I don’t think people realize how important this topic truly is.

It’s crazy the number of stories this past year I’ve read about in regard to Black children and suicide. My heart hurts deeply for Bryce; I can’t imagine the amount of pressure he was under during that time. Suicide is something that I feel our society is still trying to wrap its head around — especially Black communities. There’s so many things that play a factor in the stigma with us: the vulnerability factor in men/boys, the fact that we still regard therapy and disorders as “white people shit”, that a lot of us still try to “pray it away”, etc.

Though in Bryce and McKenzie’s case, I feel like it points more to a failing system. Not enough people know how to recognize the signs (“He was talking crazy the last few days before the incident”), and the schools may not have even paid enough attention to notice (the fact that the school kept saying they couldn’t prove she was being bullied).

Thanks for writing about this highly sensitive issue.