My mother told my brother the same bedtime story for years. It was a tale of heroes and miracles and second chances. It involved a dramatic rescue. And like the best stories told to children, my baby brother -- nearly 16 years younger than me -- had the starring role.

Even though my brother Usman had been born full-term, he stopped breathing within hours of his birth when his vocal cords collapsed. A Life Flight helicopter flew him from a suburban hospital to the major medical center in Houston.

Doctors performed a tracheostomy, inserting a tube that allowed air to pass directly into his lungs. They also cut a long, vertical incision across his belly to insert a feeding tube directly into his stomach. Mom began telling him this story when he was so young that he never questioned his scars growing up.

Clearly, the doctors were the heroes in this retelling of events.

Or were they?

While they performed life-saving operations on my newborn brother, they also delivered crushing news. The head surgeon talked to my mom when Usman was in recovery. She explained that they had run several tests, and that Usman would never eat, talk or breathe on his own. My mother stared at her, unable to accept what she had heard.

“What chance does he have of having a normal life?” she asked.

The surgeon delivered a blow. “In medical terms, we shouldn’t say there’s a zero percent chance,” she said, “but in my opinion, there’s no chance.” She advised my mother to learn sign language so she would be able to communicate with her son as he grew up.

For a month, my mom stayed in the hospital with my brother as he recovered, and she asked every doctor and nurse who came by what she could do to heal her child. She also prayed incessantly. One doctor gave her some advice, completely off the record. She said not to tell anyone what she was sharing with her. She suggested covering his trach for just a second at a time, multiple times during the day. Maybe, over time, it would help strengthen his vocal cords and epiglottis.

That was all my mother needed to hear. Even though Usman came home with machines and tubes to keep him alive, she worked with him every day using this unconventional therapy based on a brief conversation.

Four months later, she took him to the ear, nose and throat specialist for a follow-up. She insisted he could breathe on his own, and asked the doctor to remove the trach from Usman’s neck. The doctor was willing to try. They put Usman under anesthesia and removed the plastic tube from his windpipe.

Usman started gasping and choking and turning blue shortly after, and they immediately reinserted it.

The attempt to remove it was a failure.

My mother was devastated, but undeterred. She kept doing her exercises with him, praying that she would one day hear her son’s voice. Three months later, she was back in the ENT’s office, pleading for another chance. Her baby could breathe on his own, she said. The doctor was hesitant and reminded her of the failed procedure a few months earlier.

There’s a stubborn, persistent streak in my family, and, God bless him, the doctor relented to my mom’s will.

Usman, 8 months old at the time, went into surgery dependent on a suction device and humidifier to keep his airways clear.

He woke up breathing on his own.

He told me recently that he wonders what went through our mom’s mind when she took it upon herself to keep trying to fix something doctors had told her was unfixable. In her version of the story she told him all those years, she is never the hero.

“You were going to die,” she would tell him, as early as kindergarten. “The doctors saved you.”

And faith. And prayers. And a mother’s love.

My mom would tell him that he was going to pay that forward one day.

Last week, we watched Usman walk across the stage at Kent State University and become a doctor himself. He will start his residency in July.

“It was more than just me graduating,” he said. “It was all of us. There were definitely some miracles that got me here.”

Twenty-seven years later, an old story has a new beginning.

I forced myself to watch Netfix’s hit series “13 Reasons Why,” even though I knew it would dredge up decades-old, unsettling memories.

Nearly every tween and teen has either watched or heard about the graphic and controversial show, in which a teenage girl is raped by a popular classmate and commits suicide. She leaves behind 13 cassette tapes, each one dedicated to a person she implicates in her death.

My junior year of high school, three students committed suicide. I remember hearing the details of how each one of them died, the shock and questions afterward. The aftermath of a friend’s suicide is nothing like the revenge fantasy that unfolds in the series.

School districts across the country have sent warnings and letters to parents about the problematic ways the show portrays suicide. One Colorado school district, grieving the deaths of seven students who have committed suicide, briefly pulled the book upon which the series is based from its libraries.

Nearly every parent I spoke to about the series confessed that their child had seen it without their permission. Some had forbidden their kids from watching it, but discovered later that they’d watched it anyway.

So, what should a parent say to a tween or teen about the show, especially if they aren’t interested in watching it themselves?

For answers, I talked to two experts -- Jane Smith, director of Life Crisis Services at St. Louis-based mental health counseling agency Provident, and Marian McCord, executive director of the CHADS Coalition (Communities Healing Adolescent Depression and Suicide) -- along with researching tip sheets from various suicide prevention programs. Here are 13 things parents can say to their kids when trying to mitigate some of the potentially harmful messages in this series:

1. If you come to us with thoughts of self-harm, depression or anxiety, we will respond calmly. We will not freak out. We will listen and help.

