In the fourth grade, my mother attempted suicide.
I could not have articulated it this way at the time. I was a child. But I remember trying to make sense of something that felt impossible to understand. How could life become so painful that a person would no longer want to keep trying?
That question did not leave me.
It followed me into my first career in HR, where I watched talented people disengage from their work and their lives for reasons no performance plan could address. It followed me into graduate school and clinical practice, where I sat with people who were not broken. They were overwhelmed by the demands of being human.
It followed me into doctoral research, where I am still trying to build a more rigorous answer to it.
The question
What helps people keep engaging with life when life becomes difficult?
The pattern
People were not always broken. Many were simply underdeveloped in the capacities life was asking them to use.
The shift
Instead of only asking how to reduce discomfort, RaQuel’s work asks how people develop the ability to meet reality with more skill, courage, and clarity.
