My Wish For You Is This ~ AAS HASL 2021

“More than anything, my wish for you is this: 

that when your awful darkest days come, you will know you’re not alone. 

I hope you know that you can ask for help. It simply means you’re human. 

Help is real and it is possible; people find it every day.” 

― Jamie Tworkowski, Founder, To Write Love On Her Arm

This past weekend I was honored to have been able to provide a workshop at the AAS Healing After Suicide Loss Conference. I am always humbled when I speak to fellow survivors of suicide loss, and this event was no different. I am especially grateful to the American Association of Suicidology for putting the conference on.

Per participant request, I am providing a written version of the workshop I facilitated at the conference, below. There are links to resources within. 

If you are new to suicide loss, or if you are looking for resources for suicide loss survivors, or if you just need more resources or reminders at any time during your journey - this information is for you. 

✔ We started the workshop with a mindfulness activity, focusing on the five senses:

This calming activity can be done anywhere, usually in two minutes or less!

Count 5 things you can see.

Count 4 things you can touch.

Count 3 things you can hear.

Count 2 things you can smell.

Count 1 thing you can taste.

This is just one of many different grounding exercises you can try. If you want to learn more about mindfulness skills, Mayo Clinic has a good article, here:

See how mindfulness helps you live in the moment.

Mindfulness, grounding and/or meditation exercises are very helpful when we feel overwhelmed, panicky, or when we begin to ruminate about trauma and loss. If you prefer guided exercises, you can find numerous videos on YouTube:

Mindfulness general videos

Meditations focused on grief recovery

 ✔ A quick recap of myths about grief:

Myth: We get over grief.

Truth: We learn to live with grief. We come to terms with grief. We make room for new joy, new love, but we don't get over the old love or memories.

As the first year went on, I described it like this: The grief felt like a boulder inside of me, it was heavy and it took up most of my emotional and mental 'space.' As time went by, the grief didn't go away, but I got stronger and better able to hold the boulder. I grew in my compassion and empathy. I grew around the grief so I had more space. As one year turned into two, I had more moments of joy, more moments of love, more moments of comfort. I have never gotten over the grief. It will never be ok that this is the way that my mother and John died, but I can address the injustice by caring about others and letting them care about me.

Myth: There is a timeline for grief.

Truth: We will grieve in our own time. We will process as we need to. We will have many feelings, none more important than another. We may work through one feeling, and then return to it again, later. All of this is ok. All of this is right. Processing grief is about love that doesn't end, it is about sifting through memories, happiness, and sorrow. It is a wholistic process requiring hard work from us, physically, mentally and emotionally. It is ok to take time with all of this.
Myth: We are bad, weak, broken, or selfish for not letting go of the person we lost.

Truth: One thing I have heard that I wholeheartedly agree with, is that we move forward with greif, not that we move on from having had grief.

Podcaster Nora McInerny gave a great TED Talk about the concept of moving forward. She is not a suicide loss survivor, but she has dealt with significant loss and her talk is fairly universal.

✔ The truth about the stages of grief:

These stages are widely accepted as the primary emotional states we work through when grieving. However, it is important that we remember that grief is not linear. Sometimes we are hard on ourselves because we think we should be following a template for grief. Sometimes other people are hard on us because they think our grief should look a certain way. Personally, I think the stages of grief should be called the 'states' of grief. These are things we feel, but not during any particular stage. It is normal to go forwards or backwards between states, it is common to be in more than one place at a time (ie, angry and depressed).

✔  Remember to tend to your grief:

Allow it. Tell yourself it is welcome. Remind yourself that grief is an expression of love, a desire to heal, a loyalty to the person you have lost, and an attachment to the love between you and them.

Suicide loss often feels senseless. Grief, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.

✔  Practice self care:

Whether you want to or not. Whether you think you deserve it or not.

My fellow survivors of suicide loss deserve to be cared for. You deserve to be cared for.

You know best what works as self care for you. My list of comforts include chamomile tea with honey, apple sauce, jello, ice cream, and soft pajamas.

