Resources on Changing Grief, Embracing Hope after Suicide

Life continues to evolve 2 years after the loss of my child. Here are a few ways I've changed and some resources for hope.

1.      Redefining. I don’t know who I am in the world. I feel lost, abandoned, and sometimes without purpose. I know it’s important for me to find that passion I once held for animals and people in need. I am far from apathetic about issues I encounter. In fact, after 2 years  into my loss and just a few months of losing my big sister, I can barely cope with events or circumstances I feel are tragic. I believe we who grieve experience a heightened state of fear and sensitivity until we are able to release it. Aside from becoming more emotional and sensitive, I feel as if I will return to being functional and even happy one day. So, I don’t push myself. Even if a child or family member moves away, or your heart suffers from an empty nest, we must redefine ourselves and many times over our lifetimes. Where do we start and how do we keep up the momentum or hope? Life takes work. Brain training takes on many forms and it has helped me move from my Emotional mind to my Logical mind.

2.     Purpose. As stated above, I find difficulty in choosing how to live a meaningful and purpose-driven life as I used to. For some reason, I now equate my previous passion and determination with my loss, as if I lived and functioned only for my daughter. This is simply not true. I have other family members and friends I care deeply for. But, when I’m alone and especially when I’m sad or nostalgic, the feeling of loss and lack of purpose arises quickly. An example of this change is times in which I look at old photos, even of me as a child. I wonder what it was all for if the end result would be a lifetime of pain lies ahead. I will never truly heal from my daughter’s suicide but I have learned to live with the pain. I can control my reactions better, now and hope to see the light.

3.     Stuff. In reflecting on purpose and passion, I see around my home the items, trinkets, memories, ashes…of people who I have lost. In a surge of strength and a desire to remove my surrounding memorabilia of the lost, I want to create space that is solely mine, or at least honors the living or helps me remind myself that it’s okay to create a “new me” instead of walking into every room of my house and seeing constant reminders of them. I have not created this space because, frankly, I’m afraid to. I feel guilty and overwhelmed with their Stuff. I don’t want to focus on it while redefining myself in the world. I believe that transition will come in time. I want to know it's okay. 

4.      Loneliness. I feel lonely a lot of the time. I miss the days when my home was filled with kids, friends, and family. I used to become abandoned in the first year of loss. I was lonely, the phone stopped ringing, my daughter’s friends moved on as they should. I realize now that I miss my daughter and sister. I don’t mind being alone most of the time. I know when a wave of grief is coming by my search to bond with others. The paradox is that life now is about a new me and strengthening my role as a mother of a son, a friend, and so on. I do miss my friends and my daughter and sister’s friends but I now recognize that the loneliness is the loss, not the lack of social interaction. Social interaction, I believe, is paramount in keeping busy and feeling useful in this time. Empathy has proven to heal us. I believe I must keep going.

5.     Cry. I help myself to cry when I am alone, feel grief and have the privacy to mourn. I learned not to dive so deeply into the depths of question after question about my family members’ passing. In doing so, I have learned how to avoid. If the pain is with me, I try to make myself cry, and feel that it helps me release pain. Choosing time to grieve and when not to fall in too deeply is a helpful tool.

6.      Friendship. My friendships and the dynamics of the many friends of my daughter have changed. Some  of my friends have been suffering for quite a while with their own issues after my daughter’s passing.  I no longer feel as if they need to pick up the phone first or take care of me. I simply need to reach out more and be more social. When friends confide in me, I am useful, I have meaning, I am needed. It’s hard for people to confide in me because they say they feel as if my pain is “bigger” than their issues so they feel as if they should not reach out. Reach out.

7.      Presence. The pain I carry today and the thread I’ve heard expressed by others who have lost close loved ones dissipates in moments in which I can be Present. When I feel alone or lost, when I feel depressed or in pain, I distract myself if the time or place is not conducive to a good cry. Loss like this will never heal completely. But, focusing on the Now is all there is. Do not confuse being Present to mean that we don’t remember. It’s okay to enjoy company and walk into the bathroom to cry or take a moment if needed. It’s okay to cry at a party. But, if you can look into another human’s eyes and just Be, the love you feel for them heals.

8.     Guilt. I believe almost all parents feel guilty about a child’s passing. I believe that once we own that guilt (although it’s almost never the fault of the parents or others who feel that they should have done more), we can move forward a step. The guilt will stay until I choose for it not to. Whatever doesn’t serve me must pass. Guilt is a barrier that I have not overcome yet. According to many books and testimonies, guilt is the most damaging and greatest barrier to overcome.

      If you or someone you know are thinking of suicide, 

text HELLO to 741741 or call the National Suicide Hotline 

1-800-273-8255. Please Stay.

9.    Thoughts. For 2 years, I could not pick up a book to concentrate. I can’t always remember people’s names. I think the most opposite and intrusive thoughts I have never had. I hear of stories of mothers who don’t talk to or want their daughters and I see moms and daughters in stores together and I feel jealous. I envy them. I have not experienced envy in the past. Now, the intrusive thoughts have shifted away from question after question about what I did wrong and they will shift again. I tell my Self to be happy for them as I used to be. This takes work. I can’t remember a lifetime of stories at the moment. I know this too will change slowly. I believe that in my case, medication for depression is helping me through and I feel okay about taking it until I feel I can cope better.

