June 2025

There is the plot of our Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program. Small teams of colleagues travel the state to provide trainings for school and program staff, youth and community members. They collaborate with each site, make plans, gather materials. After the trainings, they collect data, debrief and prepare for the next trip.

Too, though, there are the themes. The generous kindness of welcomes. The intertwined sorrows and comfort. The exquisite resilience. The hearing, sensing and holding of stories, so many stories. The courage, theirs and ours.

There was the time a teacher cried about attending so many students’ funerals. The first time a student handed us an Ask4Help card, and the most recent. The times the many students’ names shouted,spoken,whispered,thought brought laughter and filled whole rooms. The times we drove toward sunrise and drove under nights wide with stars.

These miles have been more than distance travelled. We have carried more than stickers, pens and snacks. Often while journeying far or turning home, I have imagined that if all the yellow ribbons–those made by the friends of Michael Emme (the youth whose suicide seeded this program), the ones we wear, the ones on stickers, the ones drawn and beaded and folded for us– if all of those ribbons were unfolded and linked, what a long yellow road, not of brick but of care, it would be.

With news that the federal government canceled the funding to the state of New Mexico that made our suicide prevention programming possible, we have now facilitated our final trainings and will pause our Yellow Ribbon programing. Because of these funding changes, these late June days also find me moving on from CISNM. I carry quiet grief for this. And deepest gratitude. And hope. May it continue in some form, this Yellow Ribbon road. May it persist if not in the same way, then perhaps in forms anew and always, in who and how we continue to be with one another.

Blessings, Christina Griffith