Tiny Lantern Tarot: Suicide Intervention for Weirdos, Freaks, and Queers

Workshop description: This is an intro-level workshop for folks who want to build and share skills around supporting people in their lives who are suicidal. This is not a certification course- it’s an opportunity for folks to gather and share what we know about supporting our loved ones in a structured and facilitated way. We will discuss commonly held beliefs about suicide and suicide intervention, and how those impact folks seeking support, as well as talk about and practice some concrete skills and tools to use in conversations with folks struggling with suicidal feelings. There will not be any role-playing, and participation in all activities is voluntary!

Some of the questions we will be exploring include – what are my beliefs about suicide, and how might those impact how I react to someone else feeling suicidal? How do I know if someone I care about is thinking about ending their life? What are the wrong things to say? Is suicidal thinking always an emergency? What if the emergency services that exist don’t feel like safe options? How do I know what my boundaries are, and how do I talk about them with someone in crisis?

Facilitator Bio: Carly is a 34-year-old white genderqueer femme. She is a witch-for-hire, therapist, and workshop facilitator in Toronto, mostly working on community building, body autonomy, queer sexual health, trauma survivorship, and keeping people alive. Carly has been doing suicide prevention work informally for 20 years, and teaching about it for the last two, training over a thousand people in six Canadian cities. They like bitter foods and yarn, and hate gelatinous foods and capitalism.