A Personal Loss And A Warning

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I lost Jay when he was a teenager. Many people believe that suicide is a team problem, but in fact, it is a concern for all people throughout their lifetime. That's not a topic that we can just shelf. The risk still is there, unfortunately. So it's something we need to be mindful of throughout our lives.

Richmond Vision And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Hello and welcome to America's Healthiest City. I am your host, Will Melton, and this is a channel RVA production. If you're new to this program, please visit America's HealthiestCity.com to learn about our 10-year community partnership to make Richmond the entire region the healthiest in America by 2033. It starts with a vision and it completes with everybody moving us in the direction toward being the healthiest city. Now, this is something that's very possible. I didn't know it was possible when I started, but as I've uh gone on and done over a hundred interviews with leaders from around the region and um persisted an ideas board that is full of ways small and large that people can get involved. I believe it, and you should too. Uh but we need your help. So visit America's Healthiest City, see how you can get involved, check out the ideas board, see what it takes to become an ambassador, and we're gonna get in today's program. Uh today I have Aaron Gallagher, the founder of Jaywalkers. It's not what you think, uh, but this is a very serious conversation, and it's one that I hope you'll listen to to the end. Uh, we're gonna talk about a lot of very important stuff today and trigger warning, this is sensitive material. Aaron, thank you for coming in today. I know that this is uh a long-running thing for you, and that's not easy, uh, but it's your your work now. And uh and so I will uh ask the same question that I ask everybody uh before we get into the heavy stuff, uh, which is um, are you uh from Richmond or did you move to Richmond? And if so, what brought you here and why have you stayed?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm actually, I was born in Washington, DC, immediately moved out to the suburbs in Virginia, so Northern Virginia, where I lived my whole life until 2018. And um, we always wanted to live in Richmond. My husband and I, um, his best friend and my best friend um from childhood live here, or college, I'd say. And um, so we always wanted to come down here, but he's always been a government contractor, so it was better for us to stay in Northern Virginia for a while. But he got a remote job in 2018. Our older daughter was just going off to college, and our younger daughter was still early enough in her high school career that we could make that shift and um move down here. So it we made it happen in 2018, and it was really just one of the best decisions. We love it here. It's really great.

SPEAKER_03 2:32

I've got you beat by just one year. I moved here in 2017.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Okay, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

From um, we were living in New Haven, Connecticut, but uh I lived in Williamsburg for a good long while. So I'm familiar, family in the region, and so it was a no-brainer move to Richmond and uh made it my hometown.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, I love it. I just think it's uh it's a good city. Um, you know, you got the arts and you've got cool events and it's got a great vibe, and it's easy to get into and out of. You know, Washington, DC, not easy to get into and out of to go enjoy any of the things in the city, kind of impossible. You have to clear out your whole day. Where Richmond, you want to see something at the altary at eight, you can I can leave my house at like 720 and be in my seat and ready to go very comfortably. I love it. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

I just had a conversation with somebody not yesterday, maybe, about DC and how um, you know, it's like you when you live there, it's great and you love it. And it's not until you move out that you realize all the things that are very challenging to deal with that we don't have to deal with down here.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

It's a little lower key down here, but still you have access to you know, great community, great lots of things, you know. I just really love it here.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Well, tell

Aaron’s Path From Teaching To Grief

SPEAKER_03 3:40

uh tell our listeners a little bit about your background. Um our our program tends to focus on you know our our guests, and then we get into the work and then we talk a little bit about the future of Richmond. Um so you know, tell me a little bit about your background, uh school, professional trajectory. Yeah. Um, what has been uh things that have kind of lit you up and um driven you to to you know be who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Okay, yeah. I was I always wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. And um so I went to JMU as um for my undergrad. I was in the marching dupes. Yeah, thank you. I was in the marching real dupes for a year. Um so I was a musician, um, kind of let that go and um focused on actually I got my degree in French. And so I lived a year in um the south of France, which didn't suck. And um, it's really nice lifestyle. And then I came home, um, you know, graduated, got a teaching, I started teaching. I worked for a number of years as a teacher, was a stay-at-home mom for a while, and then I went back to school administration and did that for a while. And then I um kind of made a jump trying to do something a little bit more lucrative. So I made a jump into like an a corporation that had an educational kind of background. So it was more like training, um, adult education kind of training for in a corporate setting. So that's where I um was in 2016, um, when uh I lost my son. So and that's where things kind of took a took a big turn. Yeah, big pivot there.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

So well, um, let's talk about that. Um, did you did you stop working when that happened? Did you make big changes right away with your work?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Uh well, it's interesting that I was, uh I didn't love my corporate job. And I had in my mind uh I had a plan that I was going to in February 2016, I would be putting in my um my letter of resignation and also kind of hopefully, you know, picking up and putting, you know, having something else lined up. And then my son died in February of two of 2016. So I hung around in that job for a minute just because I wasn't in a position to make any major changes. And then um about a year later, it was just all a lot. It was too much. I just really couldn't um do that kind of work anymore. And so I took a job in a startup coffee shop in my area. Wow. And so I helped launch a coffee shop, and that was actually perfect, you know, like it was a completely, it wasn't a head job. Like once I figured out how to pull a shot and you know, make all the drinks, then it was just really just a physical labor job, you know, like just getting like so it was it was a different kind of like my head obviously just wasn't working great with grief. So just getting into like something where I showed up and just kind of walked through pleasantly, of course, but um just walk through like just the day and getting just getting tasks done and completing those tasks and delivering for people, like that worked great for me. So I did that for about a year and a half and then we moved to Richmond. So um then I had to find something here. So I had lined up, actually, I had lined up something um when I was heading down. My husband, of course, was working remotely, so that was a good reason why we could get out of the city. He could still do his job in DC, but not have to be there. And I had lined up a job um with somebody in my area to do um work in a nonprofit organization that focused on stigma reduction for mental illness. And I felt like that was a really good area for me to be in. I feel like stigma um was a big part of my son's story. And um, so anything that I could do to help make other people's stigma reduced felt like incredible work for me. So I started, I had that line in my mind, I had that lined up as we moved. We got here in about August, and I was in conversation with that executive director, and I interviewed with her early August. She said to me, I'm going on vacation, I'll be gone for a few weeks. When I come back, we'll we'll fix this all up, we'll get this all taken care of. So I waited three weeks and I didn't hear from her, and then I waited one more week and I still hadn't heard from her. So I was like, hey, you know, I called her and I said, just, you know, wanted to see what's going on. And she said, Oh, you didn't get my email. And I was like, no, I didn't get your email. She's like, well, we decided to go in a different direction. I'm like, huh, okay. Uh tell me the direction that you decided to go in. She described it to me. And in my mind, I was like, that's not gonna work. So anyway, I was like, okay, you know, best of luck to you. But in my mind, I'm like, I'm getting that job. I'm going to get that job. So I had to quit get another job. So I took a really cool other job with um Leukemia Lymphoma Society. I did some work for them. It was a school year job. It ended like it was a short-term contract to May. So I was like, great. So I put that on LinkedIn and I called that lady back and I said, Um, you're gonna see that I just put a job up on LinkedIn, but it's a temporary job because I want that job. I want to work for you. She was like, okay, uh, it turns out actually that that person that we hired instead of you isn't working out. And so and I was like, right, cool. So I started up as an organization called This Is My Brave, which I worked at until 2024 when the board decided to sunset the organization. So at that point, I was kind of um, you know, where do I go from here? And that's when I decided to go ahead and jump all in with Jaywalkers.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Okay. I that this is a perfect segue. I do need to take a quick break. But when we come back, I want to talk all about Jaywalkers. I'm gonna talk about your son, talk about the work that you're doing, and uh share some resources with our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Great. The podcast you're watching is just one piece of something much bigger. Channel RVA is Richmond's independent media network, built by people who actually live and work right here in the A04, telling the stories the bigger networks get. Go check out the rest of our original lineup and find a new local favorite.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Welcome back to America's Healthiest City. I'm your host, Will Melton. Today we have Aaron Gallagher from Jaywalkers in the studio. Before we get back into the interview, though, this is a channel RVA production. And if you're not familiar with channel RVA, please visit channelrva.com and fill out the subscribe form over there to get Richmond in your inbox every single day. Channel RVA is the Richmond's independent home for independent media creators. I said that wrong, but it doesn't matter. Uh, you're gonna check it out anyway and find out all the people in Richmond who are bringing this city to life, telling you their story, uh, bringing you all the wonderful events, food, and other things that make this city so great uh to your inbox, games. There's a lot going on over there. So uh please

