Research shows<\/a> that those in close proximity to a death by suicide are 65% more likely to contemplate suicide themselves. TAPS is aiming to stop this cycle using a \u201cprevention through postvention\u201d approach.<\/p>\nLisa Wright is one of the TAPS mentors making initial calls to survivors. The calls don\u2019t stop once a connection is made, she continues to check in frequently in the year following the death. She has a list of 500 people that she is making calls to this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany times I\u2019m the first fellow suicide spouse they talk to, and you hear an audible sigh of relief,\u201d Wright said. \u201cThere\u2019s just something about being with other people who are walking this journey that causes our shoulders to drop a little bit and relax, and think it\u2019s going to be okay. My life is not over.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said 29 of her 500 spouse mentees were in attendance at the August seminar. She carried around a 3\u00d75 index card with all of their names written. Having never met in person, she said they recognized each other\u2019s voices in the food line and around the conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re my lifeline. I don\u2019t know how I could have made it without you,\u201d she recalls hearing.<\/p>\n
Seven years ago, Wright and her family moved to northeast Texas, finally ready for her husband\u2019s post-Marine retirement stage of life to begin. She teaches high school theater, and her husband was volunteering as her tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he died by suicide later that year, she felt completely unmoored. Still new to town, she drove to the nearest military base for help. But it wasn\u2019t until she connected with TAPS that she felt supported.<\/p>\n
Eight months after his death she stood outside of the door of a regional seminar and cried, not wanting to enter and have this part of her life become her \u201cstory.\u201d But she went in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of courage and bravery to come\u2026 because it\u2019s almost like now I have to acknowledge this. This is my life. This is my future,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2026Here, I kind of found I could be whole again and find my personality again. I could laugh, and I didn\u2019t feel like I was betraying my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n
She described an immense comfort at being among a community of people where she didn\u2019t have to explain or defend her husband, everyone already understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a theme commonly evoked over the course of the seminar: the general public\u2019s stigma around suicide, and the profound relief of gathering with a group of survivors where memories of loved ones could be shared without judgment, and suicide could be spoken about openly.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_7643.jpeg\")
At least 400 military families in San Antonio gathered earlier this month for the 18th annual TAPS seminar and camp. Credit: Eleanor Fitzgerald \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n
Good Grief Camp<\/p>\n
Donald Current is a retired San Antonio Marine who has been volunteering as a peer mentor with the Good Grief Camp since last year. He said when he got out of the military he was looking for purpose, and he found it working with kids at TAPS. This time he was with the 12- to 14- year-old group, helping them make sense of the death of a parent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a kid say \u2018I wish society would normalize the word of \u201csuicide\u201d\u2026because if I say my father was murdered or my mother was murdered, no one bats an eye. But if I say my father committed suicide, everything stops, and everybody looks at me like I did something wrong,\u2019\u201d Current said.<\/p>\n
He shows up for the kids beyond the weekend-long camp, he went to the San Antonio high school graduation of one of his mentees last year. Current said he knew her father had been her person, and he wanted to help make up for that absence.<\/p>\n
Even while currently being on active duty at Lackland Air Force Base, Abby Daniels has been volunteering with TAPS. Since 2016 she has served as a peer mentor, but she said it\u2019s still emotional to think about her own close proximity to these children\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re supporting the kids, but their parents and brothers and sisters were us,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n
She said many of the kids she mentors have had to grow up faster and help support their surviving parent through this loss, and her job is to give them a space where they can be seen and heard, and be young still.<\/p>\n
Lynn Paljarvi\u2019s children were 5 and 7 years old when her husband died by suicide in 2017. Five years later they traveled from Houston to attend their first TAPS regional seminar. She said the organization has given her children the chance to be kids again. <\/p>\n
At Good Grief Camp they can talk about their dad and not feel embarrassed by their loss; they can remember and honor him with kids who get it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our normal lives, we\u2019re not really around other people who\u2019ve experienced something similar, and if we are, we don\u2019t always know because people don\u2019t talk about it,\u201d Paljarvi said. \u201cSo I think for them, it\u2019s also a place for them to just take their mask off and be around other people, and for them to feel normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just her kids who feel this way \u2013 she said TAPS has also become a space for her to speak openly about her grief, no matter how many years have passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember feeling like a human again and normal because it\u2019s a place where I didn\u2019t have to pretend I was okay,\u201d she said about her first seminar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018God Winks\u2019<\/p>\n
Over the course of the seminar weekend attendees chose from a variety of workshops, from nature walks and art classes to a newly added Spanish-only workshop. One of the most popular workshops is one called \u201cGod Winks,\u201d where participants share stories of signs that made them feel a connection to their loved one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schultz said she has many of these stories. She \u201choards\u201d them for this event, eager to share the ways she thinks Gabriel is watching over her. His name on a street sign, a rubber duck with a four-leaf clover stamped on it and \u201cTexas\u201d written across its belly, a cat with a red bow showing up on her husband\u2019s 50th birthday.<\/p>\n
Schultz has been trying to bring her daughter, Jeanne, out to one of these seminars, and she almost got her to attend this one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was questioning some things\u2026she was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the right thing for me. I just wish I had a sign to know that this is what I need to do,\u2019\u201d Schultz said.<\/p>\n
On the first day of the seminar she got a text from Jeanne, who works at the Houston VA hospital. She sent a picture and the message said, \u201cMom, this guy just walked in. He\u2019s an EMT.\u201d<\/p>\n
The picture was of a tall, brown-haired, mustached EMT. He was the spitting image of the photo of Gabriel on Schultz\u2019s nametag.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She says Jeanne is coming with her to the next seminar.<\/p>\n
The San Antonio Report\u2019s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1032852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5133],"tags":[14183,5229,413254,36851,40657,344333,5948,6575,517,274376,5502,7202,7203,5518,401765,358,7453,413255,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,413256,2512,7594],"class_list":["post-1032851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-air-force","tag-america","tag-good-grief-camp","tag-grief","tag-jbsa","tag-lackland-air-force-base","tag-loss","tag-marine","tag-mental-health","tag-military-spouse","tag-navy","tag-san-antonio","tag-sanantonio","tag-suicide-prevention","tag-taps","tag-texas","tag-top-story","tag-tragedy-assistance-program-for-survivors","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-veteran-suicide","tag-veterans","tag-wc-1000-1500"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117184245092201385","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1032852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_7648.jpeg\")
Military families in attendance at the National Military Suicide Loss Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp all saw photos of their loved ones on the \u201cHonor Wall.\u201d Credit: Eleanor Fitzgerald\/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n