Write your Truth

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

“Remember, you never need permission to write your truth if it’s your intention. Be brave, be bold, have courage. The people who need to read your story will find it.”

~Marcia Abbboud

I saw this restacked on substack by Esther Stanway-Williams, and it gave me peace and contentment.

You know, the feeling that most of us try to cultivate and draw forth more of -

Because if you’re on a healing journey, had trauma, or a grave loss, there was many points in your life where the possibility of joy, serenity and peace, seemed just a dream. So untouchable.

I started to write because five years ago, after my brother completed suicide (six weeks after my beloved and dearest mother had also passed) - all of this, less than five years after my father also died, so I did what a student of literature and a professor would do--

I went looking for other people’s survival stories.

If we’re statistically more likely, to have more than one suicide in a family, if there is one (especially parent to child), where were the others, like me?

How did they survive and make it through this time?

As I walked around in a state of traumatized shock. (I look back at that time and think about my body/mind - I felt, walking around, as though I was in a perpetual state of disorientation and surreal perspective. It felt dream-like and discombobulated, and it stayed that way for quite a while. Many, many months. I had short term memory loss, the idea good sleep was preposterously laughable and I just wondered about my life, much like what the fuck happened? And then, since it coincided with COVID-19 and the shutdown, what the fuck IS happening? It was a very disorienting time.)

But, I did look for other people’s stories of two in one family.

I found none.

I decided about a year later, when I was able to, to start writing about mine.

I write for healing, I always have.

But I also wanted others to know if they were out there with two, that they were not alone. That there were others, some of us also wondering about life trying to understand what had lost, and survived, and how the hell to go on.

I often times wonder why I write. Suicide isn’t a fun topic. I don’t expect if—hopefully when—I get my memoir published—people will go,
"Oh, I’m dying to read that!” — like you do the fascinating memoirs of people’s travel tales, or how they achieved their dreams from meager beginnings, —

Suicide survivorship is heavy, it’s dark. It shows us a part of humanity; and many of us would rather turn away.

And yet, my life has been heavily shaped by it — twice.

So, for me, it’s inescapable.

I often times wonder - do I write for me? Or for others? I think it’s intertwined, enmeshed.

But, through the process of writing, I do realize more and more about myself, my healing journey, how Iv’e grown, how I feel, how I’ve changed and evolved. It helps. Sometimes it puts together feelings or pieces of how I felt that I hadn’t realized I felt until it was coming out, in the process of being typed -

I appreciated when the author Elizabeth Gilbert said, you write the book because it’s the one that you wished you had found. You write to your younger self.

I write for my younger self.

There was so much I read, tried, and had to learn for myself, after my father died, then after my brother and mother’s deaths in early 2020. There was so much I needed to learn about being in a narcissistic relationship and losing two babies, not ever getting ‘the rainbow baby’ that many do.

There has been much I’ve needed to learn about myself, to be able to choose healing, and a healthy life and survival, and not ending up like my family members.

I do genuinely hope my words help others. It can feel very lonely out there.

Today, through substack, and the internet and our globalized world, I am very grateful that we may simply go online and find other suicide survivors. We may find support world-wide in others who know this deeply painful type of loss.

It’s a tonic, a balm, to the pain that is suicide loss and survivorship amidst mental illness stigmatization.

Because - I try to imagine what it must have been like for those suicide survivors who lost spouses, parents, siblings, and children, and others - before the internet.

We heal in community. That is true of so many other areas of life beyond suicide loss. But it is especially true for suicide loss.

We find solidarity in others, this uniquely painful and stigmatized loss.

And - for me, whenever I hear of ‘another one’, the heartbreak, the gut-wrenching feeling that takes place inside of me, it’s hard to put into words.

Just today, I saw on social media footage of a grieving, bawling mother because her 12 year old daughter took her life because she’d been bullied in school for years.

….

I just stared at the page for thirty seconds because I didn’t know how to follow that.

I know suicide loss, but only that of a parent or a sibling, from my own experience. To lose a partner, or a child, those are also suicide experiences that are completely foreign to me. I can’t imagine the depths of that pain.

You may think, oh, she gets it better than most. But here’s the thing - I’m not interested in playing that game anymore.

Because if there is one thing I’ve learned from all the deaths and suicides and trauma, it is this -

Trauma and suicides and grief doesn’t have to be comparable. They all can exist in their own right.

We, humans, often fall short because we tend to create comparisons and evaluations and hierarchies.

It doesn’t always— arguably usually doesn’t— help the bereaved.

I think most of us want someone who can be compassionate about loss and grief,

sure--

But we also ache for those who will listen to us and hold space for our own loss and its uniqueness.

Being willing to differences and how ‘their stories differs from mine’ - I believe -

It’s the root of empathy. Of loving listening.

I get overwhelmed by the enormity of grief and suffering and surviving, hurt and loss of this life. I grieve for so much of what humanity is enduring now, today, all across the globe.

But, I know that stories told in safe space and community-support do help. They heal.

Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces. Trauma survivors heal when shame is alleviated, and we do that when others bear witness to our stories.

I am a Cultural Rhetorician, by profession. I hold a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing. But I was mentored by American Indian elders, scholars, writers, thinkers.

They remind us in their wisdom that —-

“The truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (Thomas King).

They are humanity, they represent humanity.

And it’s also one of the greatest gifts and blessings we have, to help each other, and to try to heal ourselves -

To share ours and listen to others stories.

I could agonize over my story reaching the right people, but I have to believe that it will.

Much like those students usually reach out to me, finding me, disclosing to me that they too have a suicide loss.

Much like I have found just the right book I needed at just the right time.

Though I have to temper my face and minimize my reaction when I hear the platitude, ‘everything happens for a reason’ —

I do believe that through our searching, we do often encounter the people, the tools, the stories, and knowledge, that can help us, can teach us, help us survive in the shitshow of life.

That I do believe.