My letter to other [family] suicide survivors

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Part of trying to write my memoir is trying to locate who is my target audience. As any Rhetorician would tell you, the audience matters. Because it will influence how you write the piece. To whom you write. You must consider what they know, what they don’t, what they’ve experienced and what they have not.

I think that, ultimately, I am writing this book for myself, to my younger self, as it is the book that I went looking for to help me, but the one that I did not find.

But, I am also writing it to whoever finds themselves in a position similar to my own: others who experience deaths of family members due to suicide, parent and/or sibling.

And there is oh-so much that I want to say to them. But as I piece it together, here is what I would say so far:

Dearest one,

I am sorry you are going through this. From the depths of my soul, my fellow broken spirit, I know that it is like to feel the shock, the horror, the shame, the trauma, that comes from knowing that your parent or sibling, your own blood, has chosen to take their own lives. To exit this world, not knowing for certain what lay beyond. You sit with the hollowness that your relative was in that much pain that they voluntarily choose death, sometimes even a gruesome death, to free themselves from their inner anguish and torment.

I empathize you in a way that others cannot. Sure, they want to, they try, they feel for you. But there is a great divide. And it feels isolating. Sometimes how they regard you, it feels like pity. And that feeling is really shitty. You may feel alone and empty; I certainly did.

But after much therapy, writing, trauma and somatic healing, I have finally made it to another side. And I realize that it feels at many points like there is no other side. That there is only this life of continuous grief, that you must carry the enormity of death by suicide in your family. We say that we never get over grief, but we learn to live with it and carry it.

How much more for us with the grief and trauma of suicide? This loss is often times unimaginable to others. How could it not be? When it is even unimaginable to us. And we are the ones living with it.

The pain and grief will never go away . That is true. But you learn to carry it. And part of how you learn how to carry it is this—

You invest in yourself, your own mental health. Because in doing so, you at least work to disentangle and lessen the shame that you carry, through PTSD, and through the stigma of suicide. The stigma that comes because you are associated and related to someone who has chosen to do this, to take their own life.

Now, please do not misunderstand me: You/we should not feel the shame. But we often, dare I say, we usually do. It is hard to admit that we have a parent or a blood relative who has killed themselves. We are tied to them.

Suicides [and homicides] are the apex of mental illness stigmatization.

And unfortunately, all mental health crises and disorders are still so heavily stigmatized in our world.

I spent years angry, desperate, broken, that I now had to carry this. That they permanently scarred me: influenced and authored my story. I felt such deep shame. I felt connected to them, that through this extreme last act of self-inflicted death, that I would always be knotted in that, entangled with them.

While all of that, arguably is still true: I cannot change their story. How they died. That they are my family. That they affected me.

But I can now author my own story. The symbol of my semi colon tattoo on my middle-right hand finger is to constantly remind me of that.

But it was only through therapy—EMDR, somatic (body) healing of releasing trauma through my body, biofield tuning, writing and sharing my story, did I sart to heal. The grief is still there, it is not gone. But the trauma and the shame has dissipated.

There is a valley of space that now separates me from what my family did, what happened to them, and, by extension, how their choices affected me. I never thought there could be any space or distance from something so personal, so horrific.

But, there is. Because—

I have made two major investments in myself throughout my life. The first one was my education and the other one one has been in my mental health. They were both well worth it. Even though they are expensive. Even though at points I could not afford them. But they are investments in my self, mind, and well-being.

Your mental health is so important. You are worth it. I know that it is expensive. But if you can live easier, with this burden that you must carry, that you have to carry, please when and if you can—make this investment in yourself. Even if you can’t now, do it later. It is worth more to your overall well being than any material item that you could ever possibly purchase.

This may especially be true when/if you don’t find a good therapist the first time around. A good therapist is one that you click with: This means that they will make you feel comfortable in their presence, and not judged, but also, they will challenge you and they will ask you questions that make you examine yourself. But if you feel shamed or not pushed to go deeper, or uncomfortable in their presence, then this is not a good fit for you.