Here are some suggestions for self care that you might try.

✔  You need comforting:

Sudden loss makes us vulnerable again. We forget how to take care of ourselves. We forget how to say we need comforting. Consider your grief as you would a child. Here are suggestions for reassuring the vulnerable part of you, that you are safe:

• Buy coloring books and drawing paper and a nice set of colored pens or pencils. 

• Even if you aren't hungry, eat comforting foods. Chicken soup, graham crackers, or jello. Whatever you do, eat something.

• Stay hydrated. Consider cutting down on caffeine, which can contribute to heightened anxiety. Drink water, tea, ginger ale, and lemonade,

• Remember that alcohol is a depressant. When we are grieving, it tends to make us feel worse rather than better.

Personally, I struggled a lot with tending to my grieving body. I relied on a lot of external comforts. Here are some things that helped me. Maybe these suggestions will be helpful to you as well.

〰 Weighted blankets. 〰 Body pillows.

〰 Sleeping with a stuffed animal.

〰 Sleeping with a clothing item or other (soft) reminder of the person you have lost.

〰 Holding onto something that smells like the person you lost. (I purchased a stick of his favorite deodorant and would take the cap off whenever I needed to feel as if he was right next to me.)

✔  If you feel stuck, use 'radical acceptance' in order to move forward.

The concept of radical acceptance is rooted in the Buddhist philosophy suggesting that while pain is inevitable, suffering is not. It applies to grief in that we can use radical acceptance to move forward, even when we feel pain. There is a significant difference between the traditional definition of acceptance, and the concept of 'radical' acceptance.

  Traditional acceptance - not as helpful:  

It happened, I can’t change it, I need to stop being affected by it.

  Radical acceptance - more helpful:

It happened, my heart is broken, I will never be the same, this will always be a part of my life. AND I can survive this. I can move forward. I can have a future.

Radical acceptance is important because it circumvents any debate we have in our head about our right to heal. With radical acceptance, we acknowledge what has happened, we remind ourselves that our feelings are valid, and we give ourselves permission to heal, regardless.

Much of moving through grief has to do with giving ourselves permission to be exactly where we are.

✔  Recognizing complicated grief syndrome:

Experts suggest that during the first six months after a significant loss, grief may feel particularly intense and overwhelming. After six months, if symptoms of grief are incapacitating, then complicated grief syndrome may be occurring.

Personally, I think we have to be careful about diagnosing complicated grief, primarily because it implies that there is a timeline for grieving. However, if your symptoms of grief match any of the following, you may need professional help in order to move forward.

• Being stuck in a painful stage or feeling for a period of time longer than six months. 
• Focus on little else, other than the loss.
• Suicidal ideation of your own.
• Prolonged and intentional isolation.
• Unresolved guilt or self blame.
• Blaming others, uncontrollable anger, or rage.
• Intention to injure or or harm yourself or others - physically or emotionally.

Remember, you do not deserve to be further punished for your loss. Please reach out for support. And if you are feeling suicidal or compelled to harm yourself (or others) - please seek help immediately.

✔  Healthy vs. unhealthy expressions of anger:

Remember, anger is a normal, important, and healthy response to grief. Even anger that doesn't seem logical. Allow yourself to be angry. However, in order to work through those feelings it is important to express anger in healthy ways.

Healthy responses to anger can include:

• Yelling (in a safe place).
• Crying (also in a safe place).
• Writing about your feelings in a journal or in letters you don't send.
• Telling trusted friends or family how you feel.
• Talking about your anger in grief support groups.
• Seeking help from professionals.

Unhealthy responses to anger can lead to more pain on your end, and potentially for others as well. Some unhealthy responses include:

• Yelling at other people. Especially other people who are enduring the same loss.
• Telling a living person that they are to blame. 
• Telling mutual friends/family that a living person is to blame. 
• Fantasies of retribution/vengeance. 
• Being angry all the time, at almost everything, for a prolonged period of time.
• Feeling the need to hurt or humiliate someone else.
• Feeling an urge to self harm or being suicidal yourself.

