Offering hope, comfort and support for survivors of suicide loss.
In past posts, I have written about secondary loss, the additional losses faced in the aftermath of a suicide loss. The loss of additional friends and family members can make you feel alone as you fight the biggest battle of your life; learning to live without the person you lost. It is difficult to not become bitter, resenting the world around you. In my own experience, I have found that the people we lose were often not as supportive and ...
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 ...
After the fog lifts and the finality of your loved one's death sets in, many struggle with the belief that they have become depressed. We live in a society that expects someone to "get over it" quicker than we are capable. I see many survivors of a suicide loss criticize themselves for not moving forward in the allotted time that those around them expect, leading them to question whether they have become depressed. Even clinicians who are not ...
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 ...
This week, we welcome guest blogger Katherine Sargent to our site. Katherine talks about the many innuendos in society that cause a great deal of pain for survivors of a suicide loss. I know that I personally cringe when I see and hear them used in a joking matter. Thank you Katherine for speaking up, and helping educate society on what is and what isn't ok.
This blog title is very deep and may even elicit a response like, “Why would ...
