In this live‑style monologue, firearms instructor and Great Start Shooting School owner Brooke Cheney hosts her regular "Suicide Prevention Saturday" on YouTube. She frames the session around the theme of "darkness," using it as a metaphor for personal failure and trauma. Cheney explains why suicide prevention is central to reducing gun deaths, noting that about 60 % of firearm fatalities are suicides. She then shares a detailed, graphic personal history of childhood sexual abuse, bullying, rape, and ongoing mental‑health struggles, emphasizing how these experiences fostered compassion and a perspective that "the greater the darkness, the brighter the light must shine." She argues that failure is inevitable and necessary; not trying is worse than failing. Cheney offers practical advice—calling 911, texting suicide hotlines, or reaching out to crisis lines—and urges listeners to focus on personal growth, seek inspirational resources, and discuss suicide prevention when talking about gun violence. The talk concludes with encouragement to find one's purpose and a reminder that two‑thirds of gun deaths are suicides, positioning suicide prevention as a key component of gun‑death reduction.
Chapters
All right, it is 9 o'clock. So my name is Brooke Cheney, and tonight is Suicide Prevention Saturday on my YouTube channel. I can't put that because they won't let me do my, um, YouTube live thing because unfortunately YouTube has actually had some problems with a fair amount of live suicides. Um, unfortunately, obviously as soon as they happen and they realize it, they take them down.. But, um, so on— if you look for my talks, these Saturday night chats on YouTube, I have them as Saturday Night Mental Health Chats. So anyway, if you're looking for me on YouTube, you can also go to my Great Start Shooting School page. All right, sorry, I digress. All right, so who am I? My name is Brooke Cheney. I am a firearms instructor. I own a Great Start Shooting School. And I come every Saturday night because firearms deaths, every 2, as in 60% of all firearms deaths, are suicides. So anyone who wants to talk about lessening gun deaths needs to talk about suicide prevention, and I don't feel there's enough of that. So I come on every Saturday to talk about suicide prevention because of that. Um, so we chat about difficult things. Uh, some people have different questions that they ask me during the week. There's different things that come up for me. I think the reason I put darkness as our, uh, as my topic for today is because I kind of want to talk about failure and how important failure is in life in general. And I think that in our society, we seem to have a kind of skewed behavior around failure. We're embarrassed by it. We want to avoid it at all costs, and, uh, we just don't like it. It's like painful. We're not really thrilled with the whole idea of failure. So I am here to talk to you about how horrible life is and how miserable things are. And how much life sucks because it does and it's hard and it's easy to fail. However, I'm also here to remind you that if you are not failing, then that means you are not trying and that is worse than failing. But we don't do a good job of explaining that. So let me explain to you what an amazing— hey Charlie, how are you? Are you done editing yet? So, um, ah, see, yeah, see, I watch other people do lives. They're like, don't look at the, don't look at the chat, don't look at the chat, you'll lose your track of thought. And it's very true. It's very true. Um, all right. So failure sucks. Yes, it does. But if you're not failing, it means you're not trying. And if you're not trying, then that's worse than failing because you're not doing anything. And we as human beings need to produce and do things. So here's my sad, sad story. And all right, so I'm trying not to tell you this story to make you feel sad, and I'm not even sure it's a failure story entirely. So as a child— ah, if there's children in the room, this is where you want them to leave because this is not for kids. As a kid, I was molested in my own bedroom. We lived in a house that wasn't just my family, there were other people there as well. Then I was bullied at school, and that sucked, and I begged my parents to send me away, and they did. So I got away from sexual abuse, and I got away from the bullying. I got to my new school, I became one of the most popular kids there until that changed as well. And being popular all of a sudden, then rumors started, and then the next thing I know, I'm now being sexually assaulted by two of our upperclassmen in our, in our school. So out of the frying pan into the fire sort of situation. And then I came home from that, and that that summer or the next summer, it kind of blurs together. I was then getting raped by like 7 guys at the beach, and that kind of sucked as well. Now, I tell you this not to feel sorry for me, because in my world, these are events that occurred to me that make me who I am. I am not a victim, although I know a lot more about victimology now than I once did. But the whole thing of this is, is that horrible things happen, and the stories that make you the happiest are the ones that start out like that, that are like, wow, how do you deal with just one of those things versus all of those things, right? And you don't