{"id":13852,"date":"2026-10-07T00:58:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T04:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/poet-diane-ackerman-on-what-she-learned-while-working-at-a-suicide-prevention-hotline-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T00:58:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T04:58:55","slug":"poet-diane-ackerman-on-what-she-learned-while-working-at-a-suicide-prevention-hotline-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/poet-diane-ackerman-on-what-she-learned-while-working-at-a-suicide-prevention-hotline-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Poet Diane Ackerman on What She Learned While Working at a Suicide Prevention Hotline \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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<\/a>\u201cHow are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say OK?\u201d<\/em> Maira Kalman pondered in her visual philosophy<\/a>. Such is the magnificent resilience of the human spirit. Our culture is haunted by the unholy ghost of suicide<\/a>; those who succumb to it are mercilessly judged by the media<\/a> and those who stay behind are at risk of contagion<\/a>. How, then, do we help those on the brink of self-destruction \u201cget up and say OK?\u201d And what does that act of help reveal about our own trials and triumphs as we learn to be<\/em> OK?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely what Diane Ackerman<\/a> explores in the gorgeous essay \u201cA Slender Thread\u201d in the anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times<\/em><\/a>, adapted from her altogether sublime 1998 book A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a> | IndieBound<\/em><\/a>), which recounts her time working as a volunteer crisis counselor at a suicide prevention hotline, performing a \u201cslow tango of life and death\u201d that demands of its dancers impossible \u201cgrace and cunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ackerman \u2014 scientific sorceress of the senses<\/a> and supreme historian of the human heart<\/a> \u2014 marvels at the humbling, uniquely human notion of the very concept of a suicide prevention hotline:<\/p>\n

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We use only a voice and a set of ears, somehow tied to the heart and brain, but it feels like mountaineering with someone who has fallen, a dangling person whose hands you are gripping in your own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Ackerman recalls one particularly poignant call, with Louise \u2014 a frequent caller with \u201cmany talents, a lively mind, a quirky and unusual point of view, and a generous heart\u201d \u2014 whom she had reeled back from the brink of suicide many times before. Louise\u2019s anguish, like that of many on the downward spiral of the psyche, stems from feeling, as Ackerman puts it, bereft of choices. (Which is why Kerkhof\u2019s pioneering suicide-prevention technique<\/a> is so effective both in clinical contexts and in controlling our everyday worries.) Ackerman reflects on this uniquely human dance with possibility:<\/p>\n

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Choice is a signature of our species. We choose to live, sometimes we choose our own death, but most of the time we make choices just to prove choice is possible. Above all else, we value the right to choose one\u2019s destiny. The very young and some lucky few may find their days opening one onto another like a set of ornate doors, but most people make an unconscious vow each morning to get through the day\u2019s stresses and labors intact, without becoming overwhelmed or wishing to escape into death. Everybody has thought about suicide, or knows somebody who committed suicide, and then felt \u201cpushed another inch, and it could have been me.\u201d As Emile Zola once said, some mornings you first have to swallow your toad of disgust before you can get on with the day. We choose to live. But suicidal people have tunnel vision\u2014no other choice seems possible. A counselor\u2019s job is to put windows and doors in that tunnel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Talking to Louise, Ackerman contemplates the enormous and vulnerable and terrifying responsibility of the crisis counselor as a torchbearer of luminous choice amid the darkness of the tunnel:<\/p>\n

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Every call with Louise has seemed this dire, a last call for help, and she has survived. But suppose tonight is the exception, suppose this is the last of last times? What is different tonight? I\u2019m not sure. Then it dawns on me. Something small. I\u2019m frightened by how often she has been using the word \u201conly,\u201d a word tight as a noose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Assuring Louise that she would stay with her, Ackerman flickers a sidewise beam on the other meaning of \u201conly\u201d \u2014 that of the lonesome one, gripped with our civilizational anxiety of being alone<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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So often loneliness comes from being out of touch with parts of oneself. We go searching for those parts in other people, but there\u2019s a difference between feeling separate from others and separate from oneself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When Louise laments her own weakness, Ackerman invokes her acts of everyday heroism, shared during previous calls \u2014 like volunteering during the flood, \u201cfilling sandbags and making sandwiches\u201d for the victims. \u201cBroaden the perspective,\u201d<\/em> Ackerman writes. \u201cThe hardest job when someone is depressed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Because something feels different about the call \u2014 because Ackerman feels the tar-thick darkness of that particular tunnel \u2014 she alerts the police while on the line with Louise, who had made her promise not to bring in the authorities. When they arrive \u2014 faster than expected \u2014 Louise swells with the rage of betrayal, screams at Ackerman, calls her a liar, hangs up. Ackerman loses Louise \u2014 loses the call, that is, which holds the grim possibility of losing the life. She writes:<\/p>\n

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Knowing and not knowing about callers, that\u2019s what gets to me. My chest feels rigid as a boat hull, my ribs tense. Taking a large breath and letting it out slowly, I press my open palms against my face, rub the eyebrows, then the cheekbones and jaw, and laugh. Not a ha-ha laugh, a small sardonic one, the kind we save for the ridiculous, as I catch myself slipping into a familiar trap. I did fine. I did the best I could. Maybe the best anyone could tonight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ackerman circles back to the question of choice, so human and so riddled with perplexity:<\/p>\n

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Helping Louise survive is always an ordeal. Tonight she sounded even more determined and death bound than usual. It was the right choice. I think. Maybe. On the write-up sheet, under \u201cCaller,\u201d I write \u201cLouise,\u201d put the letter \u201cH\u201d for \u201chigh\u201d in the box marked \u201csuicide risk,\u201d attach a yellow Lethality Assessment sheet, and add a few details of the call. Pressing my fingertips to my face, I push again on the brow bones, as if I could rearrange them, but they ache from a place I can\u2019t reach with my hands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A few weeks after that fateful call with Louise, the Crisis Center received a postcard from her, thanking the counselor \u2014 always anonymous, as was Ackerman to her caller \u2014 for, essentially, illuminating her tunnel. After the police had taken her to the emergency room, she had checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania for three weeks of \u201cpalatial bedlam.\u201d Upon returning home, she had found a new job to replace the one she had lost and begun volunteering again, reporting that she was finally \u201cin a good place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ackerman\u2019s closing words emanate far beyond the grimly glimmering grace of suicide prevention and into the broader and immeasurable beauty of asking for help. Beholding that postcard in disbelief, she writes:<\/p>\n

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She blesses the soul who \u201ctook my life in her hands that night,\u201d thanks us all for our good work, is just writing \u201cto let you know what happened \u2014 I bet you don\u2019t hear that very often.\u201d We don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

People take our lives in their hands<\/a> all the time \u2014 parents, mentors, lovers, teachers, patrons. How often do they hear from us?<\/p>\n

The Impossible Will Take a Little While<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, which also gave us Victoria Safford on what it really means to \u201clive our mission,\u201d<\/a> is a soul-raising read in its totality. Complement this particular excerpt with Bukowski\u2019s beautiful letter of gratitude to the man who changed his life<\/a>, then revisit Ackerman on what the future of robots reveals about the human condition<\/a> and a fascinating look at how the psychology of suicide prevention can help us control our everyday worries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say OK?\u201d Maira Kalman pondered in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}