Carrying on with life as usual after the loss of my dad to suicide was one of the most difficult challenges I have faced.  I received four, I repeat four, days offs to mourn his death.  Luckily, I had accumulated a good amount of vacation days, that allowed me to take a full two weeks off to go back to Colorado to bury my father.  While I was surrounded by close friends and family in those first couple months, life still continued.  I was not the ...

Goodbyes are hard.  Goodbyes after a loss by suicide?  Even harder.  How can you say, "Goodbye" to someone that you never wanted to let go of?  Goodbyes occur at the end of something.  A conversation, a relationship, a season of our life.  There is a story behind the goodbye; a reason why we are saying it. One of the many aspects of suicide that make it so difficult is the fact that no why exists.  A story doesn't necessarily exist, and if it ...

I like to think about grief in phases, instead of stages.  To me, the first stage is when we are focused on the suicide itself.  How did this happen?  Why did this happen?  Each day you awake to the reality of the situation; your loved one is gone, and they are not going to come back.  It is a difficult time as you search for answers, search for meaning, and search for the ability to acknowledge the reality of the situation.  Then comes phase ...

In the aftermath of my father's death I heard time and time again, "You are so strong."  I didn't have the energy or ability to even think about these comments at the time.  I was in a daze, still trying to figure out what just happened in my world.  As the months passed, and the comments continued I remember thinking, "If you only knew."  I felt like a fraud.  Nobody saw the person I was when nobody was around, or could hear the voice in my ...