Suicide Diaries: A Journey Through Ritual Workshop

Suicide Diaries: A Journey Through Ritual Workshop

SUICIDE DIARIES 

Suicide Diaries is a multidisciplinary platform to express without fear of pathologizing, psychoanalyzing, policing, or institutionalizing suicidal, death, dying, or grief experiences.

bridging the gap of the lonely with community and community with the lonely.

Where suicide can isolate, this space aims to gather. Where suicide is taboo, this space aims to normalize. Where death is unknown, this space aims to explore & honor

Using the elements to ground, this workshop anchors with the practice of ritual to carry folks into exploring the suicide portal through guided meditations, movement, film, altar tending, ritual making, and writing.

What is the Suicide Portal? Read/listen below

This is for anyone who is suicidal, know someone who is, healthcare professionals, or those that are no longer suicidal but still are impacted by the experience someway. With particular emphasis on QTBIPOC, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ Comrades/Ally communities. 


IN THIS WORKSHOP WE'LL EXPLORE

  • unpacking suicidality through poetry, writing, somatic practice, and ritual making through altar tending 
  • guided meditations grounded in the elements
  • a suicide portal labyrinth activity: a somatic approach to embody walking through the suicide portal as a suicidal person, an institutional worker (healthcare workers, etc.), and community member using mindfulness emptying practices 
  • ritual making through community altar tending 

THIS SPACE IS WELCOME FOR EVERYONE, PARTICULARLY FOR

  • healthcare workers or institutional workers 
  • community who desires to be a better support system for those going through the suicide portal
  • community who have been impacted by close people in the suicide portal
  • those actively in the suicide portal 
  • those with previous experience in the suicide portal

YOU'LL LEAVE WITH

  • an at home ritual making activity for those who are: 
    • community members of those in the suicide portal
    • those actively in the suicide portal
    • those in healthcare or institutional positions 
    • those who are no longer deep in the suicide portal but are impacted by the journey from it
  • a reframed approach to talk about suicidality & navigating the suicide portal alongside others
  • mindfulness techniques that centers emptiness and "un preparing"
  • community suicide diaries zines
RSVP DIRECTIONS: 
🪴 RSVP through purchasing HERE
🪴 Fill out this RSVP form HERE
*you are not fully RSVP'd until you've filled out the RSVP form + paid*
LOGISTICS:
🪴 PAYMENT (donation based. meaning there is the starting base cost and you're welcome to donate more from there):
   - QTBIPOC and BIPOC: starting at $20
   - LGBTQIA+ Comrades: starting at $25 
   - Comrades/Allies: starting at $30
🪴 RSVP through purchasing is required 
🪴 Masks are optional 
🪴 Bringing food is optional 

WHAT TO BRING: 
🌿 Notebook / pen
🌿 Face mask 
🌿 Food: Optional of bringing your own food and drinks (no alcohol) is optional. if you are immunocompromised, please make sure to note that below so I can advocate for the food bringers to eat outside in order to honor remaining masked up for the duration of the workshop 
🌿 Option to bring any items that can be used to ground yourself throughout if needed (ex. blankets, sweatshirt, fidget spinner, etc.)

TRIGGERS/HOUSEKEEPING: 

I am not officially "certified" in counseling or psychology. I have a B.A in Sociology (May 2021). 

I am certified as a Death Doula and End of Life Planner through the Going with Grace program (Nov 2025). 

The point of this project is to transition power from the mental healthcare system back into the palms of the people-- meaning you know yourself best. You are your own healer. Your hands are large enough to carry your own heart.

I would like to offer all the medicine that I have, rooted in knowing that you are your own medicine. 

If you get triggered in any way before, during, or after the workshop, please do what you need to to tend to you. This space is to build community, but in your most tender moments, it may or may not help sharing with strangers, your experience. I trust in your own discernment. 

This is also a space to learn new ways to think about this topic, so we may all be coming from different experiences and could show up in harmful ways, me included (i am completely and messily human).  I invite you to be open. I will do my best to create the closest thing to safety and non harm as possible in space, but I cannot control everything to stay that way. + I am always open to feedback. 

Again you know you best. 

I invite you to reflect on your own triggers and what you can offer yourself before, during, and/or post workshop. 

This can look like: 
Before: bringing a comfort blanket, food, stuffed animals, journals, headphones, grounding smell goods etc. 
During: stepping away, putting in headphones, tending to the community altar, journaling, intuitive body movement, closing your eyes, etc. 
After: preparing to call a safe friend before or after the workshop, putting your feet in the grass, showering, taking a bath, journaling, preparing a hug from your people, etc.  

