After Suicide Loss: Learning to Live in the Light

Through the trauma of her loss, guest author Lindsay shares how she made significant life changes to be able to embrace the light. Having recently gone through a similar process to change my life as I had previously known it, I empathize with Lindsay’s learnings and reflection. ~ Becky 

Learning to Live in the Light: 4 ½ Years After My Mother’s Death by Suicide

It is often said, people don’t start truly living until death is at their doorstep. When they are faced with the true reality of mortality, do they awaken and truly embrace the deeper meaning of life. Sadly, death did arrive at my doorstep on January 24, 2014 at 2 o’clock in the morning.

My two girls, just two-years-old and six months at the time, were sleeping soundly on an average Friday night. As were my husband and I. We were abruptly awoken out of a deep sleep by a ring of the doorbell. We opened the door to find a county Sheriff standing there. He explained that I needed to call the Virginia Beach police department and handed me an orange post-it note with a detective’s name on it. I have a master’s degree in social work, therefore, I knew from my professional experience that police do not ring your doorbell in the middle of the night unless there is a death or something along those lines. My mother, Carolyn, lived in Virginia Beach so I instantly connected it to her.

When the sheriff was talking to us at our front door, it was as if I was watching a movie of my own life, as if I was watching a horrible movie playing out. It was as if I had lived this very exact moment. I was having an out of body experience, where I was greater than anything physical. I was in true shock. It was as if I was reading the sheriff’s lips, but I couldn’t hear him. He was speaking to me, but all I heard was my own dialogue inside my head that my mother committed suicide. Ironically, the sheriff never said those words. The unbelievable part is that I always knew this day was coming, something in me knew this and I dreaded it so deeply to my core.

Before calling the detective in Virginia, I instantly called my sister in Chicago and brother in Texas to see what happened, to see if they had received the same arrival from the Sheriff at their door. Sadly, they did. It was confirmed that our mother, who was a mother of three children and four beautiful grandchildren had died by suicide.

My mother was dead because she chose death.

It was unbelievable and truly crushing to find this out. Words cannot describe the pure, intense emotion that accompanied this news. I couldn’t even cry. The pain was deeper than tears, deeper than words. My mother had been deceased for two days when she was found. Her primary cause of death was drowning but the secondary cause was an overdose on pharmaceutical, prescribed drugs. A note she left confirmed she had chosen to check out of this life, to commit suicide.

What Led Her To This?

To the outside world, my mother was an average woman. She didn’t look mentally ill, disheveled, super depressed, or any other way you would think someone who succeeded at completing suicide would look. She had a new house, a nice car, was super intelligent, had a dog, a beautiful family, and she was pretty and relatively healthy looking. None of those “outside” character traits were significant compared to her inner, deeper reality.

My mother experienced depression and ebbs and flows of dark and light times throughout her life. She dealt with trauma during her childhood, regrets from mistakes she made as a parent, divorce, the death of a spouse, financial stressors, and so much more darkness and negativity that overtook her at times. I have childhood memories of her dark periods, but also memories of her being a great mother. She was her own worst critic though, in her mind.

Where Do I Go From Here?

Immediately following my mother’s suicide, I went into a state of shock and business. I had to fly to Virginia Beach from Chicago and arranged for her cremation. We had to deal with her house, her things, and all that goes along with a death. Although, there was another layer. The suicide. It added a completely different layer.

But then there was also another layer. I had to deal with my mother’s suicide from a practitioner’s perspective. It was all so much to deal with.  I remember sitting in Virginia at her house, which was a previous crime scene, taking a break from all the “business,” pumping for breast milk because I still had an infant at home. It was truly unimaginable. My mother had just been at my house visiting not even 30 days prior for Christmas and it was great. There were no acute, obvious signs that my mom was planning to complete suicide. She was experiencing intermittent sadness and anxiety because of some issues at her job at a Church. She was taking low dose anti-anxiety medication from her doctor, but there was nothing that screamed that she would be ending her own life.

