January 30, 2022, will forever be etched into the mind of April Simpkins.
She continues to grieve the loss of her daughter, Cheslie Kryst, who by all outside appearances had been living a perfect life. Cheslie was Miss USA in 2019, and she had recently landed a job as a correspondent for the news show Extra.
Her numerous fans and admirers were unaware that Cheslie was battling fiercely with depression, a mental health illness that afflicts millions of Americans. As Simpkins reflects on her daughter’s life, she perceives the toilsome burden depression had placed on Cheslie’s psyche, and she wants to sound the alarm so that others can recognize the signs of suicidality before it’s too late.
The result is a new book, By the Time You Read This, which Cheslie had been writing to recount her mental health journey. Her mother completed the story.
Doing so required Simpkins to understand her own emotions as a parent of someone who had died by suicide.
“Today, I’m feeling a four out of five emotionally, which is a good day,” she said during a recent interview. That was not true in the initial days after her daughter’s death. The overwhelming pain was suffocating and unbearable.
“I can remember my first trip back home after Cheslie’s death to comfort my remaining children,” Simpkins said. “I just wanted to be there for them. However, I couldn’t comfort myself. I couldn’t get myself together. I can remember just trying to inhale and exhale, because I felt like my body was shutting down.”
Those details remain vivid in her mind. “I just kept thinking to myself, ‘Is this what it feels like to die from a broken heart?’ I didn’t want to die; I just didn’t care if I did or not. And I just thought, ‘Is this what it feels like?’”
With help from family, friends and counseling, Simpkins began to create a life within her new level of normalcy. Her mission became focused on helping others who suffer with deep mental health issues. “Every day, there was a reason for me to push forward,” she explained.
The book began a key part of that journey.
“I had not initially intended to add anything to Cheslie’s writings,” Simpkins writes in the book. Cheslie had not been writing the book with her own passing in mind.
“She wrote it because she was going to go out and talk about it.”
“She wrote it because she was going to go out and talk about it,” her mother said. “When I read the manuscript after she passed, it was so obvious to me that she was opening up about what was going on in her head — what was going on emotionally, what were those thoughts behind the smile — that I knew it would resonate with others and lead me to pick up where she left off.”
Although the book won’t give Cheslie’s friends and admirers all the answers to why she took her life, it will bring a little closure, her mother believes. “There are still some questions when you read through Cheslie’s part of the story.”
By shining the light on this all-important subject, Simpkins hopes she can help others understand the importance of addressing mental health.
Simpkins is a woman of faith, which, she recognizes, guided her through the initial shock and grief process she experienced. She also found herself fortified by the memory of God’s many answers to her prayers when Cheslie previously tried to take her life.
“I vividly remember being in the hospital” she recalls, “praying, begging and pleading with God to just give me another chance — praying that he would give me more time with her, and he did. Who am I to put a clock on God? He gave me what I prayed for, which was more time with my baby. How could I not be grateful for that?”
Now, faced with a reality every parent dreads, Simpkins wants to find and spread peace.
“I have to find peace,” she said. “However, finding peace alone won’t erase the pain.”
Note: The national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 online and by dialing 988 on your phone.