Awake in the small hours this morning, enjoying the beautiful room here at the Langham hotel. It’s been a huge month for my family and we are feeling stronger and closer than ever. Soaking up all the experiences and processing so many conversations with new people.

I have been learning how to move through many different worlds with more grace. Messages of compassion, authenticity, diversity are reaching fertile ground. Doors are opening into new opportunities. The costs of this work are gradually becoming less, the transitions easier for me. I was raw and vulnerable the night before speaking, but not sobbing or sleepless with fear. Bearable costs becomes sustainable practice.

Yesterday at my work, we spoke of suicide and the aching gulf in those of us left behind. There was a moment of profound anguish, bewilderment, guilt, loss. In every space, every talk there’s a question brought burning in someone’s mouth, and if it’s safe to ask it will be asked. Sometimes it’s like a scream into the night, a supplication to a god, or the revealing of a hidden wound. Yesterday it was the aftermath of losing friends to suicide, and when the words were spoken, I felt like the floor fell out of the room into darkness and we were all strung like stars in the void, glittering with tears.

How do we make peace with such aching loss? How to bear the fear of future grief? How can we possibly understand such pain without also sharing it? How to live well with the ghosts of those we’ve loved who died before their time, leaving so many questions and taking all of the answers with them? What does it mean when people hide their pain from us?

There are moments when all that is different between us is suspended. Yesterday grief united us, here in this confused anguish is our shared humanity. Suffering and death a profound leveler. We are mortal and those we love, die. Sometimes alone and in terrible pain.

So we speak of compassion, dignity, connection, humanity, even in our places of work, those last bastions of self presented as invulnerable success. Not only for the benefit of those who struggle, but also those on the periphery, spared such agony but who do not wish to be left behind in doubt and sorrow. No one falls entirely alone, the cut threads unknit lives far beyond one loss.

We speak and unravel shame, ease the weight of secret burdens. The panel is gentle, compassionate, Georgie Harman lays a light hand on lingering guilt, Dr Eddie Mullen encourages learning and exploring – knowledge is power. They were splendid. I speak as someone who has been chronically suicidal and talk of the great gulf of fitting words to feelings, and of wanting to protect people around me. How deceits start small and with good intentions and grow large and overwhelming. I speak as someone who has cared for others who are suicidal, across a range of settings, and talk of the terrible fear of burdening loved ones, the twisted logic that draws darkened hearts into empty sacrifices that ease no pain.

The moment concludes, we who have been the midwives of it talk, listen, debrief, break bread together, shake hands, conclude. We part ways, step out into the rain.

I hope we honoured your dead, and gave some balm to the living. I hope you felt heard, held in dignity. I hope we served our goals well, safe shepherds for first conversations. The task of being human and remaining humane with each other is not always an easy one, and not without risk or pain. But it what we are for and where we shine brightest.