These days I can hardly watch TV or read a paper or use social media without getting a message that if you are thinking of harming yourself, call a hot line number.  And it is no wonder, that message is prominent.  Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.  In the wealthiest, healthiest nation in the world, there were 49,000 cases of suicide in 2024, and 1.5 million attempts.  When I try to wrap my head around these statistics, I feel heart sick that so many people cannot find a reason to live.  Then I remember a young man who came to me years ago to tell me that I had saved his life.

When I first moved to the South, I took a temporary job at the local college supervising intern-teachers.  The work entailed observing the practicing teachers at the schools where they were assigned, and writing up a formal evaluation of each one’s strengths and weaknesses.  I was always aware that my evaluation of any one of these young students could drive them away from teaching, and as a result, no matter how many things I viewed wrong or even terrible in the evaluation, I always ended up with at least two sentences of positive reporting. For example, “I liked the way you engaged the boy who was sleeping in your class without embarrassing him,” or “Your planning really showed in how you presented the material.”  That way I reasoned, each beginning teacher could build on the things that he or she had done well.

I loved that job, but when the professor, whose place I was taking, returned from his sabbatical, I finished up at the end of the year. Then, I said good-bye to the interns and found permanent employment in the public schools.

Years later, I traveled across the state to conduct a workshop for established teachers in a night-school program.  During the workshop, I noticed a young man, sitting near the back, who was not taking notes although he was paying close attention.  When I closed the workshop, he came up to the podium and said, “Ms. Nunnally, do you recognize me?”

I realized that I knew his face, but I could not place where or when I knew him.  Then he explained that he saw the workshop advertised in an educational paper, and had traveled across the state to see me because he had been one of the intern-teachers that I had supervised years before.  Then to my surprise he said, “I drove here to tell you that you saved my life.”

His name was Dan, and he said that he had been teaching in a high school where he lived and his classes and lessons had simply turned dull, without any joy in his daily teaching.  Then his wife left him taking their two children with her.  At that point, he said, he simply gave up and decided that the best thing he could do was to kill himself.  He went on to say that he had gone into the attic of his home to get some papers that would be needed by others when he was dead, and found a letter that I had written to him about his teaching.  He said that after he read my note, he realized that he was a good teacher, and that he needed to return to his students and make his lessons engaging and interesting.

Dan said, “Ms. Nunnally, your note saved my life, and I wanted you to know that.   I’m back to teaching, and I love it.  My wife came home with the kids, and we are working on our marriage. I know now that I was so depressed that I drove her out of the house.  So, your note to me gave me the courage to start over; I drove over one hundred miles to tell you that.  You helped me see that I was a good teacher, and that is what I should be doing. Thank you for seeing all the positive things about me, and writing them down.”

At that he hugged me, said he had to get going to get back home, and walked away, leaving me speechless.  As I write this, I wonder what was in the note.  There is no question in my mind, that I had written something positive to him that described his very real characteristics of a good teacher.  But how I phrased those words or what they exactly were is still a mystery.  This I do know, positive words can make the difference in how someone else views life.  For what’s it’s worth, positive words spoken or written, may help others see that they are valuable, and may help them to give up any plan they might have for giving up on themselves.  Perhaps using a positive message may be the one thing that keeps that person out of the suicide statistics.