A Bit Damaged, But Not Broken": Seed Containers, Care, and Safe Spaces for Suicidality

The provision of care for suicidal and, perhaps especially, chronically suicidal people walks a fine line: between acknowledging a person's suffering and their desire to die, and trying to accompany them safely through their most difficult moments. In this article, we explore what it means to receive and provide "safe care," as traced through the words of people with lived experiences of suicide. Our data comes from 18 interviews with members of an Australian lived experience of suicide organization, which included people with lived experience of chronic suicidal ideation, the bereaved, peer workers, and Safe Space volunteers. Drawing on the anthropology of care and aligned psychoanalytic theory, particularly Emily Yates-Doerr's (Anthropol Human 45:233-244, 2020) consideration of the seed container and Donald Winnicott's notion of holding, we unpack how suicidality is experienced, what makes care safe, and how notions of holding space for people are becoming anchored in emerging "Safe Spaces." Interview participants called for a paradigmatic shift in suicide care: in contrast to "negative" conceptions (Baril, in: Disability Stud Q 40:1-41, 2020), what arose in their stories were appeals for present-focused and engaged support where emotion, turmoil, and sorrow could be weathered alongside the listener. Thus, safe care works within infrastructures of care to neutralize-not diminish, prevent, or fix-suicidality, and to hold it within a space of concern so that it may transform.