know somebody else's story and what they've already overcome. So for me all of those things happening to me helped me have compassion for other people. Because when I was a kid, the thing that got me through that was the fact that even though those things sound horrible, I know that there are people that had it worse than me. There are people who weren't getting fed every day. There were people who were getting beaten every day. There were people who just had no hope in life whatsoever. And when I was getting picked on, it was one of those things where I'm like, here's the deal, someone has always got it better than me and someone has always got it worse than me. So even though my story may be shocking to some, others might hear my story be like, that's nothing, I had cigar burns all up and down my back and my arms and everything else, and I was locked in the closet 7 days a week, or whatever. And so, I don't know, the darkness is always there. The greater the darkness, the brighter the light needs to shine. When you hear great stories, they come from adversarial situations. Really, forget about it, nothing good is going to happen in this person's life, or at least that's what it's set up to feel like. So the darkness is there, but the darkness is there to allow us to shine our lights. And the darkness is there because without the darkness, we cannot have the light. And it's really quite that simple. So I tell you the other part of the story simply because in theory, some folks could understand perhaps why from 14 on, I had suicidal thoughts. I had ways to kill myself. I had a plan to make sure it looked like an accident so no one in my family would ever know, in case there was life insurance in me, because, you know, I just wanted to make sure people were taken care of and didn't think that I was that selfish that I would take my own life. So there was that. Obviously I didn't do it, but yes, I had all those things. So if you are having challenges, call 911 here in Connecticut and 911 in general if you need to talk to someone. If you need to text someone because you don't want to talk to someone, just text suicide hotline on Google or Yahoo or somewhere, and there's someone that you can talk to. So for me, I'm actually on a, a call line, so I can get phone calls too. So you never know who you're going to be talking to. So that is my thing tonight: the darkness. Embrace the darkness, understanding that it's just challenging you to find your light and to make it better. Self-doubt— oh yeah, no doubt that there's always self-doubt. The most successful people in the world that you've ever seen, whoever's name that you know, whether it's— sorry, first thing comes to mind is Sheldon Cooper. But whether it's a great scientist like Einstein or a great leader like Ronald Reagan, and it doesn't matter whose name it is, Madonna, it depends on what age you are and what you follow. But it's like, Lots and lots of those people have amazing stories. Bonnie Raitt is one of mine, my favorite. Her favorite— my favorite album of hers was the last one she was planning on doing because she was failing. She was failing miserably and horribly. And once she got to the bottom of where she was really failing, then that's when everything turned around. So I know one of the sayings is, if you're going through hell 'Just keep on going.' I think that really works well for many situations. Uh, Robert Downey Jr., another one of my favorites as far as listening to his story and, um, having him share that. And there are so many. So no matter where you're at, a couple things: someone else has always got it worse, and yes, someone else always has it better. Focus on what is better, because if you aim at nothing, you are sure to hit it. Sorry, there were a lot of quotes that I posted today that are still running around in my brain. Um, no matter how bad it gets, yeah, it can still get worse, it's true, but don't focus on what can go bad. Focus on where you want to go. In race car driving, if you're spinning The thing is to look where you want to go, not at what you're trying to avoid. Because when you focus on what you're trying to avoid, that's where your focus goes, energy flows, right? We've all heard these things, or at least I hope you have. And if you haven't, then grab yourself some Dean Grazioso, some Tony Robbins, some Og Mandino, some of those things. They will help lift you up and grow you. Not your style, not your speed. There's other people out there. Just Google stuff that can feed your brain. And since there are no questions, I think I will end on that. Go look for something good that will make your light shine. Find out what your piece is and who resonates with you, because everyone is different and we all have different times in our lives that we need to reach out. So that is my Suicide Prevention Saturday for this evening. And any questions, as always, reach out or call, because I know you guys often do. Remember, 2 out of every 3 gun deaths are suicide. So if anyone talks to you about gun control, please tell them that they need to be talking about suicide prevention, because if we can save one gun death from suicide, imagine how many other suicidal deaths we could save. So that is my goal with Suicide Prevention Saturdays. So see y'all next Saturday. Have a great weekend.
