Judy Collins . . . singer/songwriter and author. Ms. Collins adds Sanity & Grace:  A Journey of Suicide, Survival, and Strength to her growing list of books. In the year she celebrated her 44th year of recording, Ms. Collins had 40 albums including a number with gold and platinum status, top-ten hits, and Grammy nominations to her credit. Her film “Antonia: A Portrait of a Woman” received an Academy Award nomination. She has started her own recording label, Wildflower Records, which features her own work and that of others.

3:07

Judy Collins first charmed the world with her music in 1959.  Her annual live performances stretch over four and a half decades and her walls remind one of a lifetime of gold and platinum hits. So how does she think of herself?  As a storyteller.

High on the list of stories Judy Collins wants to tell is that of suicide -- her own failed attempts and her son’s tragic success. She wants to break the taboo she says prevents people from talking about suicide.  The taboo, she found, makes the tragedy of suicide even worse. Any loss of a loved one is very difficult, of course, but she says in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the guilt, shame and horror that survivors of suicide experience make the experience quite different. When her son killed himself, she was astonished by the secrecy.

The challenge of mental, physical and emotional health and growth, Judy Collins believes, is how one answers the question, “How do you take a situation that’s happened in your life and make it work for you, instead of against you?”   Her own answer, looking hard at suicide, includes reaching out to other people who have lost loved ones to suicide or have considered suicide themselves.

In addition to simply listening to friends and acquaintances, she also is writing about suicide, challenging the secrecy by telling her own stories. It’s her way of helping us all come to terms with what she knows is very hard -- we have to learn to live life on life’s own terms.

So, Ms. Collins is embracing what she believes is a natural progression -- coming into a kind of renaissance of experience in her sixties, she says. It’s the time to begin to teach other people, as she is teaching her granddaughter.  (She’s delighted that her granddaughter loves singing with her, floored that the youngster knows all the words to all her songs.) It’s also a time of real appreciation and she’s eager for others to join her in putting what they know to work. Give the flavor of experience to one’s art, she counsels. She feels very lucky -- privileged, in fact -- to feel that way about her newest recordings, with more to come.

Luck is good, but don’t forget she was raised and trained as an interpretive musician to maintain her instrument, keep up her practicing, not tear her voice apart or lose her ability to play.  Living these lessons has allowed her to reach new heights, she says, as she sees others doing.

Shun the idea of “retirement,” she says, horrified by the thought of shutting down when you’re just about at the age when you can actually do some good. Teach.  Relate what is there in your life.  Share good ideas that might be done in easier ways than the way you did them. Judy Collins did. She started her own record company, “Wildflower Records,” which has given her the chance to reissue much of her life’s work while giving a boost to others, including the great, but largely forgotten musician, Jimmy Norman.  (“Wildflower” released his “Little Pieces” in 2004.)

All told, Judy Collins is hard at work living her belief: Change yourself, and you change the world.

[This Program was recorded August 6, 2004, in New York, New York, US.]