Walking for suicide prevention

Michelle Vicale-Smith will be wearing red beads next Sunday morning at Smith Point County Park in Shirley, carrying a Walk With Nahum sign.

That’s where Vicale-Smith will be with friends and family, as the East End Long Island Walk for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is scheduled on Sunday, Sept. 20. Sign in is at 8:30 a.m.; the event starts at 10 a.m. The red beads signify she’s lost a husband.

She is co-chair of the walk.

Her husband Nahum, 44, died by suicide in March. Michelle and Nahum had been together for nine years.

“I believe he suffered with bipolar issues, but he experienced the stigma of being sick and didn’t want to go through hospitalization and doctors,” she said. Nahum was handsome, kind, loved nature and worked as a software architect for a remote company in health care technology, making better testing programs for ophthalmologists.

They took care of stray cats.

“He was brilliant, had a great job, and we had everything going for us,” Michelle said. “But he struggled.”

Nahum’s last text message to his wife was, “You know I love you.”

While this is a story about tragedy, it is also one about hope and awareness. Michelle, 38, is an adjunct professor of social dance at Suffolk County Community College, and is the owner/instructor of Latin Ballroom Lessons. She gives private lessons in a studio and also provides classes for local libraries. She had contacted the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention a month after Nahum's death.

One of her students who’d heard about Nahum’s death had a friend who reached out, spoke to her about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention organization, and she contacted them. Healing conversations were set up with someone who had the same kind of loss. “She told me a lot about the organization,” Michelle said. “I’m not one to sit around.

“We try to go into the schools to bring this issue to light. Our volunteers go to Albany and Washington to create laws,” she said. AFSP funds research, education, advocacy, prevention efforts and support for those affected by suicide. 

“You’re also around people who have experienced the same thing.”

She is currently in therapy. Dance helps. A dancer since age 8, she segued into tap and hip-hop after college, teaching at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio, competing for 10 years in American Rhythm, a category of five competitive and social ballroom dances in the U.S.: Cha Cha, rumba, East Coast swing, bolero and mambo.

“It’s very freeing and I still practice,” she said. “I also do Flamenco dancing. You’re just moving the body and it’s good mentally. I love teaching because I love seeing students evolve, shy at first, then smiling and laughing.”

She moved back with her parents in Ronkonkoma, works at SCCC Monday through Thursday, and also volunteers at the Medford Ambulance Company. She just got her EMT license.

“I also do CrossFit and yoga, walk with my father, and occasionally run Tunnels to Towers. I have a run in a couple of weeks. Exercising is helpful.”

If there is any advice, incorporating kindness into daily life to everyone helps, she said,  because no one knows what another person is going through. “Generally, it all starts with all of us being more aware of other people, complimenting them, just smiling and listening. I think all those little interactions change a person’s perspective.”

Michelle and Carrie Petrocca-Aronson, who lost her daughter to suicide and are friends working together on the walk, gave a recent talk at the Bellport Rotary to discuss their stories and announce the walk. The club presented them with a check.

For more information about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, click on afsp.org.

For more information about Walk with Nahum, click on: afspwalks.donordrive.com.