Survivors of Suicide: Healthy Ways to Grieve and Heal
“The best piece of advice I got was, ‘Once you accept that many, if not most, of your questions will never be answered, you can start to move forward.’”
Twenty-three years ago, I was twenty-three years old. If my present life is a sphere, it is split into two hemispheres: one before my partner committed suicide, the other afterward.
I was, as I say, twenty-three. She was a little older, at twenty-seven. A young life lost, tragic and seemingly senseless, gone in a decisive instant.
For those reading this that are also survivors of suicide, whether it is the loss of someone close to you, or you’ve escaped an attempt on your own life, know that you are not alone. There are no judgments here, no criticisms, no fault to find or blame to place.
In the intervening two-plus decades, I have experienced countless emotions, thoughts, reflections, regrets and losses, as well as victories, successes, lessons and blessings. A lifetime, really, compressed into the aftershock, grief and reconciliation of the kind of death that leaves so many lost for words, drifting in uncertainty, wracked by relentless self-interrogations...
“What did I miss?”
“Were there signs?”
“Was there anything I could have done?”
“Can I live a normal life again?”
“Will it ever be okay to say goodbye?”
You flick through these thoughts like the petals of a pinwheel, aimless because the only person who might have anything resembling an answer, is the deceased. Regardless of your religious conviction, spiritual cleaving, or the absence of such things, you find yourself haunted, the spirits ranging from anguished to ecstatic in your devastated mind.
But there will be healing, friend. I promise you this. To what degree? I cannot say. Completely? Not guaranteed. If we love someone enough to miss them when they go, it only makes sense that their absence would leave a sizable mark in time and space, a jagged callus upon our hearts.
The healing can begin when we have properly mourned, felt what we must, from head to toe. The only way out is through, as the old saying goes, and facing the loss while finding ways to love ourselves, hold ourselves, heal ourselves, is the first step on the path that lies ahead.
Of course, we had hoped that they would be with us on this path and, depending on what we believe as individuals, why can’t this still be possible? Who says we can’t bring some part of them along as we carry on? If you and the departed were seemingly inseparable, why act as though that has to change?
Much like funerals are for the living, memorials are for survivors. Here are a handful of ways we can pay tribute to those we’ve lost, to seek healing in collective hope.
Journaling
They matter, but so do you. Tell your story. Writing down what fills the mind is as timeless as breath, as sleep, as love. There are countless kinds of journals and journaling exercises; one of the most well known and often recommended by mental health practitioners is “gratitude journaling.” Write down a small number —expanded as long as you wish in the descriptions— of things you are grateful for, at the close of the day. Maybe it’s the last thing you ate, maybe a snatch of music reverberating in your head, or the departed themselves, appearing to occupy your attention. Whatever the focus, the intention should be on thankfulness, appreciation and the ways in which each thing enriched you. If you leave something out by accident or simply forget it until the following day, you’re still ahead of the game: make that item Number One for tomorrow evening.
Other types of journals may serve as workbooks for projects, to hammer ideas into shape, build outlines, or plot out what needs time and care to finish properly. A journal can become a blueprint or a canvas; your intention is the necessary tool.
Meditation & Prayer
Religious faith and spiritual consciousness can be very fine things, and there are long, storied traditions of praying and meditating in these arenas. However, neither is necessary for someone seeking reflection, solace or centeredness in the storm of waking life.
There are countless guides about these practices, going from millennia past to right this moment, documented in print, spoken traditions or binary code, like the humming pages of this very website. Indulge your mind, immerse your heart, think deeply or not at all. Very few activities are as personal or profound as reaching for the numinous, or swimming inward to touch the sublime.
When contemplating my partner and dealing with the nearly suffocating mixture of emotions that bubbled up, a simple, zen-like practice on shutting out noise and simply addressing her by name, wherever I was, became a regular prayer. I would hope she had finally found a peace in death she could never grasp in life, and the simple truth of that frame was strong enough to fill with colors, textures, sounds and images until I was nearly hollow. I gave her what flowed into me, each time it grew too vast to contain.
A Living Tribute
They cared about just as many things as we do, right? Animals and children and fairness and compassion. Nostalgia and imagined worlds and songs we know by heart. When you know how much it hurts to lose a playmate in the sandbox of life, you realize that others may never even meet one of their own. Become one, reach beyond your comfort zone. That single soul we love so dearly, gone from our physical presence, lives on within us, and can, like the metaphorical candle, light other flames without losing its own burning shine. Which brings us to...
I work in mental health right now, after many years in the trenches of lived experience and my own personal battles of recovery and mental illness. We think of those we’ve lost, and how the world that never met them could have been affected or inspired by their presence. They may be gone from our everyday lives, but we were changed by having known them, having loved them, and having come to miss them so.
Allow them to live through you, in word and deed, thought and action. Be a conduit, a humming string, a warm persistent breath breathed into the living lungs of those around you. Far more than any network, we are a webwork, and our mutual connections are what make this one certain life a diamond too precious for any jewelry box, its luster enhanced by the many hands it passes through.
Suicide is tragic and strange, a riddle with either zero or infinite answers, depending on our individual perspectives and factors both within and beyond our senses. Coming to terms with the loss can seem impossible and inevitable, sometimes all at once. Shed one tear or sob out an ocean; it’s a topic as myriad as the motives of its victims.
One thing I believe we can peacefully agree on, is that a life lost prematurely deserves reflection and respect. Maybe the one who died felt they had no other choice, or we ourselves were driven to an extreme by forces we had no way of rationally grappling with. Whatever the circumstances, for those of us that woke up today, the flames that extinguished themselves left marks on us. We can take healing strides by understanding that we all burn for a brief moment, and that the great unknown is far less frightening when we gather together for the collective healing of our hearts.
