Aaron’s story is why this exists. Be The One is what we’re building because of it.
Who Aaron Was
Artist. Hockey player. Brother. Son. Student. Someone who cared deeply and wanted his life to matter.
Aaron was funny, creative, deeply empathetic, and loving. He had a gift for making people feel seen. He dreamed of becoming a social worker because he wanted to help people who felt forgotten.
Before any diagnosis, hospital admission, or crisis, there was Aaron. A person with interests, relationships, hopes, and a future he was trying to find.
His Mental Health Journey
Content note: This section discusses mental illness, suicide attempts, and suicide loss without graphic details.
Aaron sought help over many years through inpatient psychiatric care, residential treatment, intensive outpatient therapy, partial hospitalization, medication management, and safety planning. He kept asking for help.
Seeking care
His journey involved repeated treatment transitions and contact with different programs and providers. His family worked to help him find care, connection, and a place where he felt understood.
2024: Crisis and justice-system involvement
During residential treatment in 2024, Aaron experienced a severe mental-health crisis involving psychosis and suicidal thoughts. His journey then crossed from mental-health care into the justice system. His mother continued advocating for his safety and treatment.
Aaron survived a suicide attempt that resulted in a serious traumatic brain injury. He survived, but his life was changed.
July 2025: Remembering Aaron
Aaron died by suicide in July 2025. He was 20 years old.
His death is part of his story. It is not the measure of his life.
In His Own Words
This space is reserved for selected words from Aaron’s journals, shared with care by his family. No excerpts are published here yet.
What We Wish Someone Had Seen
We share Aaron’s experience not to reduce it to one person, institution, or decision, but to ask what happens when no one can see the whole story.
These are the patterns we want people to look for, and the questions that guide the change we hope to help build:
- Repeated crises considered together, rather than as isolated events.
- Continuity across programs, providers, psychiatric care, and justice-system involvement.
- Family concerns and observations consistently heard and considered.
- Distress and behavioral symptoms understood in context, rather than viewed only as misconduct.
- Clear responsibility for follow-up after a crisis or treatment transition.
- Support for families navigating the transition to adulthood, alongside respect for a young adult’s autonomy.
- Handoffs that connect a vulnerable person to support, rather than leave them to begin again alone.
One emergency visit is not the whole story. One arrest is not the whole story. One psychiatric admission is not the whole story. The person living through them matters.
Why I Tell His Story
I do not tell Aaron’s story because I want him remembered for how he died. I tell it because I want him remembered for what his life can still change.
I was his person. I took him to appointments, searched for support, sat with him in the hardest moments, and loved him through every high and every devastating low.
I want people to see the person behind the diagnosis. I want young people to know that asking for help is strength, and that independence should not require isolation.
We can’t change what happened to Aaron. We can change what happens to the next Aaron.