A mother and daughter from Park Gate are fundraising to raise awareness of a charity to help prevent male suicide after a member of their family took his own life.
Jasmine and Jacqui with a photo of Matthew
Jacqui Couzens and daughter Jasmine Kenney have been raising funds for the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) in memory of Matthew Couzens who committed suicide aged 26 last September after suffering from depression for many years.
The pair wish to honour Jacqui’s brother’s memory.
While Jacqui held a Zumbathon, which raised £660, Jasmine has organised a music event at the Talking Heads for popular local acts to showcase their talents.
“As devastating as it was to lose him, we’ve turned a bad situation into a positive and strive to help as many other people with the same issues as we can,” said Jasmine, 16.
“It’s not recognised enough. People don’t understand suicide and why they do it. This charity is nice because it’s somewhere for them to go and it stops people feeling embarrassed about it.
Matt Couzens
“Matthew was always doing things for other people. He was one of the smiliest and funniest people I have ever met, and it’s so sad that deep down he didn’t feel as happy as he looked. Because he was very young, I could chat to him like a friend.
“We’ve held many charity events for the charity and have raised over £6,500 so far. It’s important to all of us.”
The event on June 30 at the Southampton venue will have artists DJ-Battre Diminuee, Eagle & Weeks, The Cramatics, Megan McRobbie and Goodnight Jonathan performing.
Jasmine has designed the tickets to include a yellow star, because it was Matthew’s favourite colour and he was interested in astronomy. The tickets, which cost £5 each, state the charity gig is in memory of Matthew.
Jacqui, 44, said there was an 18-year age gap between her and Matthew. Jacqui’s older and younger sisters were 17 and 19 when Matthew was born. But despite these age gaps, Jacqui said the girls and Matthew, who lived in Hill Head, had a “natural brother-sister relationship” and were great friends.
She added: “With him it was the contradiction of loving life and then withdrawing from it which is the confusing part. He was an energetic, real life-loving person. When he was up he loved mountain bikes and being active outside. He loved football.
Zumbathon
“When he plummeted he would just hide away because he didn’t want to burden other people with what he was going through.You could get properly swallowed up in the grief of it all and the why, and that still hurts obviously, but the focus of doing all of these activities honours his existence.
“And if that puts the word out there and helps just one more person and one more family not to suffer then that’s worth it.”
For tickets contact Jasmine at jasminefashionolivia@hotmail.co.uk or to donate click here.