When Suzie Bartel lost her teenage son to suicide, she decided to turn her family’s heartbreaking tragedy into something positive. Through the Ryan Bartel Foundation, Suzie aims to provide resources and hope to teenagers struggling with self-esteem and the will to live. We are honored to include Suzie in our Parent with a Purpose series and share her mission.
What is your mission? What do you want to accomplish?
Our mission is to prevent youth suicide through educational programs and activities that empower youth to help them self and each other with hope and strength.
Most suicide prevention programs focus only on helping kids when they reach a crisis point, when they feel they have nowhere else to turn. We believe we need to catch them earlier, before they reach that point of crisis. We can reduce the number of kids with suicidal behavior if we:
Reduce the stigma around suicide so kids realize there is no shame in having depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts. If a kid is struggling, they need to know they are not alone, they should not hide behind a mask because many kids go through this and there is always help and hope.
Create an environment where everyone is accepted for who they are without judgment. Kids naturally want to feel ‘normal’, and they believe that by not standing out from the crowd, not being different, will make them accepted and likeable. The truth is we’re all unique and therefore different from one another, but rather than celebrating our differences, we tend to have a culture where we want to standardize ourselves so we can fit in. Not feeling accepted can lead to serious depression and suicidal behaviors.
Help kids develop the coping mechanisms and tools they need so they know how to deal with the ups and downs of life, preventing them from reaching the point where they want to end it all.
What inspired you to start the Ryan Bartel Foundation? Is there one specific moment when you knew this was what you wanted to do?
We lost our oldest son Ryan to suicide when he was 17, in Oct 2014 when he was in his senior year. While we were grieving, we knew we needed to do something positive so that we could honor him and hopefully prevent others from experiencing what he had been through.
Ryan had been struggling his whole life with low self-esteem because he was a different kind of kid. He had Aspergers that manifested itself in learning differences and difficulty socializing, leaving him exposed to bullying because other kids usually pick on the ones who are different from the majority. Although the bullying had stopped by the time he was in tenth grade and he had started making more friends, he went into a depression in the last six months of his life. Coming to the end of high school is such a difficult time of life for all teens because you’re faced with decisions about your future and there’s a lot of uncertainty as you try to figure out who you really are. We thought we understood what he was going through, but we didn’t realize the depth of his inner pain after a life-time of challenges. Ryan was feeling utterly worthless and although we had put him into therapy, he was not sharing his innermost feelings with any adults. What we realized after his death, however, was that he and his friends turn and confide with each other first when they struggle and they often don’t reach out to an adult at all, trying to figure problems out for themselves.
It was listening to Ryan’s friends talk about how he had helped them that it became obvious we needed to harness the power of the teen voice if we were to help other teens. If we could give them a platform from which they could influence each other in a positive way, we could change behaviors. So I went to Ryan’s high school and together with a couple of counselors, started working with a small group of teens, asking them what they thought needed to be done to prevent more suicides. We learned more in the first few sessions with them than we could ever have imagined and from that moment, our mission was born.
While I was inspired by what I had learned, I still continued working in my full-time job, taking a couple of hours every other week to continue meeting with this wonderful group of teens and working on the foundation on weekends and at night. What changed everything for me was the school wide ‘We’re All Human Walk & Assembly’ last April. ‘We’re All Human’ is the name the kids chose for this group and they worked hard for several months to stage a student led event where they shared their own personal stories in front of an entire school, ending with uplifting messages of hope. That assembly impacted not only me, but a lot of students in the school as well to realize we all needed to do something to change our lives for the better. That was the day I decided I needed to go full time to fulfill the mission we had created.
What lessons/values are you learning through this process? What lessons/values do you hope others are learning?
As adults we tend to want to give kids the solutions and teach them from the top down. To have impact, the kids need to teach each other, and we need to empower them with the right skills to be able to teach from the bottom up.
I’ve also learned that we tend to allow the negatives to dominate all the good we have in our life, but we each have the power within us to reverse that feeling. One of the ways to do that is to give and help others. I was not brought up in a family where community work was important, but I have learned that it’s an essential part of life and that through helping others, you are more fulfilled and at peace. I see the same thing happening with the kids we work with. When they realize how much they can help their friends, they feel really good about themselves, which in turn helps them deal with their own negative thoughts.
Who are your role models?
The kids are my role models. They teach me things every day. When you give them trust and empower them to take control of their lives, they give so much back in return. It’s an uplifting experience and an honor to be with them.
What do you do to take care of yourself and how do you make time to do it?
I work out regularly by going to a gym. I’ve done that my whole adult life and find it’s an essential part of my existence. Exercise doesn’t just provide me with good endorphins, but I get most of my ideas and inspiration when I exercise.
What can the Macaroni Kid community do to help you with your mission?
Spread the word and encourage more schools to start a We’re All Human Group. The work of the students can really change an entire school culture and I am hopeful that we have a better future because of them. In order to start our programs in more schools we have to get the approval of the School Principal and Director of Counseling and the Macaroni community can help us open those doors.
Please also support our programs by coming to our events and giving donations. We can only exist with the help and support of the community so we are always looking for ways to create that awareness. Loudoun County suffered five high school suicides in 2016, a record number, so we’re working diligently to get into as many schools as we can, as quickly as possible. The next event is coming up on March 23 at the Zone in Ashburn. This event is in honor of Jake Kotin, the Stonebridge boy who took his life last December. 20% of proceeds will go towards our programs and there will be a silent auction with some amazing prizes, so well worth the visit.
To learn more about the Ryan Bartel Foundation please visit www.ryanbartelfoundation.org.
Past Parent with a Purpose spotlights:
