Life & Mortality Quote by Judy Collins

Collins reaches for a deliberately blunt analogy: suicide as the new “cancer,” not because the experiences are identical, but because the social choreography around them is. Fifty years ago, cancer carried a hush of superstition and shame; families hid diagnoses, euphemisms did the talking, and silence passed for dignity. Collins argues suicide is still stuck in that era, treated less like a health crisis than a contagious taboo. The line works because it indicts the audience gently but unmistakably: “People don’t want to talk about it” isn’t an abstract complaint, it’s a description of how stigma is socially enforced - by avoidance, by the refusal to “know,” by fear dressed up as politeness.

Her real target is the fatalism that often surrounds suicide. “They don’t understand” suggests not only ignorance but a kind of moral misreading, where suffering gets interpreted as weakness, selfishness, or drama. Collins counters with a corrective that’s both compassionate and strategic: “medically treatable.” That phrasing is doing heavy lifting. It reframes suicidal ideation as a symptom with interventions, not a character verdict or an inevitable ending. It also nudges the conversation toward systems - access to care, diagnosis, prevention - rather than whisper-network grief after the fact.

As a musician who built a public identity around emotional candor, Collins is leveraging her platform to model a different etiquette: say the word, name the fear, shift the frame from shame to treatment. The subtext is urgency disguised as calm. Silence isn’t neutrality; it’s a barrier to survival.