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Students feel the Robb Nash energy

A buzz of excitement and energy fills Racette School as students make a huge line, waiting with cellphones and pens in hand to get a selfie and autographs from musician Robb Nash.
Musician Robb Nash was in St. Paul, Ashmont and Elk Point schools last week giving presentations aimed at suicide prevention, with students like Brianna Demoissac getting
Musician Robb Nash was in St. Paul, Ashmont and Elk Point schools last week giving presentations aimed at suicide prevention, with students like Brianna Demoissac getting autographs and selfies with him after the show.

A buzz of excitement and energy fills Racette School as students make a huge line, waiting with cellphones and pens in hand to get a selfie and autographs from musician Robb Nash. But in the centre of all the activity, Nash focuses all his attention on one student, holding her gaze and listening closely, as she talks and wipes her eyes.

After she finishes, he gives her a hug and the rest of the noise melts away for a moment. She walks away, her spot taken by yet more students rocked by Nash’s gripping account of his near-death accident, of overcoming thoughts of suicide, and making the most of his second chance by talking to kids about fighting through tough times to make their lives count.

“I’ll tell you the truth – I don’t know why I came here today,” said Nash, as he alternated between playing music, offering up jokes and impressions of Family Guy characters to more serious talk of self-harm, cutting, drugs and suicide. However, he said after every show, he gets a message from someone saying, “It felt like you were talking right to me . . . you came here for me.”

For Grade 9 Glen Avon student Sara Robinson, that was her feeling after listening to Nash’s presentation at Racette on Wednesday.

“I’ve been bullied most of my life; I’ve been down to the lowest I could ever be. I’ve been to where I’ve thought of suicide, or had things that beat me,” she said, adding she had always felt like she was too emotional, or a freak, and that emotion felt like a curse.

But during his presentation, Nash told the students out there that were struggling that their emotion and struggles might not be a curse, but rather a blessing.

“We hurt deeply, but we can tell when others are hurting,” he said, urging kids to fight through the times of pain because their story might help others. “If the pain doesn’t go away, neither does the strength.”

“It affected me because it showed me that it’s OK to help out people, it’s OK to be emotional,” said Robinson. “I feel it will possibly affect not just me but a lot of people around me that are down, or are just the ones getting bullied - I loved it, it was amazing.”

Nash began the morning by recounting his experience of being in a vehicle with friends, driving too fast on an icy road and colliding head-on with a semi. Nash was thrown onto the road, his skull shattered, and was pronounced dead, but medical intervention and surgery saw his vitals return and his skull put back together with steel.

In the months after his accident, he described wrestling with anger and bitterness and descending into thoughts of suicide. Losing loved ones along the way made him question why he survived.

“I feel so guilty. Why did I come back from the dead and not them? I don’t know why my heart kept beating and not them. I don’t know why I got a second chance,” he said, adding he remembered one day feeling that he wanted – needed – to do more, and how he screamed into the air, “I want to do something that matters.”

For Nash, that involved ripping up a record deal and channeling his music into holding the free anti-suicide presentations for kids. With his natural charisma, presentations that are equal parts humour, self-deprecation and motivation, and music fueled by heart-searing lyrics, hundreds of kids have opened up to Nash, giving him their suicide notes, razor blades or drugs.

“That’s 640 students with suicide notes in their pockets in their classroom,” he said, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. “We’re here to tell you it’s going to be OK.”

Students have shared their hard stories with him, and he in turn shares his advice with them.

“(I’m) like, ‘Guys! Get through this.’ Listen, if you’re going through hell, why would you stop there? If you’re going through hell, get through the other side, because someone on the other side needs your story.”

Nash reminded people that they weren’t here for themselves, but here for other people, and not to wait for the opportunity to make changes in their lives if they were unhappy.

“Let today be the breakthrough.”

The Robb Nash Project offers presentations and music for free, but the band receives sponsorship and support its cause. The four presentations held at Racette, Ashmont Secondary School, Regional High School and FG Miller received sponsorship from the Town of St. Paul FCSS, with contributions from the St. Paul & Area Interfaith Group and St. Paul Education Regional Division.

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