Jay’s Story And The Shock After

SPEAKER_03 10:44

uh humor my ADD self and uh check it out. Um without further ado, I want to get back into this interview. Aaron, uh you and I met through Synapse and uh Keith Reynolds. Uh he's doing great work. And uh if it hadn't been for uh speaking to your Synapse group, I wouldn't have uh met you maybe. So I'm so glad that that we got a chance to talk and and we've had a great conversation in between. Uh we won't have the chance to get into the depths of that conversation, but I do want to give you a chance to tell your son's story and uh talk a little bit about what Jaywalkers is doing to raise awareness and provide tools around mental health and lots of other very important things.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, so um I have three kids. Um, my oldest is Jay, um, and then two daughters, Lindsay and Loren. And um in 2016, Jay was 18 years old. He was a senior in high school. He was a very funny, smart young man. He was a good student. He was a thoughtful person, really thoughtful peer to his friends around him. Um he was involved in after-school activities. He'd just gotten his dream job of working at Top Golf. So um he was also, you know, applying to college and planning for his future. And then he died by suicide. Needless to say, uh his death for us was a complete shock because the time he was not um in treatment, he'd never had a diagnosis. So for us, it just it came out of left field. And so um, you know, for me personally, uh, I'm a deep diver. I, you know, I spend a lot of time in contemplation, but also when there's something that happens that I don't understand, I really need to try to understand it like all the way around, you know. So I really did a deep dive into the topic of suicide because it's not something I'd ever thought about before. And in fact, like I've done a little uh piece that I called the worry list. And I was a, you know, I think maybe I was a worrisome mom. I had a lot of things on my worry list, and suicide was just not on that list. I didn't think it would happen to our family. I assumed it was something that happened to other families. So I think that's a pretty standard kind of feeling for people. It's something that happens to other people.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Well, I uh coincidentally, this morning before I was producing the daily newsletter for Channel RVA, I happened to see a story on NPR that talked about uh a young person whose family had a similar experience and come to find out they had been talking to ChatGPT for a long period of time and sharing a lot of things. Yes. Even went as far as to getting ChatGPT to write the suicide note that they left for for her parents. And um, and and I I just can't help but to think that there's a reason why this is so important that you're here today and that that story came out this morning. It was in our newsletter. Um and so tell me a little bit about Jaywalkers and and how you came to start that. I know it was a little bit later, um, and what Jaywalkers does to raise awareness and to provide tools.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Sure.

Jaywalkers Challenge And Breaking Stigma

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Well, so Jaywalkers um started as a program in my other nonprofit. So when I took that job, that executive director said to me, if you ever want to do anything to remember Jay through you know our nonprofit, you know, let's just pitch it and just we'll talk about it. So in fact, like in the in maybe in the first few months after Jay died, and all of my I journaled a lot, I read a lot, I, you know, studied a lot online about things. I had written down, you know, this idea that we could do a walk. And my idea was that it would be um we would walk a mile in um somebody else's shoes. So really about storytelling, about, you know, somebody who has lived with uh suicidal ideation or maybe made an attempt and survived, that they could share their story. This idea in my head was that they could walk and um bring somebody alongside them, somebody who maybe does think that this is something that couldn't happen to them or anybody that they love, that they could walk alongside this person and that person could share their lived experience and the other person could listen, ask questions. You know, I kind of had a framework where they'd walk the mile. The first lap around the track would be the lived experience person talking, the second lap might be this the other person talking. Like I had this whole vision. So when Jen suggested I could do it for as a program, you know, I kind of put the final framework around it. And so it's become a nonprofit, and it's now our flagship event is the Jaywalkers Challenge, which we do every September in which is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. And um, the idea is that you form a team, and together as a team, you make a pledge, you accept the challenge to complete 800,000 steps during the month of September. And when you do, you will have walked a step in honor of every life lost worldwide to suicide. So there is a symbolic meaning to those steps. Um, but then also once we have you kind of on the line to do the steps challenge, then we throw some other challenges at you. Because what we do know is that we can't prevent suicide if we're unwilling to talk about it. And that is a kind of taboo word. It's very hard for people to feel comfortable talking about that topic. So our idea is that we challenge you to start those conversations. We'll give you some social media posts and things that you can put up to start conversations there, but also maybe invite somebody to come on a walk with you and tell them why you're doing that walk. And some people have personal reasons why they're doing that walk because they too have lost someone or they've have lived experience themselves. Or um, you know, they just know that it's something that we need to be more aware of because we can't keep going like this, just losing people year over year and not um making these numbers better. Like we need to lose fewer people. So the only way we're gonna do this is I think by breaking down the stigma and starting those conversations. So that's a part of the challenge. And then last year we added a fundraising piece to the challenge as well. I pledge to give all the money that comes in through peer-to-peer fundraising during the challenge to support suicide prevention measures that we know work. So that's one thing I discovered in my deep dive after Jay died is that there are effective measures that are validated by research and they're just not being implemented to scale. So there's communities around the country that don't have access to these uh to these interventions, um, whether they're crisis interventions, or um, I also learned that there's a lot of things we can be doing way upstream, way in advance of a crisis, way in advance of the first, a first ever potential thought of suicide. There's ways that we can equip people to be protected against ever going down that path.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Well, let's talk about that. But before we do, if you're listening to this interview and you're struggling uh with mental health issues, or you feel like you're thinking about suicide, uh, there is a hotline you can call 988-ISTHSID prevention hotline. There are interventions, there are trained answer uh folks there. I don't know if they're counselors or if they're just volunteers or counselors, trained counselors that will uh help you talk through uh what you're experiencing. Um something of coincidence. I I'm into coincidences today. Okay. Um I also uh mentioned in my editor's note in today's newsletter, uh, and and this episode's uh prerecorded, so it's not gonna be in actually today's newsletter, but I mentioned that uh we're gonna be doing these walking work days. Um I did one last month where I just walked for a day and worked for my phone as much as I could. I had a couple of stops I had to make to take some calls, but um we're gonna start to motivate people to to do that on uh cooler days, and we might be able to, you know, find ways to to uh leverage that to get people steps in. So you can we can continue to to tell this story. Yes. Um tell us a little bit about uh the preventative uh measures because that's I think the real uh meat here. That's the thing that's gonna have the most impact.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yeah.