✔  Differentiating between acceptance and denial:

Achieving a place of healthy acceptance is an important goal of recovery. We can't change the past, we can't bring back people or situations that we have lost. With acceptance, we will be able to participate in a safe, peaceful, and even joyful life. 

Acceptance can be fleeting, especially at first, and that is ok. With time and support, you will find more peace than when your loss is very fresh.

Sometimes though, denial can be confused with acceptance. Denial and shock often serve to regulate a system that can't yet process tragedy, and as a temporary coping mechanism, this is ok. However, prolonged denial or repressed grief can have both physical and emotional consequences.

Healthy acceptance could include the following:

Feelings of optimism.

Hope for the future.

Allowing yourself to experience sadness.

Talking to others about your loss or about the person you've lost.

Advocating for suicide prevention causes.

Participating in support group and encouraging others who are newer to their loss.

Resuming activities such as employment, social events, hobbies.

Doing volunteer work, assisting neighbors, reaching out to friends, helping others.

Conversely, denial can include the following:

Feeling numb.

Not believing the loss occurred.

Not believing that you are affected by the loss.

Telling yourself that because you feared the loss might happen, that you were fully prepared.

Not talking about the loss.

Feeling confused about circumstances.

Intentional isolation.

Underlying feelings of guilt or shame.

Frequent unexplained headaches or gastrointestinal distress.

Remember that with all the stages of grief, the goal is not to disallow or disrupt them (unless they are causing harm to ourselves or others). Ultimately, the goal is to process the feelings and move through them, at our own pace. 

✔  The importance of support:

Remember that you do not need to do this alone. Surround yourself by loved ones. Lean into them as much as possible. I stayed with a friend for a couple weeks after my mom died, and I slept at a friend's house for the first month after John's loss. Here are some suggestions for how you can be supported:

Ask for rides. I suggest that new loss survivors (first week - month) avoid driving if they can.

Have someone with you to help make decisions and keep track of information, especially if you have to handle any type of arrangements related to loss.

Ask people to help you remember important dates, times, and locations.

I couldn't answer the phone the first few days. My friends answered the phone for me.

I couldn't post on social media, although lots of friends were asking about me. My son posted on Facebook for me.

I couldn't even purchase basic household supplies. One person made sure I had paper towels and toilet paper.

Accept help when it is offered. Ask for help when it is needed. Do it, even if you don't believe you need help, and do it even if you don't believe you deserve help. (You do, and you do.)

✔  Reach out to:

• Friends and family: you need people who are safe for you to be vulnerable with - so you will need to identify who is 'safe.' Safe means they don't try to talk you out of your feelings, they don't give you unsolicited advice, and they don't need you to make them feel better about your loss.

• Professionals: Suicide loss is particularly traumatizing. It is not unusual to have PTSD related to the suicide, especially if you witnessed the death or if you found or saw the body of your loved one. Needing psychiatric help and/or medication is not uncommon. When my boyfriend died, I had such a difficult time managing the pain, I eventually hospitalized myself to address my own suicidal thoughts. I was then in daily therapy  for several months.  

• Therapists: Therapy and grief counseling can be very helpful, even short term. Ensure that a therapist provides trauma informed treatment. This is important. Trauma informed therapists have had specialized training and experience in helping clients with PTSD to process their feelings. You can find a therapist by asking your doctor, fellow members of a support group, contacting your insurance company, or doing an internet search. Click here for more information on finding a therapist online.

• Your local crisis center: Find out if they offer grief counseling. I was able to work with an individual grief counselor for close to a year, for free, through the Contra Costa County Crisis Center. 

Remember, whether they are a friend, a family member, or a professional, ensure that you feel safe sharing your vulnerable feelings with them. Make sure that they listen, they don’t judge, they don’t give advice (unless asked for) or platitudes.

✔ If you yourself become suicidal:

Grief in itself can contribute to suicidal feelings. Having lost someone to suicide adds another layer of risk to survivors of the lost.

