With practiced precision, Shelby Rowe uses a small needle to lift each bead, stitching it into fabric, coaxing it to become something more. Her black hair fans across hunched shoulders. A silver tree of life hangs from her neck, tethering her to the past, anchoring her in the present.
For Rowe, this Native American tradition isn’t just art. Beading is part of survival.
“Beads are nothing but broken glass,” she says. “I spend hours of my time mending broken things. Making something beautiful out of something broken.”
Rowe was broken. She knows the parts of her that still are. She began having suicidal thoughts as a teenager. First when she was 15, after the death of her great-grandmother, to whom she was especially close. Those thoughts would return a few years later, during a volatile period in her late teens. The night before her senior prom, Rowe learned she was pregnant. She married the baby's father, though it didn't last long. Just shy of their two-year anniversary, her husband died in an accidental shooting at a friend's house, weeks after she gave birth to their second son.
Rowe had swiftly lost her youth, her marriage, and, in many ways, herself. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and again found herself contemplating suicide.
“I was 19 and postpartum with two little bitty kids," she said. "But I went through a lot of counseling, and I thought I was OK."
Rowe married twice more, had a third son and, drawn to helping people, established a career in public health. In 2007, she became the executive director of the Arkansas Crisis Center, which runs the state's suicide lifeline. But three years later, when her third marriage ended suddenly, she experienced a suicidal crisis.
“I was embarrassed and humiliated that I couldn’t control my thoughts," she said. "I did crisis intervention training with first responders, I trained all of our hotline staff and a lot of the mental health professionals in my state. I thought that I should be able to control my own PTSD. That’s not how PTSD works. It is not the logical part of your brain that’s reacting, and so my frustration and self-hate that I couldn’t control my PTSD really put me in a bad place.”
Rowe checked into a hospital. When she left, she was referred to an outpatient psychiatrist and a therapist. She saw the psychiatrist once but didn't feel comfortable opening up. She saw her therapist a handful of times.
"I wanted to live, I just didn’t know how to anymore," she said. "And I think that’s something that a lot of people miss, they think that individuals who are suicidal want to die."
On the night before Thanksgiving 2010, Rowe went to her bathroom and looked in the mirror for what she was sure would be the last time.
"I hope I never see you again,” she said. Then she attempted to end her life.
Native Americans face increased risk of suicide
Suicide disproportionately affects Native Americans and Alaska Natives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A 2018 CDC report found Native Americans and Alaska Natives suicide rates were 21.5 per 100,000, more than 3.5 times higher than those among racial and ethnic groups with the lowest rates. More than one-third of Native American suicide deaths were youth.
Experts who study Native American suicide blame higher rates of poverty, substance abuse and unemployment as well as geographical isolation, which can make it difficult for people to access services and mental health care. Native Americans and Alaska Natives experience PTSD more than twice as often as the general population, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
But experts are also quick to note that suicide rates vary greatly among the nation’s federally recognized tribes.
“Some tribes can have as high as 10 times the national average for suicide, but then other tribes might be below the national average,” said Karen Hearod, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and regional administrator at SAMHSA.
Pamela End of Horn, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and national suicide prevention consultant at the Indian Health Service Headquarters, says tribes with lower suicide rates tend to have strong crisis response strategies. Community-based efforts, engaging everyone from school officials to law enforcement to emergency department directors, have been the most effective, according to federal studies. The community works together to provide stronger social networks, tribal spirituality, tribal identity and a sense of cultural belonging.
“They have planned out really deliberately how they can provide connection,” End of Horn said.
Connection protects against suicide, according to the CDC. But Native Americans' experience with historical trauma – forced relocation, separation of children from families, loss of tribal practices – can make connecting with culture and family difficult.
Leading Native American researcher Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, who specializes in historical trauma, wrote in 2011 that Native Americans have experienced "devastating collective, intergenerational massive group trauma and compounding discrimination, racism, and oppression." Responses to this trauma can include depression, high rates of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.
Research has shown historical trauma has been observed not only among Native populations, but among generations of Jewish Holocaust and Japanese American internment camp survivors.
"You get this historical trauma, and people aren’t able to resolve it. It gets internalized and passed down to future generations," Hearod said.
Rowe's grandmother on her father's side, who was Chickasaw, and her grandfather on her mother's side, who was Cherokee, were both raised to hide their Native heritage. Rowe said they walked to school past signs that read "no dogs or Indians on the grass." It left her family feeling as though they did not belong in either the Native world or the white world. She felt it, too.