Upstream Prevention And Real Connection

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Well, can I give you a little backstory?

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Tell me everything, please.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah. So on uh the day that Jay died and the word was kind of getting out in the community, there was a family in the community that um obviously was distressed by the news and um had children the same age as my kids. And so they uh immediately sat their children down and said to them, if you ever feel this way, you need to tell us. You can tell you can tell us anything. Just let us know because there's help that is available and we can we can help you get that. And without hesitation, their son raised his hand and said, I feel like that every day. I've felt like that every day since I was in eighth grade, and he was a senior in high school too. So his parents got him the help that he needed. He's a thriving young man now, the age of 28. Um, and that's the thing that I really uh noticed in my deep dive. And I checked against what I saw in terms of resources that are available even today, 10 years later, not a lot has changed. So, what I went out searching for, like, wow, if if I wanted to encourage people through my nonprofit to start conversations about suicide, what should I encourage them to say? Like, what what's how do they frame that conversation? And so I Googled, like, how do you talk about how does anybody talk about suicide with a friend or a family member? And all of the, you could Google it today and check it, and I don't think much has changed. All of the information says, well, if you see that your friend is struggling, if you see any of these signs, they're withdrawing, uh, maybe they're not taking good, their hygiene has fallen, you know, um, maybe they're more belligerent or they're not performing as well in work, you know, all these kind of classic telltale signs that somebody's struggling and may be their, you know, their mental health is deteriorating, then you should ask them if they're thinking about suicide, because that's going to be the thing that just, you know, breaks things wide open. That to me is like waiting, and I'm not the first one to say this. This isn't my original idea, but that's kind of like waiting until we find a bulging tumor in our body and then say, oh, I should probably go get that checked. You know, this is like stage four interventions. What are the stage one, two, three interventions? So way in advance of crisis interventions. And it's important to think about those things because, you know, when you look at the numbers of people in our nation, and I said the 800,000 is a global number of how many people we lose. In the US, we lose 50,000 people a year, roughly, to suicide. But in addition to the people that die by suicide, there are people, there are, you know, maybe 25 people who've attempted and survived. There's, you know, maybe 75, 80 people who are making plans for every one person that dies. And then there's hundreds of people who are having thoughts. So all told we're like 20 million people a year who whose lives are uh disrupted to some degree by suicide. Many of those people are just having thoughts and haven't slipped further into despair and maybe to a point where they're thinking about making plans. So wouldn't it be better if we could start those conversations earlier and cut that process off, you know, kind of help people re-establish wellness and um restored balance in their life. So there are obviously conversations out of the blue, like my friends who managed to, you know, discover that their son was struggling. Um, so starting those conversations, those can happen every day. There aren't good guidelines online, but it's just about showing up for someone. They don't seem like they're doing well, or even well in advance of that, saying, you know, I know that this can be a thing. If you take that 20 million people, that's one in 16 adults in the US who's living with some degree of suicidality. We can all look around and say, well, if it's one in 16, surely I'm coming in contact with those people in some aspect of my life. So if you were to say to your friends, if you have a good friend group and say, Yeah, let's just make a pact today, like we'll be each other, you know, we'll be our a person for each other. Like if you're ever struggling, I I recognize that that can happen and I can talk to you about it. That doesn't make me uncomfortable at all. I want you to call me. And so I think that's a really important thing to say to our friends and open that conversation. It certainly does take the stigma away. Like if I am thinking about that and I'm too embarrassed because I think you probably would judge me. And you say that to me, that really does um change, hopefully, the tone that I'm taking with this topic. And it makes you somebody that I can reach out to if things do start to feel I need somebody to talk to.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

