Live Through This: How Dese’Rae L. Stage Gives a Voice to Suicide Attempt Survivors

Dese’Rae L. Stage and I are discussing some very serious and deeply personal topics when we meet at a bustling coffee shop in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood. However, admittedly, we both can’t stop bopping our heads to the soothing, albeit empowering sounds of country powerhouses like Dolly Parton and Trisha Yearwood who are playing in the background.

In other scenarios this might be distracting or strange, but in this moment, it’s rather perfect, actually. These musicians in particular, among others, have been a source of inspiration for Stage, the creator of the suicide awareness project Live Through This. “Music, specifically, has been a really healing thing in my life,” Stage says over coffee and the sounds of her heroes.

Stage — a suicide attempt survivor herself — photographs and interviews fellow survivors about their stories and experiences for Live Through This, allowing them an open and caring platform for a topic that is far too often seen as taboo or simply not to be discussed at all.

“It’s really changing the conversation around suicide in the mental health field,” Stage (pictured above) says of the project, which began in 2010 thanks to the help of Kickstarter funding and has since swelled into an essential resource for both survivors and as an educational tool.

“It’s helping people like us have a voice, because we were erased for so long,” she says of suicide survivors, who live with the devastating stigmas attached to depression in both society and in the media.

Live Through This has now featured over 150 survivors from across the country who come from every age, race, social, economic, and sexual background. The project shows that there is no one face to suicide, and each story is an important one to tell. “The stories are the heart of the experience,” she says.

To call this a passion project for Stage would be something of an understatement. The Miami native had lost friends to suicide at a young age, and struggled throughout her teens and twenties with her own suicidal depression. Stage’s own experience, as well as her frustration with the lack of resources and research in higher education, eventually propelled her to make this project and “find the language” for survivors like herself.

While Stage admits that she didn’t initially set out to make something that would become a tool in the mental health field, it’s one of the aspects she’s most proud of. She has since partnered with the likes of the American Association of Suicidology and other mental health professionals to help get the word out and hopefully change the dialogue, the perception, and the education of suicide awareness and prevention for the better.

Stage simply wants to give survivors the dignity they deserve, and wants others out there struggling to receive proper care. It’s not an easy battle, but it’s one that she fights with undeniably powerful words and images.

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When I next see Stage, she’s hosting a fundraising event a Art Machine Productions, a popular Philadelphia tattoo parlor. She’s added two more tattoos to her already stunning body of work (so to speak), and now so have other locals and friends who want to show their support. Stage’s tattoos are each a map for notable moments in her life. “[The tattoos are a] permanent reminder of ‘this is where I was then,’ and [that] things are going to change,” she says.

The event, which showcased some of Stage’s Live Through This photos, also provided a flash tattoo sale for visitors, which featured pieces that echo the sentiment and drive behind Live Through This, including the powerful motto, “Stay.”

Stage proves that, whether it’s through a tattoo or a song or a photo, each survivor has a story to tell and it’s one that deserves to be heard, respected, and honored.

Images courtesy of Dese’Rae L. Stage