marilyn Monroe, Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, Alan Turing, Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Freddie Prinze, Virginia Woolf, Hunter S. Thompson, Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, Junior Seau, Cleopatra, just to name a few. Add Amy Winehouse, the others from the terrible 27 club such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and on and on and on.
I wrote this earlier in the year:
Just today (two weeks into my own moment on Feb 1st) I saw that Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst has died, taking her own life jumping from a building in Manhattan, she was 30. “Her great light was one that inspired others around the world with her beauty and strength. She cared, she loved, she laughed and she shined” her family said in their grief. Before her death, Miss USA 2019 Cheslie Kryst posted to social media “May this day bring you rest and peace”.
What now, what next? Re-inventing the educational system, that will directly address the root cause – we are currently incapable to manage the vast universe inside our brains. Our mental health is complex and requires tools, understanding to drive different outcomes. So new subjects in K-12 education covering mental health, social-emotional learning, behavioral sciences are needed. We also need to devote more focus on preparing teachers to be mental health experts, or at least manage their position (chosen or not) as the first line of defense. They are the initial watchers who can identify students who need more targeted help, they are the ones who set the initial standard of how we behave and coexist, what we talk about and how we manage challenges. Then there are the school counselors, need for psychiatric professional services. This will be a generational change, the seeds need to be planted now, but will not truly bear fruit until many of us are gone or close to that. But life is a long game, our existence far longer, and the social studies of the past (namely geography) should be modernized with true social and emotional, mental studies for the future. Our responsibility and way to honor so many we have already lost, is with an action plan to drive true sustainable change – and from the educational perspective we can easily replace outdated subjects or at least take part of the space those subjects current take up, with these more relevant ones.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.
Why? Because we must use these tragedies to drive progress, that is evolution and progress.
I would trade 4 years of German class for being able to communicate with others about our feelings, motivations, challenges and needs. Easy swap to give up 2 years of wood shop class for better emotional and self-management abilities. And so much time spent on a twisted, biased history of the US or walking the track wasting an hour in PE class, those countless hours could be nixed to build present day skills in a new PE – complete or overall personal health – comprised of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual health. I wish I could have talked to someone about my feelings of anger that at the time I didn’t’ even know where they originated, my fear of not being adequate, looking for ways to find validation whether productive or not. There’s nothing unique about those feelings or thoughts.
Mental health is complex, so we must avoid the instant-coffee mode of deliverance, fixing things that we take in the hyper-fast pace of life these days. This will take time, it will take a team, it will take a comprehensive approach, it will take great investment. It is obviously overdue and will provide a great return for all of us. I use this visual to demonstrate that there is no magic bullet or pill in terms of this pandemic, epidemic that is our deteriorating mental stability:
