Promote Your Book Podcast with Cindy Hyde
Discover new books and learn about the authors who created them. Authors, reach out to millions of potential readers who love your genre. Enjoy fun and engaging conversations with authors of various genres who share their stories. Solo episodes with tips and tools for all authors, writers, and readers from A Workbook for Writers Who Want to Be Authors or Authorpreneurs by Author Cindy Hyde.
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Promote Your Book Podcast with Cindy Hyde
A Mother's Crusade Against Suicide Deborah Nelis's Inspiring Efforts
The depths of a mother's love and the abyss of her grief are unimaginable until you hear Deborah Nelis share her story of loss and hope. When her son Nick's life was tragically cut short, the wake of his suicide and the childhood trauma that preceded it became a catalyst for a broader conversation - one that Deborah courageously leads in today's episode. The pain of familial betrayal and the failure of protective services is laid bare, as we unravel the complex layers of seeking help for a child in distress and the ways in which substance abuse often fills the void of emotional turmoil.
Transitioning from the raw realities of loss, we find ourselves in a place of healing and the search for comfort in the signs left behind, like the butterflies that guide Deborah to a sense of peace. Her story shifts from despair to action as she establishes a ministry in Nick's memory, aiming to lift others from the precipice of hopelessness. Through candid discussions and personal testimonies, we explore the transformative power of outreach and the undeniable presence of faith in the darkest of times. This episode is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit and an invitation to those touched by tragedy to find solace and purpose in the aftermath.
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Kimberly Vega: KimberlyVega.me
Hi and thank you for joining us today on the Healing Word podcast Today.
Speaker 1:I have a lovely woman named Deborah Nielis with me and she and I have had similar encounters with almost losing a child and losing a child, and I ask her to share her story with us on this podcast because we need to raise awareness on things that our children go through the depression, the suicidal ideology, the abuse, the cutting, the self-harming all of those things that our children go through and I pray that if your child is experiencing those, that you can find help and resources that you need to get them help and help them live a better life and to develop some better coping skills, even to help them through that. So, Ms Debbie, share with me what happened to your son.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Sandy. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about suicide. I did not have any idea how prevalent suicide was until it happened to me. Every eleven minutes, a child takes their life between the age of ten and twenty-four.
Speaker 1:I did not know that and those are some pretty stout statistics, aren't they?
Speaker 2:They are horrible statistics and the worst of it, I think, is that they go to drugs to try to mediate their emotional pain. I know that that was true with Nick. When Nick was eight years old, he came to my bedroom and told me that his father had molested him.
Speaker 1:Oh, Debbie.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was devastated. I thank God that I was able to comfort my child not make what had happened worse and able to actually say to Nick sometimes people we love do very wrong things.
Speaker 2:So I put Nick back to bed and I, of course, thought I was going to lose my mind, and the next day I told Nick we needed to go talk to child protection for the sake of other children, that we would not want his father to do this to other children. Well, he immediately this is the first time that I heard Nick threaten suicide. Yeah, I'm trying to help him and his response is, if I make him go talk to somebody, that he will not talk and that he will kill himself.
Speaker 1:Out of an eight year old, eight year old child. What do you think might have been an influence in him to so readily and easily jump to that conclusion, that solution, at that age?
Speaker 2:What it tells you is he was already thinking about that because of the abuse. And another thing about boys that makes it so much harder, I think, for boys they see themselves as little men. We see them as our little babies. But, from you know, Nick was three years old and he had a nickname, Nicky Benman, because he had this little Tuffy Jones walk with his elbows, his boots and his blue jeans and he just, you know, he was the sonification of a little man. And I was proud of Nick because, even though he went, he had said what he said. He went to his room and cried and I just let him feel that pain and he came back and he said I know you're right, mom, I don't want this to happen to anybody else. And so we went to child protection. Unfortunately they failed.
Speaker 1:Nick, as unfortunately they do so many. Thank God for the ones that they do help and aren't helping, but there's just so many that fall through the cracks.
Speaker 2:Well, there's just so much that people do not know. I went to child protection, my child. They took him into a room with a qualified social worker. He had to tell his story without me there and I just thought I would lose my mind being out in the hall waiting. And anyway she said it was one of the very best testimonies she'd ever heard and that she had no doubt that this had not just happened once and that this had gone on for some time. Anyhow, they did everything on there and they were supposed to do, but his dad lived in another county and the prosecutor in his dad's county would not prosecute the case. So we had to move on from there.
Speaker 2:And that's when I found a counselor for Nick. And again he says I won't talk, and I mean it this time. If you make me go, I will kill myself. And I think as a parent you make your child eat the spinach. You make them do what is good for them. They can hate you for the moment, but you as a parent have a responsibility to make them do what is good for them.
Speaker 2:And so that's what I did with Nick. I took him to a counselor. True to his word, he did not talk to her. We went faithfully for six months and at that point, no. At that point she informed me that clearly Nick was not going to talk to her If anything had happened, which really made me angry Because of course something had happened, but just because that would have angered me too, oh, it did. But anyway, then I did take him to another counselor for a short time. His father made no effort whatsoever to see Nick once that he knew that I knew what had happened. So now Nick is dealing with the abuse as well as the abandonment. And time goes by. Nick becomes a teenager. I'm dealing with this by myself. I find out that he's taking drugs and I'm trying to work with him. He has anger issues, of course.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:My brother-in-law actually brings a policeman to our home one day to try to get Nick to realize that he has to listen to me, he has to go by the rules and that this is not going to work, him swelling up on me and being angry with me. Long story short, my sister and brother-in-law moved to Florida and offered to take Nick with them so that he could get a new start. Well, he was very close to them anyway, and their son, adam, was one of his best friends, and so they went to the same Christian school together. So him going to Florida with them seemed like a good fit. But unfortunately things did not work out well in Florida. One of the things I didn't know in Florida you can take your children in bars.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 2:So when Nick got thrown out of school he got a job in the kitchen in a restaurant bar and unfortunately that just hooked him up with a bunch of people that he didn't need to be hooked up with. How old was?
Speaker 1:he at this point.
Speaker 2:At this point he is 17. He's had his 17-year-old birthday in December in Indiana. He goes well. He had moved to Florida July and then had his 17th birthday. It's the only birthday he had that I was not with him because I could not come down to Florida at the time, but that was December and I was able to lease my home and move to Florida to be with him February 1. By the time that I got there we knew that Nick was struggling with drug addiction and we were all trying to get him help.
Speaker 1:It's hard to get somebody help when they don't want it.
Speaker 2:No, and the thing was you could tell that Nick was humiliated, that we knew, and so then he would pretend that he was better than he was. And finally he did break down on my brother-in-law my sister's husband that he had moved to Florida with, and it just happened that my other brother was there from Indiana that evening and they got Nick to talk with them and they tried to get him to understand that we didn't want to send him away because we didn't love him, but because we loved him, and that it was something that he was not going to be able to beat on his own and that he needed to be in an in-house program. And my brother-in-law and my brother felt that they had made good inroads with Nick and that in the morning they would be able to get up and call and find a place and begin the healing process for Nick. But unfortunately my brother-in-law got up, him and my brother to go fishing and Nick had taken a cocktail of pills and hung himself out by the garbage.
Speaker 1:That's not something anybody should have to experience in their life, not their baby.
Speaker 2:No, and that was just it. I had my own apartment, but Nick was staying with them. And this how faithful God is. I don't know how long we're going.
Speaker 1:You just keep going. I don't even care, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, I had tried to call Nick the night before the night that he was talking to my brother-in-law my brother and he did not answer my call. So I went to bed. And I went to bed about midnight. I was reading a book and I worked second shifts. I went to sleep and I was wide awake at six o'clock and I thought why am I awake so early?
Speaker 2:Then I realized I had three very important dreams and I thought and just like you and I are sitting here talking, I heard the Lord say to me go on, get up now. And I thought, okay, he wants to talk to me about these dreams. So I went to my seating place, where I always meet with the Lord in the morning, and got my tablet and began to write down the dreams. And sitting there talking to the Lord, and a knock came on the door and I saw my sister and I thought, oh, they come to have coffee with me this morning. But when I opened the door, there was a policeman there and my sister rushed past him and sent me down on the couch and told me it was Nick. I initially thought he was at the hospital.
Speaker 1:Something, anything but that.
Speaker 2:But then I buried my face in my hands, thinking this can't be, like any mother would. And the policeman was standing there. And then I remembered these dreams and how the Lord had woke me up and I looked at the policeman and I said have you ever seen the dead raised? And he said no, ma'am. I said get ready, and I got up and I went and put my clothes on I was in my pajamas. We went to my sisters.