Balancing Grief as a Child and Professional

At the time of her death, professionally, I was a School Social Worker for a network of eight schools in some of the highest crime-high poverty areas of Chicago. Previously, I worked as a Social Work Lead in an in-home care facility for adults with severe and chronic mental illnesses. I worked as a Social Worker at a domestic violence shelter and rape crisis center. Simply put, I had dealt with trauma in the professional realm. I had dealt with the most significant cases. There was a day I came into work at the in-home care facility and one of my well-liked clients had just jumped out of a window and died – and that is just one small piece of the large puzzle of situations I encountered. I took this professional, business-like mentality to cope with the shock of my mother’s suicide. That’s all I knew how to do. But ironically, now I was the “client.”

Embracing the Light

I suppose this major life event was the catalyst for my change. My reason for embarking on this most profound spiritual journey inside myself. To successfully deal with this horrible situation and grow, I knew I needed to dig deep. I knew I need to take control of my life where my mom left off. I had to go inward, connect with the non-material world, process and feel my emotions, evolve from this horrible reality, and truly learn to live in the light. Not the dark—as my mom had so naturally often done. I knew I needed to learn to live and truly cope effectively. Primarily for my girls, but also for myself. I had to find peace and heal. I had to achieve true physical, emotional, and spiritual health to deal with her suicide death.

About a month after my mother’s suicide, I started to truly feel the reality and gravity of the situation. Life went back to normal. With suicide loss, people around you don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to say. So sadly, they say nothing at all. I was left to go on with normal life. I went into survival mode because I knew I had to be strong for my toddler and infant who relied on me, as well as my husband. I catapulted into a major shift. I had to change something—if I couldn’t change what happened to my mother, I could at least change the trajectory for myself and my family. We went to work on the aspects of our families’ lifestyle that were completely under our control. Searching for control of something—in a positive way.

In the months to follow, my husband and I started by changing our physical bodies through the way we ate. We transitioned to a plant-based, whole food diet. We cut out processed food. We detoxed from social media—Facebook, cable TV because all the commercials had pharmaceutical drug ads, and TV shows…because crime scene and detective shows brought me to a negative space of my mother’s suicide. I also did something all the literature tells you not to do after a traumatic loss. I literally cut off all my hair, and my husband and I moved 1300 miles to south Texas. I had to experience a true state change to fully be able to embark and deal with the traumatic loss of my mother’s suicide—in a warm sunny climate that was warmer than Chicago. I started practicing yoga, meditation, and read so many books on emotional growth and the self-care realm. I did a lot of hiking outdoors, as well as used music as a form of melodic therapy, and did so much more.

It was in Texas that I learned to live in the light. I had to learn to control my thoughts and my emotions and my behavior. I had to truly embrace my true purpose and to live this beautiful life that my mother chose to leave. I had to learn to deal with the most unproductive emotions, guilt and shame and darkness after my mother’s suicide. I resigned from my job as a School Social Worker when we moved and decided to raise my kids full time and focus on our health and wellness. I had to learn to live in the present moment and start from the core of my being if I wanted to survive and fully thrive after this major life event. Self-care, practicing gratitude for the gift of life and my family, being present and in the now, and overall conscious awareness helped me to live in the light. I had to learn how to incorporate a post-traumatic growth perspective.

My mother’s death has been life changing for me. I could write for hours about all the lessons I have learned or about the major spiritual insights and experiences I have had since her death. I know my mother is with me, in my soul. I am learning how to live in the light after she ended her life in such a dark way.

As my mother’s 59^th birthday is upon us, 4 ½ years after her suicide, I realize how much has changed inside of me. I am not perfect, I am not always happy or positive. I experience darkness, sadness, periods of self-doubt, guilt, anger, abandonment, and envy for others who have their mom. But every day, I work hard to live my best life. As one of my favorite authors, Bob Proctor writes, “you eliminate darkness when you turn on the light.”

I have learned through the dark times in my life, and I will only choose to live in the light. We cannot choose what happens to us, there are times in life when things will get dark—traumas, unfortunate situations will happen. But we can choose how we think and how we feel and the energy we choose to resonate in after something like this happens. I am choosing life.  I am choosing to live in the light.

I hope to live my best life possible; physically, emotionally, and spiritually, because I want to honor my mother. I want to learn from her mistakes and grow in the light.  I hope others can find solace and hope, that you too, can overcome and grow from a suicide loss tragedy. Although I hope nothing like this would ever happen to another family again, sadly it does. I hope all those left behind after this type of loss can learn to live in the light–to emerge from the darkness of suicide loss.

“Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you have to turn on the light”—Sogyal Rinpoche