War & Peace Quote by Judy Collins

Collins frames suicide not as a private rupture but as a public crime scene that history keeps re-staging. The first move is bluntly retrospective: “for many centuries” stretches the timeline until stigma looks less like an unfortunate misunderstanding and more like an inherited system. By calling suicides “criminals,” she evokes the old legal and religious punishments: bodies shamed, families disgraced, grief policed. That word choice matters because it exposes how much of today’s “recovery” still carries the logic of prosecution: suspicion, silence, a search for culpability.

Her second move is the real indictment: the “terrible legacy” is not simply attitudes, but methods. “Society’s method of handling suicide recovery” implies institutions and rituals that are supposed to help - hospitals, media narratives, even well-meaning conversations - yet often reproduce judgment. The subtext is that survivors and loved ones are asked to heal inside a culture that keeps treating their pain as evidence.

Then she pivots to spiritual language: “demons.” Coming from a musician rather than a clinician, it lands as emotional truth, not diagnosis. The demons are centuries of moral panic, taboo, and punitive reflexes that linger in the room whenever suicide is mentioned. “Fight off” is a call to action, and it’s communal: the “we” insists this isn’t just individual resilience; it’s cultural work. Collins, long associated with confessional songwriting and mental-health advocacy, is pushing listeners to recognize stigma as a historical artifact - and to stop mistaking it for inevitability.