A tragedy happened yesterday w the passing of singer & actress Coco Lee to suicide.
And in announcing that tragedy, & sharing openly – a very careful explanation – her two older sisters gave the world an important & selfless gift.
Candidly, before yesterday, other than knowing the movies she was in, I didn’t know much abt Coco Lee. Reading up on her, she tore down international barriers, before any other Chinese singer did.
She was the first Chinese singer to be signed by Sony Music globally & voiced the heroine Fa Mulan in the Mandarin version of Disney’s Mulan, on which she also sang the theme song.
In 2001, she sang “A Love Before Time,” the end-credit title song of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Music, Original Song.
Those were some of her big performance accomplishments, by 48. Impressive by any measure. But just as impressive is the message her sisters shared w the world, that’s on the next slide ➡️, when announcing her passing.
They shared that she’d been battling her MH for a long time. Had been going to treatment. They’d been TAKING her to treatment. And then in the end: “Sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her.”
This explanation is so important. It didn’t say “She took her life.” It didn’t say “She killer herself.” Both are ways we have heard this loss explained in the past. Instead, much like how we talk abt cancer, the sisters explained IT eventually got the best OF her.
This explanation reminds me of the Naomi Judd one – where her daughters were very outspoken. It was known Naomi fought (& even wrote abt) the ideations for YEARS before her passing. In Coco’s case, much like Naomi’s, would ppl who just “choose to take their life” fight for so long to get help NOT to die this way??
I hope these selfless explanations from fam members (much like the LIFE Saver families) help illuminate how often suicide is NOT simply a choice. It can get the best of us like any health ailment. Impulse error messages.
We must all fight to keep educating on prevention…but part of prevention is taking away the erroneous shame that comes w this word.