The number that you shared is maybe small. If you really think about people struggling with their thoughts in general at any given moment, you know, from one day to the next, or good days or not so good days. Um and I think that there's this just a general stigma around sharing our emotions. I think, you know, I watch people and there's a lot changing in the world. There's a lot of stimulus, social media stimulus, there's AI now is changing things, and it's a it's a perceived threat. Yeah. And so we have all these ideas swirling. I think I think a lot of people are struggling to express what they are feeling inside. Yeah. And that's not a question, but I I I just I cannot help but to think that um what I'm observing is I look around and as I become more content with the world around myself, because I haven't always, you know, felt okay. It seems like perhaps there's a moment, an opportunity for us to leverage our social connections um to be more human, I think is really the word I want to use. We take away all the technology and we have just each other left. Yes. It's amazing. It's really amazing the connectivity that we have between people.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Yes, I absolutely agree. And I think um, I do want to tell you uh a a little another aspect of it, but I think that um, you know, what you just mentioned about the plan to make Richmond the healthiest city in twenty thirty-three. Okay. Like that um there has to be a community aspect to that, an interpersonal aspect and like actual like looking people in the eye aspect. We've receded, retreated into our homes, we've retreated into our solitary spaces, and that leaves people feeling less connected, potentially more alone. A sense of belonging is a major protective factor, strong interpersonal relationships, relationships that allow for vulnerability. And then I think that that really just takes the courage of one person. So you saying, like, you know what, we're never vulnerable with each other. So let's just like let's try it. You know, there's little card decks now that have challenging questions. You could take those out to a restaurant, put your phones away, and like, let's go through this deck, like let's take five questions out of here and let's try being a little bit more vulnerable with each other. The second you do, I think people sense the change in the connection and it feels more authentic. And I think that's really when you'll start to um find more richness in relationships, healthier relationships altogether.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

I think it I think it lends itself to to human thriving, to individual thriving. And in if my own experience is is a testament to it. Um being explicitly vulnerable as a means of practice, as a as a like, well, wait a second, like why why am I so worried about sharing this with other people? Right. Am I afraid that they're gonna judge me? Am I f you know, and and it what it really, I think, you know, in retrospect, it's like, well, no, we we're afraid that people are going to think that we're weak, that we don't have the tools to perform and that they're gonna judge us so that we aren't gonna get opportunities and you know, all this stuff. And it's like, but we're all dealing with it. We all have these self-limiting beliefs and challenges and and and um self-conscious thoughts, whether or not, you know, we can't all be okay all the time.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Right, right. I will say that just in my personal experience, that we've always been very open and honest about how we lost our son. Um, and m some people aren't, you know, we were very lucky to be surrounded by an incredibly supportive community that um just like, you know, kind of like scaffolding that held us up for the better part of a year, really. Because we were open and honest and we continue to be, we have people say to us, I've never said this before, but I lost my mom to suicide or I lost my brother to suicide. You know, these are people like because we've told our story and we say it, and we don't say it everywhere we go. We to we kind of measure the moment and make sure it's a good time to share. But when we do, people meet us in that vulnerable space with something probably equally as vulnerable. It takes some courage for um each of us to and intention to make space for that. Um, but I think that's how we'll be better connected, how we'll get to a healthier city in 2033.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

