This program contains talk of mental illness and suicide that may be difficult to watch. Viewer discretion is advised. You can click on the player above to watch the full special.Susquehanna Valley mental health resourcesPennsylvania mental health support and referral helpline: 855-284-2494 (TTY: 724-631-5600)State crisis text line: text PA to 741741 York County: York Hospital Crisis Intervention Services, 717-851-5320Lancaster County: Lancaster County Crisis Intervention, 717-394-2631Dauphin County: Dauphin County Mental Health/Intellectual Disabilities Program, 717-232-7511TrueNorth Wellness Services, Emergency Crisis Support Services, 1-866-325-0339 or 717-637-7633.The War WithinMental illness has many faces. It takes on many forms. We all know someone living with mental illness — maybe it’s a friend, family member, or someone you don’t realize is struggling. Maybe it’s you. Members of the Kansas City community are opening up about their very private struggles in the hope of ending the shame of mental illness because no one should fight the war within alone. PIERSON Pierson Phillips grew up in Blue Springs, Missouri. He loved to talk, and as an only child, he learned early on how to engage adults in lively conversation. But what no one realized is the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy was carrying a pain that ran very deep. “Second grade is when we found out that he had thoughts of suicide,” Pierson’s mom Hilaire Phillips said. “They had an assignment where they did a self-portrait. They were learning about adjectives, and his adjective that he wrote was ‘complicated.’ Now, the teacher thought that was amazing—look at that really big word. I’m not an educator, but I knew enough to go, ‘Why are you complicated? Why do you feel that you are complicated?’ His response was ‘because nobody really gets me.’” Hilaire made an appointment for Pierson to speak with a psychologist. During their meeting, Pierson admitted to having thoughts of suicide. “Would never have known,” Hilaire said. “We made up a safety plan right then and there. I had to learn immediately how to have a conversation with him like, ‘Do you feel safe? Do you have a plan? Are you talking or thinking about killing yourself?’” As the Phillips processed Pierson’s mental health struggles — another diagnosis: Tourette syndrome, a disorder that can cause repetitive movements or vocal tics that can’t easily be controlled. “He’d been having issues," Hilaire said. "We’d been going to doctors for quite a while. I thought he started having these seizures from when the anxiety would get too much.” While doctors and Pierson’s parents searched for the right treatment, one thing did seem to help -- talking. Soon, the little boy who dreamed of being a TV commentator was asked to speak to a group of adults about his experience living with Tourette syndrome. “It was his thing. He wasn’t an athlete. He wanted to be on the debate team. He was so looking forward to that,” Hilaire said. “Speaking, it helped him for some reason. Made him feel better.” Soon, Pierson’s speeches about living with Tourette syndrome became speeches about his mental health. He was just 10 years old. “He was talking about what it was like to be a kid, here and now, living with these thoughts, living with depression and anxiety and suicidal thoughts. How different it is for them versus kids that grew up just ten years ago,” Hilaire said. “The 20-30 minutes that we thought he’d be up there ended up being a couple of hours. Women were standing up and asking questions and saying, ‘You know, I’ve been living with depression my whole life and I’ve never told anybody.’ There were so many people coming forward. He just kind of opened the floodgates for them.” Pierson was becoming a mental health advocate, and at the same time, his own journey was taking him down a dark path. The pain at times was so paralyzing, he thought he could never escape it. “He said when he felt that way, he couldn’t think about it. He loved us and it wasn’t about us. It wasn’t about his dad or myself. It wasn’t about us. It was about his pain and he just needed it to stop,” Hilaire said. “He was so clear about that. I can still picture him sitting there and telling me that. He was just so serious and to the point. Not a big deal. He just said it.” MACKENZIE NICOLE “At a point, I resigned myself and made peace with the fact that my life would be short and end with my killing myself.”Mackenzie Nicole grew up in Kansas City as a middle child with a standout talent—singing. Mackenzie’s father is the co-founder and CEO of Strange Music, the world’s most successful independent music label headquartered in Lee’s Summit. To many, Mackenzie looked like she had it all. But the supposedly happy little girl was hiding a dark secret. “The first time I remember contemplating suicide, I was six years old,” Mackenzie said. “I didn’t know there was a better for so long because I lived my entire life essentially in a less than desirable state. I just figured that, eventually, I would go on like that until, eventually, I took my own life.” She carried those painful thoughts through middle and high school, seeing no way out. “It feels like this unidentifiable monster that you’re trying to take stabs at or hit, and it’s this dreamlike quality that you’re never able to land a punch at it.” But on the outside, Mackenzie was an intelligent, talented young woman with so much promise and determination. She grew up surrounded by music, making her debut on Tech N9ne’s song “Demons” at nine years old. By 18, Mackenzie became the first pop artist signed to Strange Music. Singing to crowds was nothing new, but performing songs from her own album was. “Right before I went on stage, I remember my dad and Tech were like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, during that pause when you perform ‘Darkside,’ throw them some CDs.’ I was like, ‘Throw them CDs? What if they don’t like me?” Mackenzie laughed. “So I go over and pick them up and I hold one up and probably like 50 people are like, ‘Yeah!’ I was like, ‘You like me! Cool! You don’t hate me!” But off the stage and out of the limelight, Mackenzie’s mental illness was taking control, just months before her 19th birthday. “One of my best friends had to force me to go to a psychiatrist when I was in the middle of my mental breakdown because I had resigned myself to suicide," she said. "What was the point? Why would I spend a bunch of money to be told I might be fine? Like, I don’t plan to be. It doesn’t matter if you grew up in a good home. It doesn’t matter if you have a good job. It doesn’t matter what fortunes have benefited you. This is separate from all that. Mental health does not discriminate.” JASON “I really feel like my story is a happy one.” Jason Kander has held many roles in his life. He’s been a lawyer, a politician serving as both a state legislator and as Missouri secretary of state, a best-selling author, an activist, father and a soldier. Jason enlisted in the Army in 2001 following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was deployed to Afghanistan as a military intelligence officer. “In the Army, there’s a really necessary brainwashing that goes on, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way,” Jason said. “As soon as you start training, it is ground into you from day one that someone else has it tougher than you -- that everybody else has it tougher than you -- that this is nothing. And that’s actually really important, because when I look back and I think about the rooms that I walked into knowing the danger of going into those rooms if I didn’t feel like everybody else was doing harder stuff than me, that my friends were risking more and this was nothing, then I don't go into those rooms. And that diminishes the ability of the Army to do its job, right? "My combat was not the conventional thing you see in a John Wayne movie. I was fortunate," he said. "I didn’t have to take anybody’s life and I didn’t have bullets whizzing by my ear. For me, combat was sneaking around trying not to get kidnapped and being scared that I would.” After returning from deployment, Jason couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t relax. Something was wrong. “I heard someone say, ‘Either you deal with your trauma or your trauma deals with you.’ That’s really what happened to me. I avoided all these things as best I could. I worked like crazy, I would put off going to sleep because I never had a good night’s sleep.” With his mental state suffering, Jason tried to block out the pain and anxiety. By 2018, he had become a rising star in the Democratic Party and was considering a run for the presidency. “I was running all over the country getting ready to run for president, and, frankly, it was going pretty well. That’s the direction I was headed in -- and the overwhelming feeling I had was something is wrong,” he said. “I keynoted the biggest annual fundraiser of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. The year before me, it was Joe Biden. The year after me, it was Elizabeth Warren. It was on national TV and my parents watched it at home, and that really should have been a crescendo-amazing moment for me, and it felt good doing it. But I remember being really struck in the days that followed, I didn’t feel anything.” MACKENZIE NICOLE “In grade school, I made friends with this little boy. He was a few years younger than me. His name was Pierson,” Mackenzie Nicole said. “I would walk him to class every day because he was a little nervous.” Pierson's mom Hilaire said that meant so much.“She was not afraid to walk him down the hall full of middle schoolers and take care of him. She was kind to him and she had no reason to be,” Hilaire said. “He valued that in a person. Her song, ‘Actin’ Like You Know,’ was like his theme song.” As Mackenzie Nicole's first album hit the charts, something wasn’t right. “There’s this idea that somehow you brought this upon yourself,” Mackenzie said. “You were destined to feel this way. You deserve this. You’re supposed to be this way. That’s just not the truth. No one is supposed to be innately unhappy.” From the age of six, Mackenzie believed her life would end in suicide. She would continue through the pain until she no longer could. “I think that might be one of the hardest things to overcome when you’re in that space is how comfortable you get with the darkness.” At 18, Mackenzie found herself driving alone around Kansas City ready to give up her life and her fight against mental illness. “I just started sobbing. I just lost it. I just broke down, so I called my mom and told her, ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ I told her, ‘Yeah, I’m just warning you the expiration date is coming up, and I want you to be prepared when it happens because it’s going to happen and I don’t want to catch you off guard. I feel like I owe that to you.’ "And she said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘We gotta slow down. That’s not how this is going to happen. It’s just simply not.’ "All it took was that moment for me to realize that maybe there is another option. Like, maybe she’s right. And realizing as I said it out loud to someone I love so much, I realized how drastic it was. How serious it was, and that killing myself which I always felt destined to do was a big deal.” Slowly, and with new determination, Mackenzie began to face her demons and get answers as to what had been plaguing her for years. “You know, being diagnosed with bipolar I was the best news I’d ever received,” said Mackenzie. “I know being diagnosed with a severe mental illness sounds like horrible news, but for me, it was the first time this nameless, faceless beast had a face, and a name, and a kryptonite.” PIERSON In 2018, Pierson Phillips was navigating life as a middle school student. While balancing homework and friends, Pierson was also living with anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts at just 13 years old. “We don’t really know why he felt this way,” Pierson’s mom said. Hilaire said Pierson had been in therapy since elementary school. His family was determined there would be no stigma and no shame when it came to his mental health. The charismatic teenager even turned his own battle into a way to help others by speaking as a mental health advocate to groups across Missouri. But what no one knew — the therapy was no longer helping. Neither was the medication. Pierson was even able to convince his psychiatrist into believing he was doing better, when in truth, his will to live was almost gone. “I think the biggest shock for me was ‘How did you fool him?’" Hilaire said. “He completely talked his way out of that one, and I have no idea how. You’re supposed to trust the doctors when they tell you ‘I’m not concerned about this.’ I don’t need to worry. You want to hear that. You want to hear that they’re okay.” KING ISO He’s known to the world by the name King Iso -- a rap artist focused on breaking hip-hop stereotypes and ending the stigma surrounding mental health. The breakout song on his 2020 album “World War Me” is titled “Edicious,” which is suicide spelled backward. “Rather than wanting to kill myself, it’s more about killing that part off. A specific part of me," King Iso said.But before being signed to a label, before the fans and the music, King Iso was Tarrel Gulledge—a kid from the east coast growing up in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother served in the Navy. “She really, really stayed on her stuff. No matter what. We never really went without,” Tarrel said. “I never met my father. Not a day in my life did I know him.” Darkness and anxiety were part of Tarrel’s life from the start. “My mom told me as a baby, I always had an obsession with death," he said. "She said one day when I was like two years old, I went and laid in the middle of the street trying to get hit by a car.” His internal hurt intensifying as a young child when Tarrel says he was molested by a family member. “I was a little bit young, nine or ten,” Tarrel said. “I ended up being touched by one of my relatives, so that really messed me up. At the time, I was an A+ student, always on the honor roll. Once I got out of sixth grade, it all started going downhill.” Tarrel was searching for a sense of self to understand where he came from -- something he says his siblings didn’t understand. “They knew their dads,” he said. “They had who they could look in the mirror and see where they get all their stuff from and then identify with. I was the middle child and felt like an outcast. I never had anyone where I was like, ‘That’s my hero. That’s who I’m going to be like.’ That made me get involved in the streets, hanging out with the wrong people. I found a father in gang banging.” By high school, Tarrel’s internal pain was starting to show on the outside. A classmate noticed he had been harming himself. “One day, she comes and sits down at my lunch table and she grabs my arm as says ‘What is that?’ I choked up. First of all, ‘cause I like her and she doesn’t even know I like her,” Tarrel said. “She tears off a piece of notebook paper and she’s like, ‘Well, here’s my number. Why don’t you call me so we can talk about it? It’s going to be alright.’ I loved her since that moment.” But that spark of hope, compassion and understanding would end up being extinguished too soon. “I cut on the news and she had gotten murdered,” he said. “That right there sent me into a spiraling depression. A couple months after that was my first suicide attempt. I popped a bunch of pills. I called my friends and said ‘It’s over.’ "That phone call probably saved my life because they called everybody. They got me to the hospital. I ended up being admitted after that," he said. "That was like the beginning of it.”PIERSON “He was screaming at me, ‘Mom, I need to go talk to someone,” said Hilaire Phillips. “I had been trying to get him an appointment since November. I have emails and everything, trying to reach them any way I could to get an appointment."She got one scheduled."It was for ten days after he died," he said. Jan. 21, 2019, started as an ordinary Sunday. “He was on the couch with me,” Hilaire said. “He put his head in my lap. I just remember that’s what we would do. He was just so depressed. I asked him about trust, there was something about trust. He wouldn’t respond verbally. I said, ‘Pierson, you can trust me.’ He just shook his head no. That was the strangest thing because that was the first time he’d ever done that. "The last thing I said to my son was, ‘I love you no matter what. There’s nothing that you could ever do or say that would make me not love you ever.’ He just kind of looked at me and shook his head. "I left him to do what he was doing, never ever suspecting anything. I hear this noise and I don’t know what it is. It’s this loud noise,” Hilaire said. “It sounded like something fell, and I was like, ‘Oh, I am not cleaning that up.’ I hear my husband scream my name and I knew immediately what had happened. Immediately. "It’s difficult to make that call and to tell 911. My husband wouldn’t let me in the room. I saw my son, but I didn’t get to see him. I just remember thinking I’m so glad the last thing I said to my son was that I loved him. All he left was…he typed up a note to me saying, ‘I love you.’ That was it.” MACKENZIE NICOLE“I was sitting in my cubicle at work one day, and I saw his mom had DM’d me and asked if there was any way they could get tickets for my upcoming concert,” Mackenzie Nicole said. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, we can work something out.’ I clicked on her profile to see how Pierson was doing, and I saw the memorial post. It had just happened the night before. "I know, you know what I mean? I get it. Like, how it happened to him. It was almost me,” she said, holding back tears. “It made me really realize why I couldn’t end up there and why it was so important for me to take a different path than the one he ended up on.” HILAIRE “I’ve never had thoughts in my life ever until after my son died. Now, I understand how he felt when he talked about the pain,” Hilaire Phillips said. “I don’t know how he battled that for as long as he did. It is hard.” Hilaire spent the year after her son Pierson’s suicide in a blur. Then, COVID-19 brought everything to a halt. “I definitely went into a depression,” Hilaire said. “But I was also forced to face the fact that my son was no longer with us. That he was no alive. He was not coming back. And I hadn’t had to do that.” Hilaire owns Bloom Hair Salon in Independence, Missouri. In the midst of the pandemic, she said the possibility of never reopening felt unbearable. “The thought of losing the salon, which my son was such a big part of, that’s what got me. That’s what tipped me over the edge. It’s the moment when (I thought), ‘I’m done. I can’t do this. I want to die. I can’t handle this anymore.’” Hilaire knew she needed help. She reached out to find her will to live, which mean learning to live without her son. “I had to face a lot of things and I’m not always happy about having to do it, but I realize I can do it,” Hilaire said. “I really did work hard on coming to terms with the fact that he’s not there anymore.” Hilaire is not alone in her struggles, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has claimed over half a million American lives and changed everything we used to know. “People have lost their coping skills,” said Dr. Todd Hill, a psychiatrist at North Kansas City Hospital. “I don’t blame them. We all have our different ways of coping with grief and loss, and people are witnessing loss around them on a daily basis.” Hill said mental illness reached epidemic proportions years before COVID-19. It’s gotten worse during the pandemic, affecting young adults the most. “We’re really seeing it in the younger adults,” Hill said. “Anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. One in four young adults have contemplated suicide, and in the general population, one in 10.” He said communication goes a long way. “I think we need to talk to our kids, our college-aged kids and younger adults about suicide. Ask them about it. Keep in touch with their emotions. You may think you know your kid well, but they’re bottling up a lot, and they’re not coping with it. "I’m encouraging people to talk about this,” Hill said. “Talk about it in a constructive manner rather than a destructive manner. Instead of all doom and gloom, let’s talk about where we are and where you want to be despite the pandemic. You can be successful. You can survive within this pandemic, but it’s a matter of having that mindset.” MACKENZIE NICOLE For Mackenzie Nicole, the pandemic has been difficult mentally and physically. She tested positive for COVID-19 in the fall of 2020. “I’d say the worst thing for me was the breathing,” Mackenzie said. “My lungs are still pretty messed up from it. I couldn’t speak in full sentences because I would get winded.” Her mental health struggles also intensified. “So right now you caught me at an odd time,” Mackenzie said. “When I got the email that we needed to do this interview, I felt bad because I couldn’t report back with ‘I’ve really handled everything really well. I’m well-adjusted and functional right now,’ because I’m not. "I picked up 86 habits. If anyone is bipolar, then they know. They immediately hit a wall, hit a major depressive episode. Horrible. Thought, ‘this is going terribly.’ Started to climb back up and then kept hitting a wall every month or so. "In December of 2020, I hit a real downward spiral and my psychiatrist diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder. Immediately, I entered into a partial hospitalization program at the psychiatric hospital and ended up in another program—DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy program, that I’m in the middle of doing. I’m about halfway through. "I guess it’s a lifelong process,” Mackenzie said. “You never get to a stopping point on that because people are living documents.” TARREL “This is when the mental health stuff starts, ‘cause at this point, everything is in shambles.” At 17 years old, Tarrel was deep in his battle with mental illness — running the streets and homeless. Tarrel spent time in and out of jail and solitary confinement. “They called it ‘iso.’ The name on the door, I-S-O. ” he said. “It was a 23-hour lockdown. I got out one hour a day to take a shower and call my mom. "They called me 'Iso.' They called me 'Iso' every day. I was like, 'If I gotta be called this every day, I need to make a positive out of this.'” Tarrel’s life began changing within that cell. “I started thinking positive thoughts about everything,” he said. “OK, so I got to see these three letters, 'I-S-O.' I shall overcome. I shall overcome. So, every time I left my cell and came back, I’d say to myself ‘I shall overcome.’ Everything that I’m going through, this whole ordeal. When I get out, I may be homeless, but I shall overcome it all. And that’s what became my artist name.” Tarrel was becoming 'King Iso.' He started writing music and searching for a label to give him a chance. “I would record and I would use this wi-fi system that was in the mechanic shop next door. I would upload songs just talking about my life and talking about stuff I was going through,” he said. “It generated a buzz and people were like, ‘Ooh.’ Bing bang boom, fast forward all of that and people like Tech N9ne started hearing about me. Here I am.” JASON “I was at the end of the line of being able to function.” Once considered the future of the Democratic party, Jason Kander was considering a run for the White House in 2018. At the same time, the trauma he experienced as a soldier in Afghanistan was silently taking over. Something had to change. “That’s when I decided I’m going to go home and I’m going to get help from the VA and I’m going to run for mayor,” Jason said. “I was seeking some sort of redemption and felt if I can go home to this town that I love so much and work for my neighbors exclusively, then maybe that will be redeeming and I’ll feel better.” He traded dreams of the presidency with becoming the next mayor of Kansas City. “We were probably going to win, and not by a little. So, that should’ve felt great,” Jason said. “It was 99 days and one of them was good. Frankly, that was the day I visited the Veterans Community Project for a tour. Every other day just didn’t feel good. And my nightmares were getting worse. Everything about it was getting worse.” It finally became too much. Eleven years after leaving Afghanistan, Jason dropped out of the mayoral race to deal with his PTSD.In a Facebook post, he wrote: “…I found out that we were going to raise more money than any Kansas City mayoral campaign ever has in a single quarter. But instead of celebrating that accomplishment, I found myself on the phone with the VA Veterans Crisis Line, tearfully conceding that, yes, I have had suicidal thoughts. And it wasn’t the first time.” “I sat down with a clinical social worker at the VA,” Jason said. “She asked me, ‘Why did you go so long feeling like you didn’t earn this? You were out for hours at a time, virtually by yourself. Did anyone know where you were?’ Well, no. "‘So you were in the most dangerous place on the planet, doing a dangerous thing, and you had no possibility of anyone coming to back you up if things went badly.’ I said, ‘When you explain it that way, it actually sounds quite dramatic.’ "When they actually diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress, in a way that was freeing because it was ‘Oh, now I can start working on this. Now I understand what this is.’” TARREL“I shut down for a little bit. I think we all kind of had a slight moment when ‘I’m in the house anyway. No internet, nothing. I just kinda want to sit here.’ "But I say all that to say there’s a silver lining in all that, because I feel like a lot of people were forced to look in the mirror,” Tarrel said. “That’s something I got out of sobriety. I’m two months sober.” COVID-19 had one positive outcome for Tarrel. It forced him to re-evaluate the way he had been living. “I started reading more. I started reading a lot more. I’m a glutton for knowledge,” he said. “I feel like those are things I lost with from always moving around. I learned how to draw inspiration from anything, even in those dark times.” The rapper said he draws a lot of inspiration from his fans. Their emotional connection runs deep. “This is Tarrel you’re getting right here, this isn’t King Iso. I took a chance. I rolled the die putting Tarrel in music, and I feel like that’s probably why they accepted it more. This isn’t some character he’s made, he’s literally talking about his life and him as a person.” He addresses mental health at every concert as King Iso, finding strength with the fans who are going through the same thing. “When I do these shows, I seen them all in the crowd,” he said. “They’re all looking at me. They’re all waiting for me to talk to them by the merchandise booth when we’re done. I hear story after story. A girl came up to me and said, ‘I had a plan to kill myself after this show, but your last song made me change my mind. I just want to thank you.’ She clenched me. I haven’t been hugged that hard my entire life, and I didn’t want to let go of her. "I’ll go backstage and cry. Everybody is out there drinking and partying, I have to step away. I have to readjust myself.” The strength and hope he gives his fans, Tarrel said they give back to him tenfold. “I could be having the worst day ever, and somebody will write me or comment on an Instagram post or something and it’ll be a paragraph,” he said. “Something so beautiful like, ‘I keep going for you, I keep fighting for you, and make sure you keep fighting for us. I love you and if you haven’t heard it today, you’re an amazing person and you matter.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, let me get up. Let me clean this house up. Let me get myself together and do what I need to do.'” Tarrel is preparing to drop his next King Iso album. He also became a father for the third time in 2021. He is still sober. JASON His political career on pause, Jason Kander has found a new role at Kansas City’s Veterans Community Project. “Twenty-two veterans a day take their lives, and I’m just really lucky I’m not one of them,” he said. “I’m excited to see what I can do now, and what I get to do.” While there’s no cure for his PTSD, he said seeking help to manage his anxiety and depression has made a big difference. “Being able to feel emotions again, and be able to operate in a way that’s not exhausting, and to get a good night’s sleep--they’re really great. And once you do it, it’s like being able to see in color again.” Jason continues his work at the Veterans Community Project, which is dedicated to ending veteran homelessness. The organization is expanding nationwide. Jason is leading the charge. MACKENZIE NICOLE The music studio is a sacred space for Mackenzie Nicole. Her introspective album, “Mystic,” documents the mental health struggles that almost took her life. “It says ‘my heart is a magnet for cupid’s arrow and poison darts.’ To me, that is the most important line of the album,” Mackenzie said. “Because what that means when I wrote it, and when I perform it now, when I sing it in my car. I’m so sensitive and I’m so vulnerable. Human emotionality is a beautiful thing, but it also made me susceptible to the darkness, to the poison darts.” Every song tells a part of her story. “When I made ‘Mystic,’ I was at a point where I thought I was worth nothing. My experiences were worth nothing, and nothing I made was worth anything. All of a sudden, I had this thing in my hands that I loved, that I created. I realized if I can make something good, maybe I’m good. "I’m not there yet, but I’m trying," she said. "You don’t get a prize at the end of your life. You don’t get a gold medal or star sticker for accepting no help. Rejecting help on principle is one of the most foolish things you can do, because no one at the end of your life is going to congratulate you for making yourself suffer. If anything, that’s the least noble thing you can do.” Mackenzie Nicole is continuing therapy for bipolar I disorder and borderline personality disorder. She is still recovering from COVID-19. She is back in the studio working on her next album. HILAIRE “I still don’t know how I get up every day and do anything.” Nothing will ever replace her son, Pierson. Hilaire Phillips is working to make sure he and other suicide victims are never forgotten. “We say they lived, they were loved and they matter. They still matter,” Hilaire said. “It’s present tense.” The Pierson Project is a nonprofit group dedicated to ending the stigma and shame surrounding suicide and mental illness, carrying on Pierson’s legacy of helping others in need. “He was not ashamed of who he was," she said. "It was just a part of who he was, just like anybody else.” Hilaire is back working in her salon. She is also the executive director of The Pierson Project. Hilaire and her husband are considering becoming foster parents.