The goal in my life is to fulfill my own needs of belonging, presence, expressing my grief, and climbing out of despair that leads to guilt and shame. I hope the links in this writing will help others. I want to talk about my daughter’s and my sister’s wild, free, funny, endearing personalities and to tell stories about them. I also want to hear stories of people others have lost. One day, I hope to tell more stories to remind myself of the beautiful years I spent with them. The key word is hope.

Suicide, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Grief

I carried my coat and cake into room 239 on the last night of class. Placing the cake among the faculty and student contributions, I listened to the professor talk about her cousin who passed on. She told some interesting stories to the class in the past but this time, she spoke of a medium at her place of work. She spoke of listening to the medium’s encounter with a young man who hung himself. The medium told the family member, “He didn’t mean to do it.”

I hunched in the middle of a Master’s class and still standing, I sobbed. I wondered if that story was for me. I thought it must be. I wanted to know if Taylor meant to do it. She would normally persevere and I just asked through sobs, “I wonder if my daughter meant to do it.” No one really knew what to say and I didn’t need for anyone to say or do anything. They mostly ignored probably the professor’s and my story and query into the deep.

How could this be any worse? In suicide prevention trainings, they show video footage of people who attempted suicide, failed, and stated that the second they made the decision to end their lives, they changed their minds.

Maybe Taylor’s Borderline Personality Disorder took over and the abuse from the man and the lack of my presence and the psychosis added up and Taylor literally lost sense. Would it have happened continuously?  Would she have had children? Would she have suffered for her entire life? Did she mean to do it?

Brain training is sold in all forms and sorts through meditation, medication to get your mind right so that you CAN meditate or run, bike, write, draw, talk to a counselor…there’s so much I know now that I didn’t know about before she left. We could have learned together. It’s been just over 2 years now and I’m still bargaining. BUT, I trained my brain for a while to stop slipping so deeply into the questions, doubts, physical pain and psychological damage. I just used a skill from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to put a “STOP” to myself when I wanted to share stories about why it was my fault and why I couldn’t think straight enough to have her funeral cards made with a photo of her that she wasn’t eventually cremated in. Suicide is sickening.

Thoughts of suicide pervaded throughout the most difficult of my days. I chose to call around until I could find someone home to talk to me through it, talk to me while I was laying knees to chest bawling. A friend talked to me one night about a tool used in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and as a matter of fact, DBT is the only treatment known to help Borderline Personality Disorder. There’s no medicine, no cure, nothing but exposing yourself as a raw, frightened, confused person in pain. It is possible to work through. It is hard to reach out. But, we must or we leave a hole in the souls of too many people who blame themselves. I will never be okay without her.

My friend shared one possible solution, a thought even that helped me change course when the pain was like hemorrhaging her body and soul from mine. Grief is too much, sometimes. Grief is lonely and my friend taught me how to help myself. When I thought of taking my life, she said I used my Emotional mind. She told me to think with my Logical mind to decide if suicide would be a good decision.  I don’t share my daughter’s disability so I was able to be brought out of the core of my despair.

I did not choose not to suicide because I wanted to stay. I chose to stay because I have a son who I love as much as my daughter. I didn’t “think” he needed me, I mean look at what I did to his sister. I killed her. Of course, logically I had to know that I was not responsible wholly for her suicide. Emotion vs. Logic. A feeling vs. a thought. I chose to stay for my parents and sister who I walked to heaven. Carla asked me to take care of her as she slowly died. I stayed for my fiancé who stands with me now and loves me through the betrayal of my wanting, for a time to leave him behind in this world.

If you or someone you love is thinking of suicide, call or chat online 24/7 to 1-800-273-2855 or text Hello to 741741.

I’m back at the beginning. I’m back to the people who wanted to kill themselves to escape their pain and who decided not to. My reality at the moment is a silent depression, one for which I saw a doctor, am taking medication, and will eventually pull away from. I’m taking the steps. I don’t try to offer people my advice when they say they’re depressed. I offer to help find resources. I just don’t think I could function without taking care of myself. I can work full-time now, go for a day without crying, and tell my mind to stop and think, give myself time. If I’m too depressed, I go to bed. Going to bed is not a cure. It's buying time for you to change your mind by morning. Put your ear buds in and listen to meditations, talks, breath work, calming music and go to bed. In the morning,start researching to get help. There are free services and low-cost services available wherever you are.

We must help ourselves by reaching out for support, even when we believe the world would be better without us. It won't. She tried to call so many people…even me. Ultimately, our lives are our responsibility and we sometimes can’t fight for ourselves in our Emotional mind. But, for the taken and the ones whose ashes we sift into the ocean, they couldn’t make their mind logical and they couldn’t stop and they couldn’t go to bed. She didn’t mean to do it. I cry about it every single day. No matter whether you think you matter to people or not, I am telling you that you do. I can barely hold on, knowing that my bright and beautiful, funny, charming, smart-mouthed, water-loving daughter would have chosen to live.