After Fiancé's Suicide, Local Writer Starts Magazine To Help Others Heal

Bruce Schwartz•

For Jenna Faccenda, the darkness descended last Nov. 6, the afternoon she found her fiancé with his head down at the kitchen table, dead of a gunshot wound by his own hand.

"I was in complete and utter shock,” says Faccenda, a 2012 North Penn graduate who now lives in Manayunk. "I talked to him on the phone only an hour ago. He told me he was going to get dinner for us.”

By her account, the months following his suicide were a fog of anxiety and depression. "Everything that mattered to me before didn't matter anymore,” she says. "I moved in with my friend because I couldn't be alone.” Sleep was fitful, life was mechanical, and tears would flow and stop.

Then, gradually, she rediscovered her passion — and a new purpose.

Faccenda has founded Eclipse Lit, a nonprofit literary magazine backed by CultureWorks, a 501(c)(3) creative community agency in Philadelphia. Eclipse Lit magazine’s stated mission is to be an escape valve, "the saving place” for artists facing life traumas.

Each issue will have a themed topic. Theme of the first issue, now in production, will be "Sorrow.” All proceeds will benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

"This project has been a huge part of my healing process,” Faccenda says. "Writing has been the only thing I was able to hold onto after he died. And now that I have found my way back to myself, it gives me hope to be able to help others.”

She, her fiancé and her son were living in Quakertown at the time of the suicide. Faccenda had just picked her son up from school and returned home when they found him. (She withholds his identity "out of respect for his family.”)

"I immediately got my son out of the house and sat with him outside until the cops came,” she recalls. "I talked with ambulances and cops and called family for hours, (but) it was as if I was watching myself do things. I wasn't present in the moment. I remember apologizing to my son over and over again.”

She took off work, had her son spend more time with his father, and moved in with a friend. "I remember waking up with unbearable anxiety. Every morning at 5 a.m., I would be sitting in her living room in the dark,” she says. "Mostly during these times I would just write. I would write my dreams, my thoughts, just anything to make the anxiety go away. And when it finally did and i could breathe, it would be then replaced with numbness and eventually tears.”

She says she always enjoyed writing — her full-time job is in publishing — and slowly it dawned on her that putting emotions to paper could light her path back.

"I started to think about what my purpose really is in this life,” Faccenda says. "I started thinking about how I could turn this darkness that has been shadowing me into something good and memorable.

"I also wanted to do something in memory of him — for him,” she says. "His life meant so much more than to be forgotten.”

Eclipse Lit— the name signifying momentary darkness before reemerging sunlight — "has been a huge part of my healing process,” she says. "Writing has been the only thing I was able to hold onto after he died, and now that I have found my way back to myself, it gives me hope to be able to help others.

"I strongly believe that this magazine will not only start conversations, but will give a safe space and voice for artists, and will really help organizations … dedicated to helping traumatic situations,” Faccenda says. "I want this magazine to show people that they are not alone in this darkness, and they can, and will, find the light through the help of others.”

Eclipse Lit is currently accepting poetry, prose and art submissions for the first issue, at [email protected] (the subject line should be "Category Submission,” and include bio info and a short query letter explaining the work).

And the magazine is seeking donations to help fund startup operating costs "so that we can achieve our future goals,” she says. "This will help us bring our organization to life by paying for our printer, designer, housing costs and website.”

Donations can be made through https://eclipselit.wedid.it/campaigns/8108. For more information, visit www.eclipselit.org.

For now, Faccenda says, "I have found my passions again. I am writing and working and running a business. I have traveled and will continue to do so. And I am having fun with my son. The grief still comes in waves, and sometimes it feels like I am drowning again, but I am learning that this is a part of my life.”