The Power to Heal.

This is a repost of an article originally published in February 2022.

By now, the story of Cheslie Kryst – the trailblazing young Black entertainment journalist, attorney, and 2019 winner of the Miss USA pageant – has received wide coverage as the most recent death by suicide that we have learned about within the past month (Regina King’s son Ian Alexander, Jr., MARTA CEO Jeffrey Parker, and Hyattsville, Maryland Mayor Kevin Ward). I hesitated to write about Kryst’s death out of sensitivity for her life as a public figure. (She was in an industry whose shadow side consists of heavy demands, competition, and objectification while people are alive.) Some media reports described Kryst’s death as a “jump” from The Orion building in New York. Others described it as a “leap” or a “fall.” Some offered context for her life and others reported the simple facts; that she had left a note and that her final post on Instagram wished followers “rest and peace.” The details were painful to read in that they were not part of some fiction story. They are part of our lived experience.

Since 2020, we have experienced loss in unprecedented ways. It has been sudden and, in many times, distant. It has been elusive and digitized. Back when the pandemic started, a friend told me that her mother, aged 90 or so, had commented on not having ever experienced something like it. Loss, these days, has been by accident, on purpose, shrouded in shame or boldly unrelenting. But that is what it has always been, though. What has been slowly changing is the language around life and death. We are seeing more public conversations about the human experience of being here and how we choose to experience and define the here and now. 

I visited Cheslie Kryst’s Instagram page for a glimpse of her public image – a combination of photoshoots, red carpet interviews with celebrities, and beauty tips. Just days before her death, she posted a recent interview with Denzel Washington during which she asks a great question: “If you had a super hero power in real life, what would it be? What would you want?” Washington responds: “The power to heal.” There is laughter between them as he jokingly offers up a name for his super hero: Heal Man. There is something very cathartic in imagining ourselves with super powers or tapping into some external super power. Washington’s joke is rooted in a powerful truth, though. We each have the capacity to go within (or beyond) to access the healing power within us. What that power looks like is different for each of us. What does it look like to you? What would you like for it to look like? Perhaps it may take time to discover or uncover. But it is there. The lives of those that we have lost have made a profound impact on us. May you continue to experience love and tap into yourself in the unique way that you can. 

Here are a few resources that are immediately available as support:

• Music
• Deep breathing
• A pen and paper to write your thoughts and feelings
• CDC Mental Health Toolkit

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