So well, on that note, I want to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk about the framework that you shared with me on our call. And um, we have a few more questions and we'll we'll wrap up the interview. We're gonna go long today. I think this is such an important topic. Thank you for coming.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

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SPEAKER_03 29:28

Hi, and welcome back to America's Healthiest City. I'm your host, Will Melton, and today we have Aaron Gallagher from Jaywalkers in the studio. We're talking about suicide prevention. And uh, if you're new to this program, please check out America's HealthiestCity.com and uh check out our ideas board. You actually can leave an idea on the ideas board for ways that Richmond can become the healthiest city in America by 2033. Um the whole concept started with just an ideas board, a place where we could all share together ways to do it so that we have ideas on things that we can do to make that happen. Uh so please check that out, leave your ideas. And without further ado, we'll get back into today's interview, Erin.

Hope Skills And Year Round Tools

SPEAKER_03 30:02

Um we talked on the phone about uh hope skills. Uh so I hope you'll share a little bit more about that and any other tools and resources that our listeners can tap into to get more connected to Jaywalkers and to go where they need to go with this story.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Sure. So hope skills, I think, is one of the most exciting things that I tripped into in my deep dive about um suicide. And so this whole framework is not designed um with suicide in mind. However, it um has been proven when you have strong hope skills that you have kind of better outcomes in life. The hope uh theory was developed or made popular by Dr. Snyder, Rick Snyder, in the late 80s, early 90s. So that's the other thing I thought found was really fascinating is that this is stuff that's been around for a while and it's just not widely known. So part of what I want to do is make sure people understand. Um, hope skills are, you know, you just said, I hope you'll tell me more, which is the way we use hope. I hope you have a good day. You know, that feels very wishful, but actually, hope skills are measurable and they're really based on um kind of like a like a three points where um it's about setting a goal, then knowing that you have the the willpower to achieve that goal and you can see how you'll achieve that goal. There's one book called Hope Rising that where they call it the willpower and the way power, where you can envision um the way there, the way to get to that goal, and you can envision or you have trust that you can achieve that. So it's about kind of self-efficacy and it's about planning and making plans to achieve, and then also being able to kind of deal with any sort of roadblocks that come up along the way. You know, how will you overcome those things and trusting that you can do that? So these are measurable skills and they've worked the assessment down to about 12 questions. So you could go and search for hope skills uh assessment today and find out what your um your score is, and that will tell you kind of what your hope skills are. And the great thing about hope skills is it's not a fixed thing like an IQ. Each of the questions kind of falls into whether it's about goal setting, whether it's about um willpower or way power. And if you uh look like there's a deficit in willpower, then there's some ideas for how you can improve that skill or that um sense of self-efficacy. And then you can grow in your hope skills, which just leads to hopefully greater success as you move through your life. But the thing that I find most interesting about hope skills is that you parents can do hope skills training and assessment, assessment and training with their kids as young as like six or seven. So that's a little bit shorter of a questionnaire. You ask them the questions, you get those answers, and you can then gather like together like a score. If there is uh an area in those um in those questions where your child seems to need to improve, then you can work with them to build to improve those skills. And hope skills in children is more predictive of success in life than anything else, socioeconomic status or IQ or uh, you know, grades in school. Uh it's hope skills that has, and that's evidence-based. So um that I actually have on my website. So um, you know, when we did Which is so the sorry, oh yes, jaywalkers.org, which is jhyphenwalkers.org. Thank you. Thank you. When we started the challenge, um, we started the challenge in 2022. So um it as a program in another nonprofit. So this year is our fifth anniversary. Um, this year's challenge is the fifth annual Jaywalkers Challenge. But what we realized, obviously, is that we can't just think about um this very complex issue of suicide for just 30 days out of the year. We can't table that that work at, you know, at the end of September and not come back to it again until the beginning of next September. So there's plenty of work that can be done throughout the year. And so what we really want to do is maybe, you know, challenge people's mindsets about suicide during the challenge and then encourage them to continue if they realize that there's work that they could be doing to understand this topic better for themselves and for those around them, that they could continue to explore ways to, you know, make themselves more well and do some things like hope skills training with their family members. So we have those on our website in what we call year-round challenges. So if you're curious about the hope skills training, um, that is on our website under the year-round challenges. And there's a lot of good resources there for how to improve your hope skills, how to, you know, foster good hope skills in your children or in other family members. I think we could all be doing work throughout our lives. One other point I want to make is, you know, I lost Jay when he was a teenager, but and I think it many people believe that suicide is a team problem. But in fact, it is a concern for all people throughout their lifetime. That's not a topic that we can just shelf like, oh, my kids are now in college. Oh, nope, everybody's off and uh starting their own lives. The risk still is there, unfortunately. So it's something we need to be mindful of throughout our lives.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

