This month I have published two pieces in themighty, a non profit that provides support, community and resources to those struggling with mental illnesses and other conditions, some of them firsthand and others, like suicide survivorship, by proximity.
A woman read one of the pieces that I had written and reached out to me. She also had experienced multiple suicides of those close to her, relatives and others.
I am so thankful to have connected with her and others from this venue.
In the e-mail that she wrote to me, she expressed gratitude for what I had written and noted that she was glad that I had survived. I’m grateful for the opportunity to connect with others, shared stories and offer support. It is exactly why I started writing about my experiences.
One of the things that she said, that gave me pause is that survivorship is a verb. We continue (to have to do) the work. To survive, to continue onward, to press forward with this journey of living with relatives who have completed suicide.
This emphasis on the verb, the action, of survivorship made me pause.
It struck me.
I have often heard that we ought to approach love as an action word, and faith as a verb.
I even think I had heard recovery (from alcoholism or another addiction) as a verb, to reflect the continuous process.
But I’d never really thought about survivorship and surviving from a relative’s suicide to be action, a verb.
Then I started to think—why not?
To survive means to continue on, to endure, to persevere. All of those do not have simple ending points. They are journeys; they are processes.
It makes me realize, especially as I read and process a lot about grief:
I’ve come to regard suicide survivorship as grief, but doubled, compounded.
This isn’t to minimize others losses, deaths or other griefs. I firmly believe to do so is a moot and heartless point. Suffering through loss and the grief and mourning of the death of a loved one is always difficult.
(And aside:
I recently read the following quote by Professor of Theology, Jerry Sissler who wrote the following (after losing his mother, wife and daughter all in one car accident:
“I question whether experiences of such severe loss can quantified and compared. Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways. No two losses are ever the same. Each loss stands on its own and inflicts a unique kind of pain. What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative and irreversible nature.
What value is there to quantifying and comparing losses?
It is really useful to decide whose losses are worse?
Catastrophic loss of whatever kind is always bad, only bad in different ways. It is impossible to quantify and to compare. The very attempt we make to quantify losses only exacerbates the loss by driving us to two unhealthy extremes. On the one hand, those coming out on the losing end of the comparison are deprived of the validation they need to identify and experience the loss for the bad thing it is.”)
So, though I resist the idea that there are worse losses, that there is no use of quantifying them, I *do* find myself continuously drawn to the unique nature of suicide, undoubtedly because of the stigmatization of mental illness and suicide.
For though I want to be a part of the advocacy to resist that, and I greatly appreciate efforts to revision suicide as succumbing to a disease of depression, I find that suicide survivorship—especially when it is associated with someone that you are related to, by blood or home life, forever relates you to someone did die at their own hand.
And though I try to push back against it, as a survivor, it is difficult to (mentally) disentangle the idea in your mind who could take their own life.
To me, that is the ongoing survivorship, the unique journey of (familial) suicide survivorship.