We can not lose our own lives because of the loss of the person we loved.

We are loved and needed in this world, just as the person we lost was. But, we have an opportunity to reach out for help and to heal. Take that opportunity. Do it for yourself. Do it for everyone who loves you. Do it for the person you lost to suicide.

✔ Finding a support group:

I also encourage survivors of suicide loss to try out a support group. Groups may be in person, via zoom, some are online. Some are volunteer led, some are moderated by professional clinicians. I have found my ongoing participation in support groups to be a hugely helpful part of my healing. 

There are some important things to consider in regard to support groups.

There are generic grief support groups. In these, participants have lost their loved ones in many different ways. These can be very helpful. Because suicide is stigmatized, some loss survivors feel they don't 'fit in.' However, this is not a universal experience.

Then there are grief groups that are suicide specific. You might feel more comfortable being vulnerable with those who have suffered a similar loss. However, do be prepared for some feelings of overwhelm. My suggestion is that you prepared to feel a little worse at first, particularly after the first session. This does usually improve, but it can be very sad to be among others who've also endured such heartbreaking loss. 

(The first time I attended an in person support group. I broke down crying on the way to the facility where the the group was held.  I was so upset over the fact that I needed a suicide support group, at all. Initially, I dropped out of of all the groups. I returned a few months later.. Thera are also many people who feel an immediate benefit groups. We are all different.  Do whatever works for you.)  

Online group can be very helpful as well. They don't usually have set times when they 'meet.' Instead, the members are able to stop in, comment, or not, at any time 24 hours a day. I have found that good moderation and group rules are necessary. It is very important that you and your fellow members feel welcome and that the group is as conflict free as possible.

Be prepared too, when joining most support groups you will have to answer questions prior to being admitted. Typical questions are about who you lost, when your loss occurred, and your relationship to the person who died. At least one group asked me to provide a copy of a death certificate or obituary. 

Finally - beware of groups on Facebook that are for those who suffer from suicidality. Some of these groups are for those who want to share their suicidal ideation. They may glamorize suicide. Stay clear of these groups. My experience is that they can cause further pain and trauma to loss survivors. 

Overall, I do recommend support groups. Remember, when you join a support group, you may not just be helping yourself, your participation may help others as well. Take care of yourself and find a group that feels like a fit, 

✔ Resources for finding a support group:

Here are some suggestions for finding grief and suicide loss support groups. Note that I do not have direct knowledge of all of these groups. Therefore, this is a list of resources, but not necessarily endorsements.

• AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) has a comprehensive database of suicide loss survivor groups. You just enter your zip code in order to find local groups.

• Friends for Survival was started by two mothers grieving the suicide losses of their sons.

• Alliance of Hope provides support for those grieving the loss of a loved one to suicide.

• T.A.P.S. serves those who are grieving the loss of a member of the military (actively serving or veteran).

• Local county or city 'crisis centers.' Sometimes you can find this information by dialing 2-1-1. Other times you can find crisis centers by doing an internet search.

• Meetup.com is a site that helps to connect people to others in their area with similar interests. You can do a search for suicide or suicide loss, and see if there are any groups in your area.

• The Compassionate Friends is a general grief support organization that is specifically for parents who have lost children. 

• Facebook offers numerous suicide loss support groups, many of which are specific to the type of loss (parent loss, child loss, sibling loss, partner loss, etc.). Do a search for 'Suicide' under groups. My favorite group is SOLOS; Spouse-Partner Loss.

✔ We ended the workshop with a peaceful breathing exercise:

I want to acknowledge that I have provided a lot of information in this post. You may feel overwhelmed or anxious. These are natural reactions and a sign of our nervous system trying to safely process a lot of suicide specific information. 

Whenever you are having this kind of reaction, I highly recommend a calming mindfulness activity. 

On June 12th, we ended our workshop with a variation of a 4/7/8 'peaceful breathing' exercise. Here is a video that guides you through this breathing technique. The video is less than one minute in length. 