Yeah. Well, um, so many things come to mind, uh, getting lonely as we age and losing our peers as we age and things like that. Um I can't help but to again go back to the serendipity of things. I'm I'm finishing a book called Uh From Survival to Significance. And a lot of it's really focused on helping people get unstuck when they perceive failure before they've even started. And I feel like there's just so much overlap with this concept of hope skills. And so I'm gonna do a deep dive on that before I finish uh editing my book because I feel like there's space to think about how that overlaps with with uh pre-existing thinking. I know I'm not the only person who've arrived at this set of tools and and and kind of experiences of uh breakthrough to to

How The Challenge Works And Closing

SPEAKER_03 36:32

help other folks. Before we sign off, I I have a very important question. Um is the challenge just a month-long challenge for folks, or is there a specific day, an activity where a lot of folks come together uh for the Jaywalkers Challenge?

SPEAKER_00 36:47

So it's a virtual team-based 30-day challenge. Although we would love to see people gather together and do their walks together. So I'll be a part of a walk in Northern Virginia at the end of August, um, where we'll grab some people that you know our old neighbors and friends. We'll get together and do a walk in a park there where we have a bench dedicated to Jay. So we'll walk from, you know, one point down to the bench and then turn around and walk back. And those will be our, you know, we can count those for our steps during the month. And then on September 1st, I'll be doing a walk with a group out in Woodlake in uh Chesterfield. We have a lot of people up and down the East Coast that do this. Um, and they do it with people like coworkers or neighbors. And so it would be great if neighbors could make a plan to get together every Saturday morning, get your steps in however you can during the week, whether you're um, you know, taking them a walk at lunch or getting them on the treadmill, you know, after work, or I don't know, we had people last year. This one woman wrote and said, I was at the airport and we had a layover. So I got all my steps in at the airport. So um, you know, wherever you are is where you can take your steps. If you have a team of about 10 or 12 people, it's about 2,200 steps a day, which is about a mile a day. So it's 20, 25 minutes, 30 if you're a little slower walker. Um, so it's an easy target um for folks to achieve.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

That's great. You're gonna have channel RV support through this. Um, we're gonna help Remember Jay and save some lives. I think this is such an important thing. Yeah. Before I let you go, um, I don't let anybody off the hook on this one. We need uh tell tell other stories, other folks who are making important things happen in the region so that we can uh realize the vision of becoming the healthiest city in America by 2023. So uh who is the person that you would challenge to come on this show and tell their story?

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Well, so I've been working with a Rotary Club. Daywalkers has a partnership with Rotary that district. So it's kind of not just local clubs, but clubs from here all the way out to Virginia Beach area. That's great. Because of that partnership, I've uh spent some time with Rotarians and um they're a pretty remarkable group. And so there's um one group, um, the Midlothian Rotary Club, that's doing some really cool thing in prisons. Um, so they've kind of forged a partnership with the sheriff out there, and they go in to work with prisoners. Um, and I this is the thing, I don't know the program name, uh, but um I can give you the name of somebody at the at the club. But they've had some really incredible outcomes when it comes to recidivism um for the for the people who've gone through that system with them. So it it involves Rotarians going into the prisons, working with the prison population. Um, and and it's really had uh impact in terms of recidivism for those who are released and aren't finding themselves, you know, right back where they were, you know, before, which is really cool. I just think it's innovative, exciting. Um, so anyway, that was really impressive work. I love that Rotary Club is really about um, you know, making a difference in their own community. So that's what we're trying to do with Jaywalkers and Rotary is um any of the peer-to-peer fundraising that they do during the challenge, we will use to pay for clinicians to be trained in a suicide-specific protocol called CAMS. Um, but we will train people in their service area. So um, so they can be assured that when they raise that $420, it will be used to train somebody that will directly serve their community and make their community safer, which I think is really exciting.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

So many good things happening. Yeah. Uh uh, unfortunately on the heels of tragedy, but it's uh important that we talk about it. So, Aaron Gallagher, thank you for coming on America's Healthiest City. I hope this interview uh impacts somebody's life in a meaningful way.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me, Will. It's been a great conversation.