Debby Waldman Encore -- "How Covid-19 and Power Tools Helped Heal My Relationship With My Son"

Special Episode for Suicide Prevention Week: Debby Waldman is a writer and ex-pat American who has lived in Edmonton, Alberta, since 1992. We were knitting buddies in New Haven, Connecticut in the mid-1980s when she was a newspaper reporter there, but we lost touch until recently, when a mutual friend sent me her New York Times essay, "How Covid-19 and Power Tools Helped Heal My Relationship With My Son": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/well/family/depression-suicide-covid-woodworking-canoe-cutting-boards.html The essay is in part about how the pandemic gave her a chance to pursue a long-time dream, to learn woodworking, but it's also about another step in her journey to understand and come to grips with her family's legacy of mental illness. She has recently completed a draft of a memoir about the effects of the secrets and silence that surrounded the suicide of her father, a Reform rabbi, when she was 13. Learn more at https://www.debbywaldman.com/. Check out https://copenotes.com/zestful for an innovative app that supports mental health. Find out more about the Zestful Aging Podcast at ZestfulAging.com.