I hope this information is helpful to you. My heart is always with my fellow survivors of suicide loss. I am inspired by your bravery, my heart breaks open for the path we are all on, and I join many in the hope that we find moments of peace and a healing journey.

✔ To sum up the workshop:

You have permission to feel what you feel, when you feel it, on your own timeline.

You deserve support. You do not deserve to be punished with pain.

Honor your grief. Honor your loved one.

And always remember, you are not alone.

.

I see you. I care about you. You are needed in this world.

 

To see posts on this blog featuring LGBTQ topics, click here.

For information on crisis hotline/textline/chatlines, including the Trans Lifeline, click here.

To see a (partial) list of LGBTQ suicide prevention organizations, click here and scroll down to LGBTQ.

For more LGBTQ suicide prevention resources and support, see the AFSP page, click here. 


To all in the LGBTQ community, including allies, I see you. I care about you. You are wanted in this world. You are needed in this world. Never forget. 

Join Me, June 12, 2021

Healing After Suicide Loss Conference

Saturday, June 12, 2021

I am excited that I have been asked by the American Association of Suicidology to present a workshop during their 2021 Healing After Loss Conference. Join me on Saturday June 12, 2021, for a conversation about the process of moving past guilt, blame, and anger, in order to begin to heal from the complicated grief associated with suicide loss. 

The American Association of Suicidology (AAS) is one of the premier non-profit suicide prevention and awareness groups. AAS programs reflect a commitment to the following:

• Advancing Suicidology as a science; encouraging, developing and disseminating scholarly work in suicidology.
• Encouraging the development and application of strategies that reduce the incidence and prevalence of suicidal behaviors.
• Compiling, developing, evaluating, and disseminating accurate information about suicidal behaviors to the public.
• Fostering the highest possible quality of suicide prevention, intervention and postvention to the public.
• Publicize official AAS positions on issues of public policy relating to suicide.
• Promote research and training in suicidology.

AAS has received the Guidestar Platinum Seal of Transpancy.

I am honored and excited to be a part of their 33rd annual Healing After Loss Conference.

Mental Health Awareness Month. Because we are needed in this world.

Salt Water

Taking a moment to thank the lovely website Salt Water for re-posting my post, The Cruelest Month, today. Salt Water provides "a safe harbor where you can find comfort, support, and tools to survive your loss and rebuild your life."

I am always honored when my writing is shared. I am particularly touched that my post has been shared with a site dedicated to supporting the grieving. 

Margo Fowkes, the founder of Salt Water. has provided a powerful list of the things a survivor of suicide loss can do to begin the journey of healing. You can find that document here:

Suicide Prevention. Have the Conversations.

Love, Honor, and Compassion. A Suicide Loss Announcement Done Right

Tommy Bloom Raskin
12/30/1995 - 12/31/2020

'[Tommy] opposed all malicious gossip, 

stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line:

forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.'

With suicide loss, making public announcements is often complicated by the stigma attached to suicide. As a suicide loss survivor and as a suicide attempt survivor, I have experienced my own shame around losses and survival. For a long time, I avoided and sidestepped questions. I didn't speak up about needing comfort, and I often pushed it away when it was offered.

Today, I see speaking up as an imperative part of healing. And more so, I refuse to let shame dictate my behavior.

A few days ago, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin (and his wife Sarah) publicly announced the death of their beloved son, Tommy Bloom Raskin. I am sharing their announcement now. I feel the announcement was done right. It focuses on what is important: Tommy's amazing life, his accomplishments, their compassion for Tommy's struggles with mental illness, and finally - their great love for their son.

With the exception of adjusting sizing of text and removal of a few photos (for spacing reasons) the announcement below is unchanged from that which was posted on Congressman Raskin's website. I hope that in reading the announcement, you might grow in your compassion for survivors of loss, as well as those who have lost their life to suicide.

To Jamie Raskin and the rest of Tommy's friends and loved ones, I extend my heartfelt empathy and condolences. I know I speak not just myself, but for so many of our fellow survivors of suicide loss, when I say that we share your grief. We are deeply saddened that you have now joined our heartbroken club. Your son's life mattered. We know.

