Tracey Erin Smith

About 12 years ago, my father died by suicide. Within weeks, I separated from my then fiancé. That was definitely the lowest point in my life. 

My mother and I were staying on Toronto Islands, because I wasn’t in the family home, and I remember feeling like I weighed a thousand pounds. All I wanted to do was literally walk into the earth. It was the only time in my life I can remember wanting to disappear. 

I did move back into the home with my then fiancé. But the moment that changed things for me was when a friend of mine who’s a writer came over to our kitchen. She brought with her baguettes, some cheese, some meat, and she put it out on the counter. She opened her laptop and said, “Tell me stories about your dad.”

I started pacing back and forth with my tears splashing off the kitchen floor and told her stories. She wrote them all down. It was one of the most powerful acts of love that I have ever experienced from another person. It was like I was falling down this well of darkness after what had happened, and she tossed a bucket down and pulled me up by saying, “I will listen to these stories, and I will capture them for you.” That is what became the basis of my show about my father’s death; the rough notes that she captured. It meant the world to me that she did that.

Shortly after my father died, I felt like I completely understood why he killed himself. When I got the news, I was hysterical and enraged. But in the days following, I felt like I had a clear, a very clear, understanding of what had happened, and that he literally couldn’t see a future that he could live into. He was 100,000 dollars in debt. He was about to be evicted from his apartment. His girlfriend had moved out because she knew they were way behind on the rent. And I feel like, when you can’t imagine a future, there’s nowhere to go but out. He literally couldn’t imagine a future he could live into, and so he exited. It was really interesting to feel I had that understanding. I found it very helpful.

One of the things that I feel I can do because of the work I do is almost teletransport into another person and get a hit or a download of what was happening for them at that time, or what’s happening now. And it was helpful. It was helpful. In the support group for suicide survivors, they told us there are questions you will never have answers to. So that helps the mind because everyone after a suicide becomes a detective: What happened? What clues did I miss? What did he say to you? What was the last time he did this? And when someone finally tells you there are questions you will never have the answer to, the mind can rest a little more in knowing that there’s no answer. You can’t chase it, because it’s not coming.

One of the things that I found after he died made me angry. We were going through his office and there was a to-do list. He had a to-do list of how much money he wanted to make, the fancy sports car he wanted to drive, how much he wanted to weigh. And he just was consistently not achieving those goals. I wanted to set that piece of paper on fire. I thought, "We're so conditioned to strive for more—more money, thinner, this, that—and if there had been some way that he could have found peace within himself, that he was...he was an amazing person.” But I don’t think he ever believed that. He was always living beyond his means, and that’s what got him in the end. It finally caught up with him and there was no way out. And he wasn’t willing to live a life that wasn’t the life he pictured. 

What I've learned from him is to find enough. To find enough, to feel enough. 

I have said of the work that I do that I give people back to themselves. I’m able to create a space, an environment where whatever needs to come forth from people can come forth. And one of my favorite sayings from our friend Jesus goes ‘if we bring forth what is within us, what we bring forth will save us.’ Or, ‘if we do not bring forth what is within us, what we do not bring forth will destroy us.’ My humble goal is to create an environment where everything can come forth, because there’s no fear of shame, judgment, or expulsion. All is welcome, and then the healing happens.