Speaker 2:The police would not let me be with Nick. They had to treat it like a crime scene. Anytime there's a death. And I sat waiting for them to let me lay hands on him and pray for him and actually called a friend of mine in Indiana and her name is Judy. She's a dear friend of mine. I had only known her like a year and I said Judy, do you really believe what the Word of God says? And she said Debbie, you know I do. And I said, well, good, because my son has taken his life and I'm going to need somebody to believe with me that God will raise him up.
Speaker 2:I imagine getting a call like that at 7 o'clock in the morning. Bless her heart. She said, debbie, I will stand with you. Of course, my sister and my brother were there, two of my brothers and my brother-in-law. And finally, when they let me be with Nick, he was in a body bag and I began to speak to him. I know everybody on the podcast is hoping that Nick was raised from the dead, but he wasn't. We don't always know, but anyway, I commanded him to come back to life several times, but he did not, and so I finally stepped aside and let them take him Do you think that at some point, if we're gone, that we have a choice whether to come back or not.
Speaker 1:I do, because he was suffering so greatly Like I can almost hear him say no, mom, I can't, I can't, I'm not going to. I love you, but I'm in a good place right now.
Speaker 2:Right, I know that hurts, but yet it's got to be a comfort to know that I know that that is true. The Lord was very loving with me, showing me a lot of things with Nick, and one of them he showed me I was walking, I was trying to survive, I was trying to deal with this and I was saying to the Lord, if he had any love for me, he would let me just have a massive heart attack and go on and be with Nick. Of course, but I had other children. I had four other children, and how selfish that Nick and I would both leave them. I was hurting so bad. I just couldn't see another way.
Speaker 1:I don't think that there's a pain on the face of this therapy that could deal with the kind of take it that losing them in a car wreck or losing them to cancer, you know you've got, but for them to take their own life Exactly, For it to be so traumatic on them to get to that point.
Speaker 2:Yep. I just Yep, I just I did. I felt like Nick had so much pain that once he was in the presence of the Lord to feel that love. No, he wasn't coming back to this painful place Joy and peace.
Speaker 2:I was walking, as I was saying to the Lord, please just let me have this massive heart attack. And while I was walking, there were these two butterflies and they were just following me and they were just staying step by step with me and I was not paying them any attention, because I'm trying to talk to the Lord and get him to let me go on and be with Nick. And the Lord said to me can't you see that Nick has morphed into something beautiful? Oh, thank you. So. And the funny? We're in a comfort.
Speaker 1:Yes, then remove the cloth of that evian.
Speaker 2:But now, but it's a beautiful thing for the Lord.
Speaker 2:What makes it even more beautiful is, after Nick's dad virtually abandoned him, I tried to let him know it's still okay to love your dad. It's not okay what he did. And Father's Day was coming up and I said to Nick let's get something for your dad for Father's Day and we'll send it to him. And we had gone to a ceramics shop where you make your own ceramics, and my grandson had picked out a mug to make for his dad. Yeah. So I thought Nick would probably do something the same, but instead he picked out a butterfly and I knew that he wasn't making that butterfly for his dad, but I just went along with him.
Speaker 1:It was for you.
Speaker 2:And I still have that butterfly, oh my goodness. So when the Lord used those butterflies, you know, I knew it really did speak to me that the Lord does know, he really does know, he goes ahead of us. That was years ahead, seven years, seven years. He had already had that butterfly that Nick wouldn't give his dad. He gave it to me and he wrote on it I love you, mom and David did, and you know he did.
Speaker 2:Yep. So yeah, suicide is absolutely the worst way to lose a child. Losing a child is horrific in itself, but to have your child take their own life for their pain to be so great that there's no other way out. And yeah it just it broke my heart. No amount of talking.
Speaker 1:No amount of alcohol can drown me.
Speaker 2:No drugs. Yes, Exactly.
Speaker 1:I wrote a book called External Scars from Internal Wounds that deals with the suicide I should have brought you both. I didn't think about it. But my son slays throat from one side to the other. I did not know that and when I got the phone call we still didn't know if he was dead or alive. They had the life fight him and he was, you know, hours away from everybody. So that the Lord spoke to me and said write a book. And so he gave me the name of the book, because it's those internal wounds that caused your baby's external scars.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it's like how do we, how do we raise awareness more? I know we've got the podcast, we can do it through that, yes, but to kids that are suffering from these things are not going to listen to this podcast, exactly. But you've been doing something that I want you to share what? What your method of raising awareness was with your sister. Right Um after and, by the way, my son did survive that whole ordeal. Okay, the doctor said one eighth of an inch and he would have cut his juggler. Ah God, it's good.