Statement of Congressman Jamie Raskin and Sarah Bloom Raskin on the Remarkable Life of Tommy Raskin

Rep. Jamie Raskin

3 days ago·9 min read

TAKOMA PARK, M.D. — Congressman Jamie Raskin and Sarah Bloom Raskin today released the following statement about their son Thomas (Tommy) Bloom Raskin:

“On January 30, 1995, Thomas Bloom Raskin was born to ecstatic parents who saw him enter the world like a blue-eyed cherub, a little angel. Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected).

“Over the years he was enveloped in the love not only of his bedazzled and starstruck parents but of his remarkable and adoring sisters, Hannah the older and Tabitha the younger, a huge pack of cousins, including Jedd, Emily, Maggie, Zacky, Mariah, Phoebe and Lily, Boman and Daisy, and Emmet and spoiled rotten with hugs and kisses and philosophical nourishment from his grandparents Herb and Arlene Bloom, Marcus Raskin, Barbara Raskin, and later Lynn Raskin, the best aunts and uncles a mischievous ragamuffin could ask for, including Erika and Keith, Kenneth and Abby, Mina, Noah and Heather, Eden and Brandon, and Tammy and Gary, and a cast of secondary parents who wrapped him in adoration and wildly precocious conversation like Michael and Donene, Ann and Jimmy, Kate and Hal, Kathleen and Tom, Katharine and David, Judy, Reed and Julia, Dar and Michael, David and Melinda, Angela and Howard, Helen, Sheila, Mitchell, Will and Camille, Phyllis, Shammy,Khalid and Zina.

“With all this love infusing Tommy’s world and soul, girls quickly came to fancy this magical boy who always made time for the loneliest kids in class and frequently made up his own words to describe feelings and parts of toasters — and, to be clear, he took a strong liking to girls too, these omnipresent magical lovely girls he found who always had a profound beauty radiating from within. Tommy was raised on a fine Montgomery County Education, which took him through Takoma Park Elementary School, Pine Crest Elementary School, Eastern Middle School, and Montgomery Blair High School (with a frolicking detour to Ecole Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel in Paris for one family sabbatical year where he learned French, tried to teach himself Japanese, and insisted on travel adventures through North Africa and the rest of Europe), but his irrepressible love of freedom and strong libertarian impulses made him a skeptic of all institutional bureaucracy and a daring outspoken defender of all outcasts and kids in trouble. Once when third-grade Tommy and his father saw a boy returning to school after a weeklong suspension and his Dad casually remarked, ‘it looks like they let finally let him out of jail,’ Tommy replied, ‘no, you mean they finally let him back into jail.’

“At Blair, Tommy’s adult persona began to take shape: he co-founded Bliss, a life-changing peer-to-peer tutoring program and spent hours tutoring fellow students in Math and English; made wonderful friends he lavished attention on; became Captain of the Forensics Club and a savagely logical and persuasive orator in the Debate and Extemporaneous Speech Club where he had to be constantly reminded by his teammates that the purpose of high school debate tournaments is to score points and not convince people of the truth or change the world. He was active in the Young Dems and recruited dozens to get involved in the 2012 Obama reelection effort. On Prom Night, he threw a dinner party for 24 fellow students, including classmates who had no date that evening, and they all went to prom together as a group. He hated cliques and social snobbery, never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line — ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.’

“Above all, he began to follow his own piercing moral and intellectual insights looking for answers to problems of injustice, poverty and war. A Bar Mitzvah from Temple Sinai, he taught a Sunday School with Heather Levy for two years at Temple Emmanuel, often substituting his social-struggle analysis of the Exodus story for teachings on the Hebrew alphabet. He ordered and devoured books on the Civil War and Maryland’s history in it, World War II and resistance to Nazism, Jewish history, libertarianism, moral philosophy, the history of the Middle East conflict, peace movements, anything by Gar Alperovitz on the decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and anything by Peter Singer on animal rights. He began to pen these extraordinary essays and articles that now add up to well over 100 as well as write plays and extremely long polemical poems, which he eagerly performed for audiences astounded by his precocious moral vision, utter authenticity of emotion, and beauty of expression.

