Toni Lynn

September is Suicide Prevention Month, and for me, this isn’t just awareness—it’s survival.

In 2022, I found myself in a dark and heavy space. I kept telling myself to suck it up, to dry my tears, to keep moving. I thought that’s what strength looked like. But the despair clung tighter, no matter how hard I tried to shake it.

One day, I sat with my dear friend H and, with raw honesty, let her see it all—the darkness, the hopelessness, the jagged edges I usually kept hidden. She didn’t tell me to stop crying. She didn’t try to fix me or tidy up my feelings. She simply held space for me. With quiet courage, she gave me permission to sit in the grey—to exist in the full spectrum of what I was feeling.

That moment changed everything.

As a recovering perfectionist who learned young not to be “too much,” I spent years forcing my emotions into silence. H unknowingly cracked that open. She reminded me that no emotion is bad, that anger, grief, and gratitude can all exist at once. She reminded me that the world still needed me—and it needed me to stay.

In a culture that pushes us to move on, be grateful, be positive, H’s stillness in my darkness saved my life.

Learning the Language of the Grey

But what does it actually mean to sit with the grey?

It means learning to live with uncertainty. To release the need for clean lines and clear answers. I have always been drawn to black-and-white thinking, to clarity, to right or wrong, to good or bad. But life doesn’t work that way, and neither do our emotions.

So much of what we experience happens in the in-between. In the grey.

To sit with the grey is to make peace with the mess. It is the space where grief and gratitude exist side by side. Where you can love someone and still feel hurt by them. Where you can be overwhelmed and hopeful at the same time. Nothing is simple there, and that’s okay. In fact, the mess often holds the most beauty because it reminds us that being human means experiencing the full range of emotions.

For first responder families, the grey shows up often. We hold fear and pride in the same breath, exhaustion and love in the same day. We celebrate homecomings while quietly grieving the sacrifices it took to get there. Our lives rarely exist in neat categories, and maybe that is why the practice of sitting with the grey is so vital for us.

Sitting in the grey gives us room to grow. It invites us to ask deeper questions. It challenges us to tell the truth about what we are feeling. It helps us uncover what lies beneath the surface and discover parts of ourselves we never knew existed.

It means recognizing that there is no single “right” way to feel. Emotions don’t follow rules. They don’t arrive on schedule. They simply come, and they ask to be felt.

To hold the grey is to hold yourself with grace. It is the radical practice of saying: both things can be true, and I can carry them both.

Learning this was my first step in embracing the fullness of what it means to be human. It was the moment I stopped forcing myself into either/or and began to honor the both/and. It was here, in the sacred in-between, that I discovered how much strength can live inside softness, and how much clarity comes when we stop resisting reality.

When we stop labeling emotions as good or bad, when we allow grief and gratitude, despair and hope, joy and sorrow to sit at the same table, we see life for what it is—not tidy, not linear—but layered, messy, and beautifully complicated.

The Silent Weight of Warriors

What I learned personally mirrors what I’ve seen in the first responder community. Officers and firefighters are trained to be strong, to push through, to compartmentalize. Spouses and families—the silent warriors behind the badge—absorb the impact of long hours, critical calls, and the unrelenting fear of what-ifs. And too often, we’re expected to do it quietly.

But the truth is: silence kills.

I’ve heard of spouses lost to suicide. I’ve seen how internal dissonance—the war between what we feel and what the world expects us to feel—drains the soul. We’re told to be strong, but real strength isn’t in suppression. It’s in allowing ourselves to sit in the grey. To hold both fear and love, both pride and exhaustion, both despair and hope.

Sitting in the grey means making peace with the mess. It’s where grief and gratitude coexist. Where you can love someone and still feel hurt. Where you can feel overwhelmed and still believe tomorrow might bring something better.

It isn’t clean. It isn’t easy. But it is profoundly human.

When we stop labeling our emotions as good or bad, when we stop rushing ourselves out of the dark, we discover something life-altering: the grey isn’t weakness. It’s the birthplace of healing. It’s where silent warriors learn they’re not broken—they’re simply human. Both things can be true. And we can hold them both.

So this month, as we talk about suicide prevention, let’s remember that sometimes the most life-saving thing we can do isn’t offering solutions. It’s pulling up a chair, holding the silence, and saying: I’ll sit with you here.

Because the grey, as heavy as it feels, can be the very space where hope begins to grow.

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📞 Law Enforcement Family Helpline – 1-737-7-FAMILY (1-737-732-6459)
📞 Safe Call Now – (206) 459-3020
📞 National Suicide & Crisis Hotline – Dial 988