White Collar Week, Ep. 15: A Brave Talk About Suicide with Bob Flanagan, Elizabeth Kelley, & Meredith Atwood

Today's podcast is about mental health and the crushing stress and depression that professionals sometimes experience that can induce suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, suicide itself, the pain and anguish caused to family and others, and how one can find relief and hope instead of pain, suffering, and tragedy. 

My guests today are Rev. Bob Flanagan, who has written, spoken, and preached about his own mental health issues. And Meredith Atwood, a former lawyer and now author and life coach, who is candid about her suicide attempt, sobriety after drug and alcohol addiction, and finding her way back through triathlons and weightlifting. And Elizabeth Kelley, a lawyer who specializes in representing defendants with mental disabilities all over the country, and in attorney wellness so that they don't burn out and cause harm to themselves, their families, and their clients.

A warning: this is a very difficult conversation in which we all talk about our personal relationships with depression and suicide, a much-needed discussion in these times of community and personal trauma. So, coming up: A Brave Talk About Suicide on White Collar Week. I hope you will join us. - Jeff

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Welcome to White Collar Week with Jeff Grant, a podcast serving the white collar justice community. It’s the isolation that destroys us. The solution is in community.

If you are interested in this podcast, then you are probably already a member of the white collar justice community – even if you don’t quite know it yet. Our community is certainly made up of people being prosecuted, or who have already been prosecuted, for white collar crimes. But it is also made up of the spouses, children and families of those prosecuted for white collar crimes – these are the first victims of white collar crime. And the community also consists of the other victims, both direct and indirect, and those in the wider white collar ecosystem like friends, colleagues, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement, academics, researchers. Investigators, mitigation experts, corrections officers, reentry professionals, mental health care professionals, drug and alcohol counselors, – and ministers, chaplains and advocates for criminal and social justice reform. The list goes on and on…

Our mission is to introduce you to other members of the white collar justice community, to hear their very personal stories, and hopefully gain a broader perspective of what this is really all about. Maybe this will inspire some deeper thoughts and introspection? Maybe it will inspire some empathy and compassion for people you might otherwise resent or dismiss? And maybe it will help lift us all out of our own isolation and into community, so we can learn to live again in the sunshine of the spirit.

Blessings, לשלום

Jeff

Rev. Jeff Grant, J.D., M.Div. (he, him, his)
Co-founder, Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc., Greenwich CT & Nationwide
Co-host, The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast
Host, White Collar Week
Mailing: P.O. Box 1, Woodbury, CT 06798
Website: prisonist.org
Email: jgrant@prisonist.org
Office: 203-405-6249
Donations (501c3): bit.ly/donate35T9kMZ

Not a prison coach, not a prison consultant.