Speaker 1:And they didn't even keep him for a psyche vow because he said he wasn't suicidal, he just didn't want to be here anymore. Really Never heard of such, so you know that that touched me to the depths of my core for a few minutes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do you? How do you not be suicidal and slit your own throat and not want to be here? Demonic? Yeah, exactly, and we do know that that. Demonic. The enemy comes to kill, to steal and to destroy. That is his motive, and he's talking about Burundi every day he gets up. That is his and what does he do?
Speaker 1:if he can't get to us get started. Children. Yes, he gets to our the weaker. Our weaker links our children, our family members, our spouses.
Speaker 2:And it goes back to his desire to hurt the heart of God.
Speaker 2:Because, you cannot hurt a parent and you cannot hurt God without hurting his child. You can do anything you want to to me, I'll survive it. But you lay your hand on my child, then you've touched me Exactly Well before Nick. Actually, I think I don't think we even had Nick in the grave. Maybe it was the day of the funeral, I'm not sure. Things are pretty blurry back then. But we were at my sister's and I was saying we can't just ignore this Exactly. We can't let hurting kids destroy their lives because of something someone else has done to them.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:We've got to do something. And my nephew, josh, josh Hopkins, nick's cousin, said what do you mean, aunt Debbie, like some kind of foundation? And I said a ministry, something, and I said I don't even know what we would call it, josh, and he said how about, in the nick of time? And that's what we called it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And we began to do outreaches. We did outreaches on the beach Suncoe's Cathedral Church, 62nd Street, St Pete, If you're in Florida. Florida yes, if you're in Florida, there's a good church for you. Go and get connected. Those are good people. We had a massive event there called Stormy Negates of Hell, and we had entertainers. We had wonderful, wonderful men and women of God that came up and gave their testimonies and they've also been suicidal and survived.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Or had had family members or had lost a family member. One of my favorite things is at these outreaches when we would reach out to these kids afterward. Well, I should tell this we lost Nick August 11th and December 12th. He should have been 18. And on his first day it was the first time that I got up and told Nick's story, and when I did I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off, but God is faithful.
Speaker 2:When I told Nick's story afterward, a mother came up with her 13-year-old son who had confessed to her that he too had been molested and was thinking of suicide. Another mother came up with her 11-year-old daughter who had been being molested by a family friend and she had been stealing her grandmother and her mother's pills and was planning to take her life that very night. And I always say I'm so grateful that I did not think that my loss was so deep that I could not go do that, and so those are two lives that absolutely were saved. Another little boy I won't give his name, I say little boy he was 17, same age as Nick. He happened to be a friend of someone who was helping me with one of the outreaches and she kind of got him to come along and help her, making a little back pain, a little more than it really was.
Speaker 1:Whatever it takes, whatever it takes, get him somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yes, she knew that he was struggling and she knew that he needed to hear next story. And he was sitting there when I said mother, see their boys as their babies, but they see themselves as little men. And then, when someone does something like this, they turn their anger in on themselves and blame themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes, how could they have let that happen? And this young man turned his best friend and said that lady knows what she's talking about. And he got up and went outside and his best friend went with him and he confided in him that his father and his grandfather had sexually abused him his whole life and then he was planning to take his life that very night. But instead, but God but God. So those are some of my favorite stories Sunday. Yes, we did outreach.
Speaker 2:I still have in the nick of time on Facebook. I've got to figure out how to manage it. Help you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want you to take the last few minutes that we have and I want you to just minister to the moms that have lost their babies because of suicide.
Speaker 2:But there is no words. No, there's no comfort. There is no comfort except the arms of God to wrap around you.
Speaker 1:And what he speaks to you.
Speaker 2:Yes One of the things that might sound crazy to people that I had my CD player on my bed and when I would finally doze off to sleep and then I would wake up, I would play Chris Tomlin's my Chains Are Gone. I've been set free, oh, amazing grace. And that just soothed me, it helped me, it reminded me we are not alone. Nick was not alone. Nick did not live alone and he did not die alone. The Lord made sure that he let me know that he went to Nick, that he was there with Nick, and it gave me a vision of him and Nick walking down the boardwalk with Nick's arm around the Lord's shoulder and Nick looking over his shoulder and giving me a way, like Nick would do, with this big smile on his face.
