Getting Through the Pandemic Stronger
Suicide prevention advocate Dennis Gillan on post-traumatic growth and the value of relationships
In late 2019, Dennis Gillan gave a TEDx talk about the loneliness epidemic, and right before February 2020, it was published online.
“It was so bizarre,” said Gillan, a public speaker, suicide prevention advocate, and executive director of the Half A Sorrow Foundation, as in the Swedish proverb he likes to share: “A shared joy is a double joy, shared sorrow is half a sorrow.”
In January 2020, Gillan was looking at a busy year with speaking engagements around the country in places he’d always wanted to go. The talk he gives is a difficult one: He is one of three brothers, and two of them died by suicide. Since then, he’s done what he can to try to prevent anyone else from ever having to experience what Gillan felt himself.