I invite you all to reflect on this on the days leading up to the workshop. and please stay tender with yourself. we are all in process. <3

DISCLAIMERS:
This workshop is not a substitute for professional advice of any kind nor is it a therapeutic or healthcare service. Palm Nguyen assumes no liability for individual actions taken based on this workshop. By attending client acknowledges that this workshop is primarily for educational and informational purposes only and is primarily a place for learning, growing, reflecting, and building community/skills. By attending, you acknowledge that Palm Nguyen is not encouraging suicidal behavior, nor suggesting that participants disregard safety plans or guidance from their healthcare providers. 

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR: 
Palm Nguyen is a queer gender fluid first generation Vietnamese American death doula, born and raised out of the Dakota and Ojibwe People's Land (Minnesota), now living in the Nisenan, Maidu, Miwok, and Patwin (Wintun) People's Land (Sacramento). They are in an ever evolving practice of decolonizing their time and creations. Deeply practicing ancestral worship, meditation, and storytelling, he is rooted in creating and sharing with intentionality. She is in the practice of pause instead of pressure, rhythm instead of time tracking, and slowness instead of fast pace.

They center most of their poetry & fashion around being first generation, Vietnamese American, queerness, and mental health. They’ve competed at Brave New Voices, Button Poetry Live & have had their work published at several universities. Author of self published chapbook Kissing God’s Gravel, they are also an aspiring filmmaker and eco-friendly fashion entrepreneur through their platform KARMAKLUB.
Although this is a workshop, Suicide Diaries is also part of a broader community project with aims to bridge the isolation gaps beteen people going through the uicide portal. 
We walk through the suicide portal feeling as if we are alone in it, when in reality many of us traverse this labyrinth too. we just need to talk about it.

what is the suicide portal? read about it here

 

graph ii: The Suicide Portal, Which is Really a Processional Labyrinth. Processional meaning the action of moving forward as part of a ceremony ; also, as having multiple entrances. 

REFERENCES/INSPIRATION: 

the majority of this project has been birthed from my own personal experience in journeying through the suicide portal. i have not done extensive research on suicidality enough to know if any of what i am sharing in this workshop has already been done, but i am absolutely open to hearing what work is being done similarly to mine! please email me anything you might come across to karmaklub555@gmail.com.

but what i have been inspired by is: 

  • Being Present For Suicide by Ocean Phillips 
    • particularly this quote: 

      Marady: How do we prepare ourselves as doulas to enter a space where suicide has occurred?

      Ocean: Sometimes the question isn’t how we prepare—but how we unprepare. Because when we prepare, we often bring expectations: that we will offer something helpful, that people will respond in a certain way, that we will know what to do. But in the aftermath of suicide, those expectations don’t hold. We are not there to fix. We are there to be.

      We prepare by clearing space inside ourselves. Through breath. Through body. Through the willingness to empty out the story lines that say: I need to succeed. I need to make people feel better. That desire, however subtle, creates distance.

      So instead of preparing with tools, I try to arrive with openness. Breath connects me to life. My body anchors me to the moment. That’s how I come into the room—not as the one who knows, but as the one willing to stay.

  • The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche 
    • particularly inspired around: 
      • the Tibetan Buddhist belief that the major purpose of life is to die- therefore everything you do in this lifetime leads up to the moment of death. 
      • the Death Meditation
      • the overall concept of reincarnation and how the soul never dies

  • Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson
    • particularly inspired by: 
      • the concept of obedience:
        "Etymologically, obedience has nothing to do with being some kind of slave. It means instead a willingness and an ability to listen to what is, to attend to it. Obedience is following the grain of things. With that skill of obedience, every natural thing knows aabove all how to be itself, come what may. Dying is a natural thing, and left to its natural self each living thing knows how to die. The body has the genius of a natural thing, and it knows how to obey the accumulation of time, wear and tear, disease and symptoms. It knows how to stop." (Jenkinson, 51)
      • chapter 5: Yes, But Not Like This  on Euthanasia and Suicide"Living doesn't always require the ability to live, or the willingness to, and dying isn't the collapse of that ability or that willingness" (Jenkinson, 170)

        "For the purposes of intervening to end life, it is the closeness to death that legitimizes suffering." (Jenkinson, 161)
        • My thought: if we do not actually know when our own death is, as in we do not know how close or far our own death is (we often just have hope for a long life, but that is not guaranteed), if we are both living & actively dying beings, and if this life is riddled in suffering, then isn't coming to suicide at least once in this life the most sane, normal, and legitamate thing to come to?
  • The Inherent Whiteness of Psychology & Therapy Podcast by Bobo's Void
  • Getting To The Root of Mental Illness Podcast by Bobo's Void
  • All About Love by Bell Hooks
    • Especially this quote
      "Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being." (Hooks, 14)
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