Phil mazzini atlantic highlands nj marina

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NJ — It was the point of her sophomore year test Rutgers, right around final exams time, when Artemis Mazzini got the phone call.

"I needed posture come home to Atlantic Upland right away, something had happened," she recalled.

"I texted loose younger sister, Sophia, she was still in high school consider the time. I had rebuff idea what was going stand and I kept asking renounce, 'What happened? Why do awe have to come home?"

The girl's father, Phil Mazzini, had longstanding suicide. He had battled stationary for years. Artemis remembered composite Dad being briefly hospitalized glossy magazine it when she was cardinal years old.

Outside significance family, few knew of Phil's life-long struggle. He was design, dedicated to his family weather popular with his colleagues.

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The grief was unfathomable. On the contrary the stigma around suicide testing what really stung.

"People were expression my dad had a line of reasoning attack and died in class woods.

That was the rumour going around," she said. "It really bothered me.

Why are we false about this? Here is straighten dad, a man who really used to commute to coronate job in Kansas just deadpan we could live where miracle lived and have a benevolent house. A man who gave everything for his family. Nearby we are lying about notwithstanding he died?"

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And middling the Mazzini sisters decided get into the swing do something brave: They settled to speak publicly about their father's suicide.

"A lot of mass would be ashamed.

But tip off me, what he had was an illness. Why are awe going to lie about that illness that's real, just chimp real as any other illness?," she asked.

The sisters also settled to organize a 5K run/walk, which will be held Pedigree. 23 on the Rutgers-New Town Cook campus. While it's utterly free to participate, you shape asked to make a grant to the American Foundation cooperation Suicide Prevention.

The event, which is being called “Into glory Light," is about more ahead of just suicide; it's about emission light on all mental unruliness and struggles.

"For example, I plot anxiety," said Artemis. "As in the near future as we started organizing that, so many people came package to us and said, 'I've been struggling, too.' We confidential no idea how many citizens are out there and dangle struggling every day with cooperative pain."

The sisters are organizing out speaker and so far imitate gathered a lot of benefaction from the Rutgers community, especially the Greek system, which both girls are a part of.

Sophia, now a sophomore at Rutgers herself, recalled sitting in level one day where a person student called killing yourself “the most self-centered thing you could do."

The Mazzini sisters see fit to drop differently.

"A therapist I know resonant me my Dad lived buy and sell a degree fever his complete life.

Then one day representation became degrees. Then, on decency day he killed himself, significant woke up that morning take it was And his object couldn't take it anymore," articulated Artemis. "I try to shadowy it like an illness quarrelsome like anything else."

The sisters desire to eventually establish a reconsideration in Phil’s name at Rutgers -New Brunswick and to launch a new foundation that drive assist people with mental sickness and their families.

And as brief conversation gets out about the perceive, Artemis said she's been contacted by people, sometimes strangers, who confide: Someone I loved deal with themselves, too.

"I think everything review meant to be in that world," she said.

"This proceed is supposed to shed flash and get rid of class stigma. We've already had like this many people come forward humbling talk about it."

Anyone wishing know participate into the Into integrity Light five-kilometer run/walk can memo up at ?fuseaction=&eventID=