In The Press
The Dark Pollyanna—Truth with a Twist
60 years in the trenches. Six losses by suicide before age 30. A survivor. A sparker of raw, real hope.
Biography At a Glance
Elaine Lindsay (“The Dark Pollyanna”) – speaker, mentor, author, podcaster (Suicide Zen Forgiveness), polymath, early adopter, digital integration specialist.
Practically died three times, lived through multiple MVAs, addiction, ideation, double-digit surgery chaos. Now speaks fluent contradiction: half suicidal ideation, half relentless hope.
Featured in Understanding Social Media, Interview with The Global Discussion Thinkers360 Top 100 in Mental Health 2024.
Latest Press & Interviews
“From Suicidal Ideation to Radical Optimism: The Birth of The Dark Pollyanna” — The Honest Talk, June 2, 2025
This personal essay reveals the dual reality: the undercurrent of suicidal ideation you lived with—unnamed, unspoken—counterbalanced by a stubborn optimism born from the “Glad Game” and rainbows on the wall from age five. It reads like a confession and a code for survival. Journalists need to know this as much as they need what you do next.
“I didn’t have a name for it … the constant undercurrent … what I now understand as suicidal ideation.”
“When Dark Humour Saves Your Life” — The Judy Croon Show
This radio style interview pairs sharp humor with deep compassion—your core. It demonstrates how dark humor can become a lifeline when life pushes you to the edge.– featured on The Judy Croon Show. Elaine shares her near‑death experiences with botched surgery, embracing humor amid trauma, and breaking stigma around suicide.
“50% suicidal ideation, 50% relentless hope.”
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Suicide Zen Forgiveness Podcast Guest Gallery
– More than 176 raw, unfiltered conversations with survivors who carry loss, ideation, and healing. This is the beating heart of the Suicide Zen Forgiveness Podcast—unpolished and essential.
“Elaine’s mission: End the silence, stigma, and shame around suicide, ideation, and mental health.”
Executive Bio & Speaking
Speaker | Podcast Host | Digital Legacy Pioneer | Keep Breathing™ Mentor | Emotional Strategist
Where ideation meets intention. Where survival becomes an art form.
Elaine, known in her public-facing work as The Dark Pollyanna, is a speaker, podcast host, and mentor who doesn’t just talk about survival; she embodies it.
With over five decades of lived experience navigating chronic suicidal ideation and more than 30 years in digital strategy, optimization, and online culture, she brings unmatched depth to conversations around mortality, memory, and meaning.
As a speaker, she is lucid, raw, and unforgettable. Her signature keynote, The Digital Remains™, explores the truth and texture of our digital legacy.
What we leave behind in the scrolls, scraps, and search results of our online lives. It’s not about vanity metrics, but intentional memory. What persists when we vanish? What story does our data tell?
Elaine is also the creator and host of a podcast that holds space for the hard conversations about staying alive, making meaning, and showing up when it would be easier to disappear.
Her voice is both balm and blade, cutting through pretense while offering profound permission to be as messy and magical as you are.
Through her Keep Breathing™ mentoring practice, Elaine works with individuals who live in the liminal; those still here, still hurting, still looking for a reason.
Her Surviving Yourself sessions combine mindset recalibration, trauma-aware meditation, and her original 17-Second Reset™, offering practical, soulful tools to interrupt the spiral and re-enter the moment.
Elaine does not offer healing. She offers tools. Language. Spaciousness. A flashlight in the dark.
Her work is for those who function well but feel hollow. For the ones still performing life while privately unraveling. For anyone who has ever wondered, “What remains when I don’t?”
Keynote & Signature Talks:
- The Digital Remains™ – A talk on digital mortality, legacy, and curating what lasts
- The Glad Game (Rewired) – A defiant reframing of joy through the lens of chronic ideation
- Surviving Yourself – An experiential workshop in mindset, meditation, and the 17-Second Reset™
- Topics: suicide awareness, mental health, trauma, resilience, digital storytelling.
- Signature keynote: The Digital Remains™ and Finely Tuned Chaos.
- Audience takeaways: messy hope, humor in trauma, stigma‑crushing stories.
Women Wisdom, Wellness, She’s the Change Conference, MoMondays, Google, Boston/Cambridge, Las Vegas, The Big Social Summit, Thinkers360 Top 100 Thought Leaders Mental Health 2024
Core Offerings
- Speaking (Keynotes, Panels,Podcasts)
- Podcast Hosting & Guest Conversations
- Keep Breathing™ 1:1 Mentoring
- Surviving Yourself Workshops
- Digital Legacy Strategy & Consulting
Vibe & Voice:
Radically honest.
Digitally fluent.
A velvet hammer for the soul.
Media Contact
Elaine Lindsay / The Dark Pollyanna
Email: elaine@thedarkpollyanna.com
Test me: +1-613-697-4990
Social & Useful Links
Social & Useful Links
Testimonials / Media Praise
Your powerful advocacy in mental health—your description of grief as “a train you board and ride for life” is one of the most resonant and truthful reflections I’ve come across. — SV
“Elaine doesn’t sugarcoat life—she serves up finely tuned chaos with a side of compassion.”
— The Judy Croon Show