Healing After a Loved One's Suicide
Where do I start?
Know that you are not alone
Consider talking with other survivors. Talk openly about suicide with people who really understand. Join a support group.
Come to talk.
Come to listen.
Come to share your experience.
Come to support others.
Come to begin your healing.
The time required for healing cannot be neatly measured against any calendar.
Piece by piece, you begin to re-enter the world.
Yes, you can survive,
and even go beyond just surviving.
HALOS is a mutual support group meeting ON A REGULAR BASIS...
- creating space where one can authentically speak what's there for them and to listen to others to bring awareness that they are not alone
- sharing how individuals work through, and how they are stopped, by everything that comes up now after going through their experience
- providing compassionate support for individuals to fully take on their grief and loss and then move onto healing
Grieving after a suicide is complex
I have experienced a traumatic shock. It takes time to go through that. Then there's the devastation I experience in knowing my loved one will not come in through the door or talk with me over the phone ever again. Everything I experience now is not as it was before. And then there's a time of deep, intense sorrow. I miss my loved one immensely.
And the world moves on...
Sometimes there's anger that others can go on. How dare they? Do they understand what's happened?
And the world moves on...
Sometimes, wanting to help, someone says it's time to get back to normal. Do they understand that nothing is normal anymore? At some point, I will create a brand new normal.
And the world moves on...
Sometimes, concerned about making me sad, someone avoids saying my loved one's name or talking about memories that include them. Aren't they aware that I long to hear my loved one's name. Do they realize I want to know they have not been forgotten?
And the world moves on...
Sometimes I think what if... What if I had said this? What if I had come home earlier? What if I had done something differently. I must go through and ask myself all of these questions. It's necessary for me to work through everything...until I come to the realization that I cannot change what has happened. At some point, after working through all that I need to work through, I will accept that my loved one is no longer physically here with me. My loved one will forever be deep in my heart. I will realize that how they died does not define them. It was one moment in time. How they died has no meaning, unless I choose to make it mean something. It is their entire life that has meaning. At some point, I will realize that I have the choice of moving forward in my life. And that moving forward will not in any way diminish any of my love.
Peace takes courage. I request you start your journey now. You are not alone.
Depression strikes millions – indiscriminately.
Depression is simply a suppression of brain activity. It’s powerful, it’s constant, and it makes life unbearable. Its onset can be so subtle you don’t notice it. And even though depression is readily treatable, only one out of five sufferers ever seek treatment.
Why do so many just drag themselves along or eventually seek relief through suicide?
First, there’s the lack of awareness of depression – as an illness and as the threat that it is to each and every one of us. Second, there’s the unwarranted negative stigma attached to it. You know, the “mental” thing.
It’s time to collectively face depression. To know it’s an illness, not a weakness. And it’s a challenge that’s long overdue. It’s taken too many of us already.
- suicide awareness voices of education