By Jason Klaiber
Staff Writer
If she wasn’t here, AnnMarie Giannino-Otis would miss being the cheerleader in the bleachers at her kids’ track meets, whipping up Sunday dinners and singing Pink tunes at the top of her lungs.
Adding to the dialogue about depression and suicide, the Fayetteville resident hopes for others to think about what they would miss if they or someone they loved was no longer living.
With that, she has introduced the “What Would You Miss?” campaign, which encourages others to share what they appreciate about their life and the people that impact them in one way or another.
Giannino-Otis, who has battled suicidal thoughts herself, started the mental wellness campaign about two months ago, first inspired to action by the suicide of a close friend’s son as well as the conversations she has had about life and the feeling of loss.
“It got me thinking one day when I was really struggling,” Giannino-Otis said. “I thought in my head, ‘Why do I feel this way if I have this great house and I have four children that are healthy.’ It gave me a lot of guilt.”
She started thinking about the things she would miss in her absence. One was the dice game Bunco, played by gatherings of her and her friends over the past 17 years.
Later on, a friend of Giannino-Otis mentioned she too would miss her participation in those Bunco games.
“That’s when I had this euphoric moment,” Giannino-Otis said. “How often do we tell somebody who’s struggling ‘I would miss you, and this is what you do that makes me miss you?’”
The “What Would You Miss?” campaign poses an “existential question,” according to its founder.
“We can force someone to have gratitude and be thankful, but for them to find worth is really hard,” Giannino-Otis said. “When you don’t have worth, you don’t have hope, so the two go together.”
She said talk of suicide is normally spoken in whispers otherwise.
“It’s an easy conversation to have with someone when you word it like this,” Giannino-Otis said. “There’s not a harshness to it. It’s softer. It’s very cathartic and therapeutic.”
She said the question at the forefront of the campaign also leads to in-depth conversations, which she considers an important factor since these long discussions have a chance at guiding people away from negative thoughts.
Giannino-Otis is also the founder of Stupid Dumb Breast Cancer, an advocacy group that started eight years ago after she was diagnosed with the disease.
“I quickly realized that mental health and any disease or chronic illness go hand in hand,” she said. “That’s when I started to branch off a little bit more into the mental health community.”
A one-minute public service announcement for “What Would You Miss?” has been set for release at the end of this month, right around the start of the holiday season.
The National Alliance for Mental Illness, the Central New York chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and local schools have latched onto the campaign with their support.
Giannino-Otis has received responses to the question through whatwouldyoumiss.com, [email protected] and the movement’s Facebook page, some messages coming from places as far as the Netherlands.
Some responses have touched on simple things, like peanut butter sandwiches in a lunch box, or the small inconveniences like dirty socks on the floor left behind by a now-departed loved one.
Submitted photo
