Eat At Chili's - give back to AFSP

Who wants to work all day, go home and cook, and then clean up!? What's that? No one? Well then, how about you take the family out to Chili's and 10% of proceeds go to the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. Less work for you, and 10% of your sales go to a great cause. The promotion is this Tuesday, September 18, 2012, and October 16, 2012, Chili's at Sawyer Park (near I-10 and Taylor). All you have to do is print out this flier below and go eat!

Service opportunities like this are awesome! They are easy to do, and you can get a lot of people involved. Take the family, invite your parents, invite your friends! Go for happy hour, lunch or dinner.

It's not all about making service easy. I believe that we need to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, but this is a great way to spread the work about an organization many may not know about.

Suicide Prevention is one of those causes that unfortunately people tend to rally around only when they have been affected by it personally. But even then, many victims of suicide don't know how to get involved or are too ashamed because of the dark stigma around suicide. However, with one American dying by suicide every 14.2 minutes - 100 people per day - chances are high that suicide will touch your life. With such an epidemic as this, why do we not get involved? The fact is it's portrayed as a dirty little secret, when in fact, people who commit suicide die from a disease. According to the AFSP website, 90% of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable and treatable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death. AFSP raises funds for  research for prevention of suicide and for aftercare for those left behind.

I was left behind. My life has never been the same since I lost a loved one to suicide. We were left questioning why and battled feelings of anger, guilt and sorrow. The more that I talked about it, the more that I found that others have lost loved ones to suicide. Knowing that I wasn't alone comforted me, but also angered me. The thought of a mother losing her child, a wife losing her spouse...why does no one talk about this!? Because as much as we try to sound enlightened in 2012, we still have so much work to do in suicide prevention and awareness.

In 2008, I discovered that AFSP hosted an Out of the Darkness walk in Houston. This year's walk will be held November 3, 2012 at Stude Park. It's a beautiful walk to help bring suicide awareness out of the darkness. Visit www.afsp.org for more information. I'll post more on that later...

But, tomorrow, please consider going to Chili's for dinner and making a difference. At least tell someone about it! We are a city of 4 million...we can make a difference.