Speaker 2:Even if and the other thing, this is so vitally important I want mothers to know this God is the God of time. He is not held by time, he holds time. And you know you would think, like some children shoot themselves and you think there's no way they could repent. Yes, they can. Oh yes, because God showed me that he can take a nanosecond and stretch it as long as he needs to stretch that nanosecond in order to get to that child and that's one of the things the Lord showed me that he said to Nick Nick, when you came to the altar he was 15. He practically stopped the service to get saved.
Speaker 2:He said did you mean it? And of course Nick said yes, but it's too late. I've taken these drugs. I put this rope around my neck and that's when the Lord picked him up and took him with him. If you never get that kind of story from the Lord. No that my story can be your story.
Speaker 1:You can share that.
Speaker 2:And know that God loves you. He loves your child. If there was any way that he could get to your child and save your child, he he was there and he took your child with him and black the eye of the enemy. Because you know the enemy was celebrating and Jesus walked in. Jesus walked in, that's for me that that's power.
Speaker 1:Well, is there anything else that you would Would like to say? I am gonna edit this so I'll get all the bracelet taps and all that off. Oh my gosh. You know, losing, losing loved ones is hard, but losing your child, that, like I said in the beginning, there is nothing that can compare.
Speaker 1:No, and on the face of this earth, my brother hung himself on Easter morning while I was at a town at a Seder, and they came and told me and I answered the phone, not come back out in the pastor. I guess he saw I look like a ghost. I probably didn't have any, you know, I was probably pale from shock and he stopped the service and they, they prayed over me during that time. I'm thank God that I had that. Thank God I had someone call me the moment that I got the phone call. Within five minutes of me getting the phone call about Sean, one of my Dear friends called me and he said I don't know what's going on. The Lord told me to call you right now and I Told my little tell them that I can't talk right now. I mean, I just heard that. I mean I'm like, you know, as any mother would be in the, in the state of what, what? What is my son alive? And he just prayed in the spirit. He said you just listen, and he began to go to battle for me. And I knew with, within a matter of about two, maybe three minutes, the Holy Spirit came upon me and there was just a peace, whether my son was alive or whether my son was dead. I had peace, knowing that God was in control and that, either way, my son was going to be okay. He lived, he's gonna be okay. If he was gone, I know he was saved, he's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1:So, david and I both encourage you to Put your faith in God, and if you don't have a relationship with him, it's very simple. Jesus was born of a virgin. He was crucified on the third day. He was risen from the dead. He's at the right hand of the father and the word of God says that if you believe in him and you confess with your mouth, you will be saved. We want you saved. We want you to be comforted by the Holy Spirit as you go through whatever, or as you have gone through, and maybe you're still stuck in the grief, maybe you're still asking why, why, why? There's some things that there just are not answers to. We can't ask why. I mean, sometimes the Lord will tell us why. Maybe it was because they were suffering too much, maybe it was more than what they could bear.
Speaker 1:I. I don't know the why, but God does, and we can come for you. Yes, and he will come for you. So, devon, I both pray that you will allow him to come for you. And, hey, there are resources available. I'm sure that knows more. I mean, my book is there for you. It's on Amazon.
Speaker 2:My sister still has her website, anita airs, at Anita airs org. You can find her on Facebook as well. You can find me on Facebook. Deborah Nielis in EL is Mm-hmm. But there's also Survivors of suicide on Facebook, which I found. You have to be careful with some of those sites because some of those people Don't know the Lord so they do not have the comfort for you. But Reach out, reach out, do not suffer silently. Oh, that's such a good word.
Speaker 1:There's somebody and the Lord will reveal them to you or bring some or even send them to you, saying that he will send them to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, he will. He loves you, he wants to comfort you, he wants to be your companion, he wants to walk through this with you and he can Heal you. You can have a life that is far more beautiful than you ever thought possible, so reach out and let him come for you.
Speaker 1:Thank, you, cindy, I thank you. Thank you for sharing that story. Both of us are sitting here, tears running down our faces and and I know that if you've been touched by Suicide in your family in some way that you you probably were crying with us and we're sorry for your loss. We wish that we could take that pain from you, but we know what the Lord is capable of doing. So thank you for listening and I hope you join us for the next episode of the healing word Podcast with Cindy Hyde. Thank you, debbie Nellis. Thank you.