After almost a decade, Tracey Wanganeen is resigning from her role as StandBy Support After Suicide coordinator.
Ms Wanganeen will begin a new role as site manager at Head to Health when the service opens in Mount Gambier.
Ms Wanganeen started her role at StandBy nine years ago after completing her final social work placement in palliative care.
“Up until then I had been quite avoidant with grief and loss, I did not feel like that was a field I wanted to go into, palliative care is such a privileged area to work in,” she said.
“I worked with an interdisciplinary team.
“It was a really great environment, and they were so supportive that I lost my fear of talking about death and grief.
“When the job for StandBy came up, I looked at it and thought I could probably do that, and I came out of the interview thinking this is exactly what I want to do.
“I did not really choose it, I fell into it in some way, and I have loved every moment of it.”
Ms Wanganeen looked forward to the challenge of her new role and assured the community the StandBy service remained fully available and responsive.
“I have loved every moment and the team of people that I work with,” she said.
“It is a great honour to work in that space, I am feeling very sad about actually leaving the role.
“I think it is such a true privilege to be with people in their grief, they allow you into that space and you do what you can.
“You know you cannot take the pain away, but you hope to be able to ease that in some way and help them to find hope in that loss and I think that has been a great privilege that I have had in this area.”
StandBy is a program of AnglicareSA and is a free client-centred service available to anyone who has been impacted by suicide at any time in their life.
“They can reach out to us and the first thing we will do is have a very gentle conversation with how they are at this moment, have they got supports around them and then we would offer to come into their home,” she said.
“We know we cannot take their pain away, but what we do is share our expertise about some of the strategies that can possibly help them, and then we look at other supports they might need ongoing.”
Each client also receives a bear knitted by two local women, who have knitted almost 800 bears between them.
“One of the knitters told me that before she gives me the bears, she hugs each one before she puts them in the bag, so we now tell people there is a hug in your bear,” Ms Wanganeen said.
Ms Wanganeen was proud she had promoted StandBy across the state as much as possible and said it was important to challenge the stigma around suicide and death.
“We do not do death very well in society,” she said.
“I think being able to talk about death in a way that is not so negative, of course it is always going to be sad, but let’s talk about it in a way of celebrating the life that people lived.
“I always say that around suicide, sometimes it is difficult for families to plan a funeral because they have that fear around the stigma of suicide, they do not want to mention it.
“But we do not have to focus on the way a person died, let’s focus on the life they lived, and funerals these days, yes, they are sad, but they can be such a nice life story.
“That’s what we need to focus on, so that when it comes to death, we can think about all the wonderful things of the life of that person and not just focus on the sad part of dying, but rather looking at the life that was lived.”
People wanting to reach out can contact Lifeline on 131 114 and Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
If you are bereaved or impacted by suicide, please contact StandBy Support After Suicide on 1300 727 247.