“At Amherst College, he majored in history, helped lead the Amherst Political Union, intellectually discredited the egregious Dinesh D’Souza who turned to pathetic insults when Tommy destroyed his argument from the audience with a simple question (even before D’Souza was soon to be convicted of federal campaign finance crimes), won the Kellogg Prize, created and performed one-act plays with his social dorm mates, and wrote a compelling senior thesis on the intellectual history of the animal rights movement. Spending his summers voraciously reading and soaking up all the wisdom to be had at his eclectic self-procured internships at the CATO Institute with Doug Bandow, J Street, the Institute for Policy Studies, ARC of Montgomery, Compassion Over Killing, and for Professor Frank Couvares, Tommy became an anti-war activist, a badass autodidact moral philosopher and progressive humanist libertarian, and a passionate vegan who composed imperishable, knock-your-socks-off poetry linking systematic animal cruelty and exploitation to militarism and war culture. He recruited gently and lovingly — but supremely effectively — dozens and dozens of people, including his parents, to the practice of not eating animals, and it will be hard to find anyone his age who has turned more carnivores into vegans than him. (He also cheerfully opposed sectarian holier-than-thou sanctimoniousness among a handful of vegans he met and would say, ‘I’m working for a vegan world, not a vegan club.’) A prolific and exquisitely gifted writer, he came to publish essays and op-eds in the Nation, the Goodmen Project, Anti-War.Com and other outlets. After his Amherst graduation, Tommy went to the Friends Committee on National Legislation to work on stopping the war in Yemen and on Middle East policy, and spent a year publishing more remarkable essays and articles (soon to be available to you) and launching a book of political philosophy offering a sweeping animal rights critique of Locke, Mill and classical liberal social contract theory.

“In 2019 Tommy went to Harvard Law School. He lived up in the attic of the home of Michael Anderson and Donene Williams, his Dad’s beloved law school roommates, and made more remarkable friends. He studied constitutional law with Noah Feldman, criminal law with Carole Steiker, and property with Bruce Mann (Elizabeth Warren’s husband); he loved the systematic thought and debate dynamics of law school but reported it to be like half an education because the moral philosophy component was somehow left out. Rather than read endless lists of long cases, why not have students read clear comprehensive statements of what the law is and then talk about what the law should be? So while zealously promoting his newfound favorite game — Boggle — to rescue his classmates and himself from the stress and anxiety of law school, he also pushed them to engage with social problems and found a strong affinity group in the Effective Altruists. He spent last summer working quite brilliantly as a summer associate at Mercy for Animals and found a knack for actual lawyering.

“This fall Tommy not only took a full complement of his second-year law classes, including Disability Law with Michael Stein which he loved, but, at the suggestion of his beloved Professor Steicker, became a Teaching Assistant with Professor Michael Sandel in his ‘Justice’ Course at Harvard. As a teacher, Tommy devoted great time to teaching his section of the class — working on his astonishing lectures and jokes, and meeting endlessly with his dozen students on Zoom, finding what was precious in their work and teasing it out. He loved his students and they loved him back. Not content with giving half of his teaching salary away to save people with malaria by purchasing mosquito nets with global charities, when the semester was over and after his grades were in and the student evaluations were complete, he made individual donations in each of his students’ names to Oxfam, GiveDirectly and other groups targeting global hunger. When I asked him why he did this, he quoted something that he loved which Father Daniel Berrigan said about Dorothy Day: ‘she lived as though the truth were true.’ Tommy said: ‘I wanted them to see that the truth is true.’

“We have barely been able to scratch the surface here, but you have a sense of our son. Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

“On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

“He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: ‘Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.’”

Click here to find the announcement on Congressman Raskin's Website.

Click here to find the Tommy Raskin Memorial Fund for People and Animals.