Has your life been shattered by suicide? Nenagh group here to help
A SUPPORT group in Nenagh to help people in North Tipperary bereaved by suicide is about to relaunch its service to make more people aware of its role.
The Nenagh group, which is part of the wider Midlands Living Links network, comprises six facilitators who directly had their lives changed by suicide.
Nenagh Living Links currently holds support meetings once a month in the Pastoral Centre on Church Road at 7.30pm.
And it is in that building that it will relaunch its voluntary service, holding out the hand of support to those suffering following the self-inflicted death of a loved one.
The relaunch will take place on Tuesday, June 24, at 7pm. Doing the honours will be local Catholic priest, Fr Lorcan Kenny, and all are invited to attend.
A number of facilitators in the Nenagh group will be speaking of their harrowing experiences of suicide on the evening and how their subsequent involvement in Living Links helped them cope or recover after the loss of their loved one. Refreshments will be served afterwards.
One of the members of the Nenagh branch is Frances Hynes, from Ballycommon, who lost her 21-year-old son, Oisin, to suicide in 2015.
It was after that life-shattering experience that Frances and her husband Eddie, parents of two other children, became aware of the great work being done by Living Links to help people bereaved by suicide.
“We started going to the support meetings once a month and they helped us hugely,” Frances recalls.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support I got.
“The facilitators were all affected in some way by suicide. Living Links supports anyone affected by suicide loss.”
Frances added: “Talking about it is the best support you can get, sharing with someone who understands what the journey is like.
“Because, really, only somebody who has been through it can really understand.”
Frances is one of six local people who is trained as a facilitators with the local branch of Living Links.
Among the great supports provided by Living Links is accompanying bereaved families to inquests, where they have to sit through the harrowing evidence of how their loved ones died.
“If anybody needs us just pick up the phone,” says Frances, who adds that the local branch is reaching out to people not just in Nenagh but throughout Tipperary.
She said: “All our services are completely confidential and there’s no judgement whatsoever. What you are feeling is what you are feeling and that’s it.
“Nobody judges you and if you want to talk, you can talk. And if you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to. You can just listen and take it all in.
“Usually after a few meetings we find that people want to talk and tell their story.
“It’s in the talking that people start to heal.”
LOSING HIS FATHER
Another facilitator with the local Living Link group is Tom Cleary (55) from Dromin, Carrigatoher.
Tom was just 13-years-old when his father, also Tom, a 46-year-old council worker, died by suicide, leaving behind a wife and five children.
“It’s 42 years since I lost my father to suicide,” says Tom, who related how he got to become a facilitator with Living Links.
“My wife Caroline saw this advert in a newspaper for Living Links and she said to me, ‘why don’t you try that?’. My reply was that it wouldn’t be much good to me at this age of my life.
“But then Caroline said, ‘you might be good for other people’, and so I tried it and related my own experience. Getting involved with Living Links really helped me, so I went on to become a facilitator myself so that I could help others.”
Since the Covid Pandemic a new Living Links group in Nenagh has been regenerated and Tom says it is now going from “strength to strength”.
“Over the years we have helped people to the best of our abilities, including a lot of families who have been bereaved by suicide,” says Tom.
‘LIKE TORTURE’
Before groups like Living Links were founded there was no help for the living victims of suicide and life for them was unbearably tough, comments Tom.
“It was like torture in former times because you parked everything and you just got on with life and never mentioned anything about it.
“In those days suicide was viewed by the Catholic Church as a sin and in some cases at funeral Masses the body was brought down the side aisle of the church. It’s different now, thank God.”
Tom said that reaching out for help to groups like Living Links is life-changing for many victims.
“People are left with a hole in their hearts after suicide of a loved one and only people like us facilitators who went through it understand that, unfortunately,” says Tom, who is encouraging victims to make contact with the group. “Of the six of us who have become facilitators in our group, every one of us has lost somebody to suicide. That’s what makes our group unique, because we lost sons and daughters, fathers and mothers.
“So, we know first-hand, unfortunately, about the tragedy of the experience and ways and means of dealing with it,” Tom reveals.
LAUNCH EVENT
The public is invited to the launch of Nenagh Living Links on Tuesday, June 24, at 7pm at Nenagh Pastoral Centre.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information on Living Links visit the website: Midlands Living Links - Reaching out with Hope.
Tel: 087 2250215