Sorcha, I've got to reinforce Susan's second paragraph. What you do, openly, to work yourself through this situation (hopefully with some good counselling help) will be a very powerful force in your childrens' lives, probably the most helpful thing you can do. That was an amazing discovery for me, that what I did for myself to cope with life responsibly had far more effect on my kids than what I said or tried to get them to do. It wasn't selfish or self-indulgent. It was modelling a positive response to life's dark stuff. Seems simple. But I think that, as children, a lot of us "learn" that parenting is prescribing. Anything else seems self-centered. Wrong!

Like Susan, I've had both my grown sons say (more than once) that what mattered far more than the awful stuff (of which there was plenty, including my own suicidal tendencies) was that I never gave up, never stopped working on it. I could have written "WE never gave up", but the guys see Vaughn and I as individual examples as well as, as a couple (as we all see our parents, I think). And they tend to see us individually in this case. What we DID mattered immensely to them. And they were aware of it, just as Susan says, in their worst - seemingly most estranged- moments.

Guess I'm reinforcing Kat's second paragraph just above, too. What about family counselling as a strategy. God knows, you've all got this to deal with.

As one who has had to deal with a family history of suicide attempts in the older generation, I've found a powerful lever against my own fears of what I might do to myself in an old hotline saw: "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." Don't know who first said it. She/he has saved lives.

God bless, -George ::-.--O