‘You have so much life ahead of you’: Mother of suicide victim offers advice to youth

When it comes to the topic of teenage suicide, Melissa Johnson Lawson knows a lot more about it than she ever wanted to. In 2018, her 16-year-old daughter, Bethany Faith Lawson, took her own life and died by suicide.

Melissa Johnson Lawson, whose 16-year-old daughter Bethany Lawson killed herself in 2018, spoke in 2018 prior to the start of a suicide and bullying prevention walk. She is encouraging youth thinking about suicide today to remember that what they are going through will pass.

Melissa Lawson’s advice to anyone thinking about killing themselves, particularly young people, is to remember that “what you are going through today will pass. It doesn’t matter how bad it is. It is passing. It will pass and be behind you. It will be your history someday in your future, whatever that problem is. You have so much life ahead of you.”

“It doesn’t matter where you come from or what is going on in the moment, there is always room to change and to have a life, have a good life. Don’t get so caught up in the fog and the depression and whatever else is going on in the moment that you cheat yourself out of a wonderful life. We all deserve that. It is out there to be had. You just have to give it time. Whatever you are going through it will pass and there will be better days ahead. There are people out there to help you figure that out.”

Since December, two middle school students in the community have died by suspected suicide.

Lawson noted that she is heartbroken about the two deaths like many others in the community. While she doesn’t know any details about the two deaths, she does have some advice.

Melissa Lawson’s advice to parents of young adults – whether they are seeing any potential signs of suicide or not – is take what is happening right now and sit down with them and open a dialog.

“Let them know that it does not matter what is going on in their life that you are there. They can always have an open line of communication. If they aren’t comfortable talking to you, then they can talk to counselors at school or call 988,” she said. “You want them to talk to you of course. If they aren’t comfortable with that, if they don’t feel like they can have that open line of communication with you then there are other people they can do that with.”

Bethany’s story

Bethany Lawson was a teenager, who enjoyed riding horses and modeling.

Just a few months after she turned 16 years old, she died by suicide at her home.

“We had no clue anything was going on,” Melissa Lawson said. “Bethany was a good student. She had lots of friends. There was no problems in the home.”

Melissa said that prior to her daughter’s death, when she heard about teenage suicide, she falsely thought that there must be something wrong in the teenager’s home life or that they were being bullied and issues like that.

“That just wasn’t the case with Bethany. She didn’t fit that bill. There was nothing we could find indicating that she was having issues so we were completely blindsided,” Melissa Lawson said.

For the first few months after Bethany’s death, Melissa Lawson could hardly get out of bed.

To cope, she started going to some spiritual counseling with Pastor Gerald Mullins at Grace Christian Fellowship.

This led her to talking to children in the community, some of whom didn’t seem to be having problems.

“I had a lot of kids reaching out to me, who were just like Bethany. You did not see that there was an issue. They didn’t show it. They didn’t talk about it. Their parents didn’t know. I began to realize there was a bad problem and we needed to do something,” Melissa Lawson said.

Melissa Lawson reached out to Mullins to help her start having meetings where teenagers and other young people could attend. At the first meeting 40 people attended.

“That showed there were people out there hurting, who need to talk about it and know they have support. You can’t fix everybody’s problems for them. You can’t fix what is going on in other people’s lives. You don’t have to understand what is going on. They need to know that somebody is there to listen, to walk through that with them. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t even have to understand what it. You just have to be there sometimes.”

This is how Bethany’s Hope got started.

“What we do is just have meetings once a month. Anybody is welcome to come. We just do a devotion and we talk about things going on right now in our community,” Lawson said.

Many of the attendees now are high school and college aged young people.

After the group meeting, people are available to talk individually if they need to speak to someone.

Bethany’s Hope holds annual walks each September to raise awareness about suicide. In addition, it also holds a horse ride annually and other fundraisers.

988 billboard

This year instead of doing a scholarship, Bethany’s Hope decided to pay for placing a 988 billboard on I-75 that is also visible from US25W in the Mt. Ash community. 988 is the national suicide prevention lifeline.

It was put up shortly after Christmas.

Statistics show about 50,000 people pass this billboard every day.

Melissa Lawson admits that every time she sees the 988 number, she can’t help but wonder whether her daughter would have called it if it had been around before she killed herself.

“It’s anonymous. It’s not going to your parents and saying, ‘I’m struggling and I don’t understand why,’” Melissa Lawson noted. “I think she didn’t understand why she was loved and she did have support and she still felt depression. I don’t think she felt comfortable talking about it because she didn’t understand why she felt that way.”

When Bethany’s Hope did its annual horse ride this year, it also held a 988 art competition that involved middle school and high school students from Whitley County and Williamsburg. A total of 60 people entered the competition.

The high school art winner’s drawing is on the billboard, and the middle school winner’s message is printed on there.

More needs to be done

Lawson admits she is not sure what kind of suicide prevention programs that the Whitley County school system has, and noted it was very supportive of her and her family after her daughter’s death, but that more needs to be done after the death of two children over such a short period of time and it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

“I think we need to do more in the school. We need to get a program in there that is in-person and not a video. We need the 988 number posted throughout the school. Obviously, we are not being successful at what we are doing so far. We need to do more,” Melissa Lawson said.

Lawson noted that not everyone is comfortable talking to someone that they hardly know and she would encourage schools to find some other ways for kids to sit down and vent.

“There are other ways that kids can learn to express themselves along with the counseling. There is art therapy. There are things they can do outside like horse riding. There are things that we all do to help us vent and give our mind a release from things. I think it would be great if we could explore some of that with our kids,” she said.

Lawson added that she wishes there was a program in the schools that screened kids for depression.

“Then if they showed that they were at risk or they were struggling with depression then we could actually have a meeting and sit down with the parents and offer those kind of things to them,” she said. “We are losing our babies and we need to figure out how to stop that.”