2. If you have ever self-harmed or been a victim of sexual abuse or assault, or have had suicidal thoughts, the show can trigger those painful feelings and thoughts. If you start having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-273-8255.

3. If you or someone you know is dealing with the trauma of a sexual assault, there is also a National Sexual Assault hotline: 1-800-656-4673. It’s important to talk to a trusted adult about it.

4. A friend’s suicide is never the fault of surviving friends or loved ones.

5. Unlike the character in this show, people don’t get justice or revenge against bullies after they’ve killed themselves. That’s fantasy, not reality.

6. The teens on the show often made a mistake or bad situation worse by lying and keeping it secret. That never solves a big problem.

7. If you turn to an adult, in your school or elsewhere, who discounts or minimizes your story of bullying or abuse, there’s another adult out there who will listen and try to help. Keep trying until you find that person.

8. If a friend expresses suicidal thoughts to you, immediately tell an adult. It is not a betrayal. You might be saving someone’s life.

9. The main character on the show is the victim of false rumors that damage her reputation at school. This feels completely isolating, but lots of people have rumors spread about them at some point in their lives. Many of us have gotten through it, and we can help you do the same.

10. Depression and other mental illness can be treated with therapy, medication or both. There are also millions of people who suffer trauma and survive and live healthy, normal lives despite it.

11. A person who commits suicide doesn’t continue having a relationship with people once they are dead.

12. The sooner a person reaches out for help, whether for themselves or a friend, the better. It might take a few tries to find the right counselor.

13. It’s common to feel a lot of anger, frustration and anxiety about difficult situations you might face growing up. Mental health workers are reporting epidemic levels of anxiety and stress among kids. But suicide is never the answer.

It can be scary to talk to young people about suicide. If they’ve already watched this series, though, they’ve only seen a Hollywood treatment of this important issue.

They need a reality-based discussion, too.

Sharon Wildey spends holidays, especially this one, calling mothers whose phones won’t ring otherwise.

She knows how painful that can be. Personal experience has led Wildey to self-publish two books about parental abandonment, which is when an adult child cuts off ties from a parent for seemingly inexplicable reasons.

In the first book, “Abandoned Parents: The Devil’s Dilemma -- The Causes and Consequences of Adult Children Abandoning Their Parents,” she sought to validate the trauma felt by parents who experience this. There’s no data on how widespread an issue it is, but there’s an increasing number of support groups online devoted to the problem. Wildey’s Facebook page for abandoned parents has 5,000 followers, and she also moderates a Yahoo group with over 300 members who share their heartache with one another.

“This is a global problem of adult children simply walking away,” she said.

Outsiders who have never experienced such a situation have a hard time believing grown children can simply walk away without legitimate reasons, such as abuse.

“They are just so sure that it is something you have done,” said Cathy Brandt, 69, who lives in Huntington, Virginia, and helps run another Facebook support group for estranged parents.

But Wildey says that 95 percent of the parents who turn to her for advice say that they tried their best as parents, provided a loving and good upbringing for their child, and cannot understand why they have been cut off. Her second book offers a path toward healing from the overwhelming grief she has experienced firsthand.

Wildey had a child die of cystic fibrosis, which was devastating, but she says the pain of losing her other adult children to estrangement has been even worse.

“We are talking about horrendous grief,” she said, which most parents are too ashamed or embarrassed to discuss with their friends. There are abandoned parents who still drive by their children’s houses or search for ways to contact them once they’ve been cut off.

Brandt says her daughter has blocked her on Facebook and ceased contact with her more than four years ago. They share a mutual friend on Facebook, who tries to sneak Brandt pictures of her daughter and keep her updated on her whereabouts.

For years, Brandt beat herself up about the lost relationship. She talked to several therapists and read dozens of books on the topic, hoping for a reconciliation.

“Now, I am trying to reconcile myself that I will probably die with this unresolved,” she said. “I will probably die without my child being there. I have to prepare myself for that.”

That can be too bleak an outcome for others in her situation to accept. And some psychologists recommend that estranged parents continue to try to find ways to reach out to a child, even if they have been blocked from phones and social media accounts. Sometimes, there are grievances from childhood that need to be acknowledged in order to repair the broken bond, even if the reaction seems out of proportion to the perceived parental failings.

Wildey takes exception to this advice. She talks about the injury that comes from this type of repeated rejection from one’s own child: It takes a serious toll on physical and emotional health. And she believes that a parent’s persistent, unwanted outreach can also hurt an adult child who has decided to cut off ties. She advises parents to try to heal their own wounds first, so they can be healthy if their child decides to reconcile.

While she offers strategies to cope with this kind of grief, she says, “There are no magic answers. What I’m talking about is lessening the pain. It’s not ever going to go away.”

So, she makes a point to spend special days that will trigger that pain with others who need her comfort.

She picks up the phone and calls.