Please be patient. And please, please, please try again. There are so many types of therapists and therapies out there.

Therapists are just people. They are fallible and personalities don’t always mesh well. It’s possible that this has happened to you or will happen.

I have seen so many people endure years of living with such mental/emotional burdens because they had one shitty therapist experience. It can be traumatizing, I know, but it is not your fault. The therapist either failed you or they were not a good match for you, that is all. They are just humans. You make yourself vulnerable by going there, and if they take advantage of that, that is their fault and not yours.

Please, I beg you: don’t give up. Try again. You are worth it.

This club that you have had to join isn’t a happy one, “the [family] suicide survivors club.”

And—as you learn that others have experienced this same heartache, it will be a torrent of various emotions that flood you. You feel kin to them, you ‘get’ them and understand them more than others. Your heart breaks for them because you know how soul-crushing and how heart-wrenching this feels. And, also, you may feel not so alone and a relieving solidarity. You feel grateful to not be alone, then you may feel guilty.

All of these emotions are okay. You are not wrong and you don’t have to feel badly for the relief that you are not alone. You are entitled to all of them.

I will say that again: you are entitled to feel however you feel, at any given moment.

Suicide is complex and being a survivor of it brings a whole gamut of emotions. If other deaths are known to cause anger and guilt and sadness, a whole range, how much more for suicide—when someone takes their own life? It increases those emotions by ten fold. Perhaps even more.

I cannot say how you will make your way through this, only that there is hope and there are options out there to lighten your load. Please don’t crawl up with your emotions, trauma, grief and shame, alone and isolated, as then it will feel heavier. It is counter-intuitive because it feels too shame-filled to do so, to open-up. You think you are exposing yourself, perhaps, and welcoming more shame to you.

But there are options: Perhaps one of the biggest blessings in this day of age is the anonymity provided by the internet and social media. There are support groups out there with other survivors. I didn’t find a face to face meeting the place for me, but if that is where you need to go, then please do so. Either in person or through the internet. There is support available.

The best advice I can give you is please don’t stop trying to take care of you, invest in you, maintain you, looking for ways to alleviate your shame/trauma, that you will always carry grief and heartache. But—the amount, the magnitude, the degree of pain that you may be feeling, how you’re suffering now, you don’t always have to have that, this acutely.

It will not ever go away, but it will get better. Don’t lock it up and throw away the key, try out to different keys/methods. They are out there.

My mother said three things to be growing up that I want to share with you now:

1-There is no use in just suffering when there is help available.

(And there is help, even when you can’t see it, don’t believe it, can’t feel it.)

2-You [probably, if you have a suicide in your family] will not get the support and help that you need from your family, so you must look elsewhere, outside of your family for this support.

3-It won’t always be as bad as it seems right now. That you may feel it always will be, this bad. It won’t. That’s a lie that you have to felt like hell to not believe.

Oh, and one more—

***You are so worth it.***

Know that [family] suicide survivorship is brutal. Life can be so fucking hard. But we can survive through a lot. We’re a lot more resilient than we ever realize, until we’re made to have to live through shit.

And the unexpected silver lining of this, you may develop an enormous capacity for compassion and empathy, love and consideration for others, to help them as they shoulder their grief and the trauma, whatever wounds that they have. In doing this, your family member’s death is not in vain. You can contribute to a better world, helping others and alleviating suffering or their load. Even if you don’t become a suicide prevention advocate, or admit to your family member’s death, you can still make the world better by love and compassion and empathy that you have developed from this heart-wrenching situation.

The other golden nugget of is is how you can use this opportunity to address your own intergenerational trauma and emotional inheritance, the wounds that you were made to have to carry. If you do, you will become even healthier, mentally and emotionally, then you were…perhaps even pre-suicides.

It’ll be work, but it’ll be so worth it.

Take heart. Hold on.

Please, don’t let go. Either of your life or your own well being.

You are so worth it.

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