Offering hope, comfort and support for survivors of suicide loss.
We all want a roadmap for grief. When will the pain end? When will I experience joy again? The reason a roadmap for grief does not exist, is because everyone's grief journey is different. A mother and father grieve for a lost child differently. A brother and sister grieve differently for a lost parent. Each one of us had a different relationship with the person we lost. To think that any one of us will follow the same path is unrealistic. ...
Change is never easy, and the worst kind of change is the change that you never even wanted. Beginning a new job is scary. Moving to a new location is scary. Starting your life over is scary. That is what happens the day you lose a loved one to suicide. Life as you know it has changed, and you are forced to begin a new chapter. A chapter that you never wanted to write, let alone live. For me, this was difficult to accept after losing my ...
Silence is golden. Have you heard this popular quote? While this quote is fairly popular, silence is something that our society is often not comfortable with. We assume that silence is a bad thing, often interrupting these quiet moments with conversation. I know all too well the feeling of isolation that follow a death by suicide. Friends and family stop calling as they report not knowing what to say. So instead, they just say nothing. I ...
Mourning the loss of a loved one to suicide is hard. Not just because it is unexpected, but because there is no manual telling us what is right and wrong. If we cry too often we feel we are stuck. If we don't cry enough, we feel like we are in denial. The thing about grief is that there is no manual; no right or wrong way. We all need to do what we need to do to get through the day. I often tell the people I work with that not thinking ...
I hear it all too often when speaking to survivors of a suicide loss. "I was doing so well" they will say, "and then I had a day where I couldn't help but cry." I am not sure why we think tears are a sign of weakness. Tears are similar to laughter; they are a way to express an emotion. A way to communicate that we have been deeply touched by a sound, smell, image or memory. They remind us that we are human. Crying does not mean that we ...
