Athenie's Angels Suicide Prevention Charity Launch

When we lost our daughter Athenie to suicide, it propelled us into the unknown; there's no instructions, no guidance on how to deal with it all. I remember when they took her away, and then authorities all left the house, it was just us alone again… minus one. You then kind of look at each other and go… “what do we do now, do we have lunch?” Life goes on, and you figure it out from there.

As a parent, you try and do everything you can to help your child have a good life, you drop them off to school, you educate them but what happens when a child closes their door and seemingly out of nowhere without any warning decides to take their own life in the middle of the night... what tools, what skills could we have given her to guide herself out of that mental state in that moment?

We're launching Athenie's Angels; a charity we started soon after we lost Athenie to gather all the skills and tools out there and put them together under one roof in a presentable and functional way for teenagers to build Emotional Intelligence and Resilience.

We're building an App which will send out messages and skills, so they become part of their vocabulary. We’re organising “Mental Resilience Workshops” to give teens skills to get through life challenges and have them understand that they can get through the tough times. Emotional Intelligence and Resilience will equip them with tools so that they don’t feel alone and helpless during tough times, they’ll be able to guide themselves through it. Our daughter was bright, she was intelligent, she was many things but at the end of the day she didn’t have the tools to help herself at a time when her own thoughts made her believe that life wasn’t worth living. It would be easy for us to go hide in our grief, but we don’t want any child or parent to go through what we’ve been through. Death is final, your problems are not! Athenie’s Angels wants to get that message out there and to give people guidance thorough tough times.

We need you help to achieve all this; we can’t do it without you.