For Native Americans today, Hearod said, reconnecting with lost culture can help reduce risk.
“Despite all of the things that tribes have endured, we're still here,” Hearod said. “There is strength and resilience we can find in that.”
'Continue our legacy'
Rowe woke up two days after her attempt and knew something needed to change. She didn’t know what, or if she would survive, but she knew she couldn’t live the way she had been any longer.
Her sister and her father, who Rowe says was emotionally distant most of her life, drove from Tulsa to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to see her. Her father, a Vietnam veteran who had never coped with his own traumas, opened up for the first time – about his pain, and about his love for her.
"He gave me a great big hug and looked me in the eye and said, 'I've missed you my whole life. I don't want to miss you anymore.' I think I felt more love at that moment than I had felt in years," she said.
The conversation helped Rowe feel connected. Thomas Joiner, a renowned suicide researcher, put forth a theory in 2005 that suicide results, in part, from a sense of "thwarted belonging," which includes isolation and loneliness.
"Your brain doesn’t know the difference between physical pain and psychological pain, so having a kind person to connect with you alleviates that pain," Rowe said. "Having those human connections is lifesaving."
Rowe woke early the next morning. She went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. This time, she said something was different.
“I just felt like my ancestors reached out and embraced me," she said. She described it as a spiritual scolding, like "a parent who scolds their kid for running out into traffic. It was, ‘why did you do this? Don’t you know who you are? You are all of our hopes and dreams. All of these sacrifices we made over time were so you would be here. Please continue our legacy.’”
Rowe says her ancestors have guided her all along, but the clearing of her mental anguish allowed her to hear them more sharply. That morning she felt the urge to drive to Ada, Oklahoma, the headquarters of the Chickasaw Nation. She spent an hour trying to talk herself out of it, then got in the car and headed south.
She began to think about happiness, which for her is being around horses. She began to think about purpose and realized the calls that had impacted her most while working at the suicide lifeline were from vets. On the three-hour drive, Rowe decided she would merge her passion and her purpose. She started the nonprofit Almost Home Ranch, and its inaugural project was caring for the horses of service members who were deployed, disabled, struggling financially or deceased. The venture would last 18 months and nearly bankrupt her.
"It was a great adventure," Rowe said. "I have no regrets. ... horses really helped me heal."
Rowe's road to recovery has had its share of setbacks. It is her spiritual convictions, she says, that keep her grounded. Rowe has continued to listen to her ancestors, reconnecting with her roots and diving deep into the lives of the women she descended from. Her ancestors include Betsy Love, whose lawsuit helped establish the principle that married women could own their own property, and Love's daughter, Mourning Tree, a powerful medicine woman whose name captured the pain of relocation.
“Native peoples are at greater risk, but I think that our secret to healing is in our traditions, connecting with who you are,” Rowe said. “I've tried to get a lot better at listening to [my ancestors]. It's that internal voice we all have – call it your guardian angel, the holy spirit, your conscience, your intuition. To me, I call it my grandmothers."
They've told her to be kinder to herself, she says. When something triggers her PTSD, instead of getting angry, she recognizes it and focuses on what she can do to feel better. She's learned not to hide her pain. Before her attempt, she was protective of her past traumas. But concealing the harrowing parts of her life made it impossible for people to help her.
"My ego got in the way," she said. "I didn’t want anyone handicapping my success, like 'oh, well, Shelby is successful – for a teen mom. She’s doing well – for a young widow.' I had this group of people around me who didn’t know anything about my past struggles. ... So I wasn’t getting the support ... that I needed."
SUICIDE SAFETY PLAN: Having one could save your life
Rowe knows it seems odd to some that she’s remained in suicide prevention work, but she says this is her purpose, and it keeps her alive. Rowe is now the suicide prevention program manager at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Her life is spent helping others in crisis, and cherishing the relative peace that has come to define her own. Now she's trying to persuade her sons to reconnect with their Native heritage, too.
“I'm still working on bringing the rest of my family home to our ancestors. Hopefully, I will live long enough to bring all of them back, and to bring my grandchildren yet to be born,” she said. “To make sure that they know who they are, that they're connected, because they should be very proud.”
Suicide Lifeline: If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts you can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) any time of day or night or chat online.
Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741.
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- Suicide is one of the nation's top killers. When will we start acting like it?
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- What actually happens when you call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
- How to help someone who's suicidal