A year ago, I took a walk that changed my life. It was a picture perfect spring day. The sunny, blue-skied kind of afternoon that makes you want to play hooky. I wasn’t playing hooky, though. I was working. In fact, I was doing an interview. Agreeing to go on that siz-mile walk was the only way I could get Hoppie’s owner Danielle Marshman Williamson to fit me in.

For Danielle, six miles was nothing. She was working up to 18 – because in two months time she’d be walking that distance in a fundraising walk in Boston called the Out of the Darkness Overnight. Sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the dusk ‘til dawn walk raises money for suicide prevention and to provide services and support for survivors of suicide loss.

“Survivors of suicide loss” is the term used to describe people who have lost a loved one to suicide.

In other words, people like Danielle.

In 2001, her dad, Dan Marshman, took his own life. In the years following his death, she struggled to come to terms with his suicide. It was only after attending an AFSP conference in 2004, that she finally began to heal. The organization – and this cause – is very near and dear to her heart.