Don't Say "I Know How You Feel" -- Suicide Grief is Different

"Don't say, 'I know how you feel."

As much as I knew my midwife’s assistant was hurting, too, and trying to find connection, she didn’t truly understand what I was going through; I felt unseen in the complexity of my fresh grief. 

“Don’t place value judgments on the suicide, such as ‘It was a selfish choice, a sin, an act of weakness, or a lack of faith or love or strength.'”

But don’t feel afraid to say the name of the person who died, to share your memories of that person, to create space for the survivor to share their own memories, to honor their loved one’s life. Let the grieving person say what they need to say, feel what they need to feel.

[Executive director of the Suicide Prevention Network based in Minden, Nevada Debbie] Posnien suggested: “Listen with your heart, maybe hold their hand, look into their eyes, let them know you feel their pain.” Saying that you feel someone’s pain may seem similar to “I understand what you’re going through,” but those words more fully honor the complexity of the survivor’s experience — they mean “I understand you need support” and they mean “We’re going to walk through it together.”

What to Say (And Not to Say) to Someone Grieving Suicide

Melissa Fay Greene on Her Son's Life and Suicide

Melissa Fay Greene writes about the suicide of her son.

It was so impossible, so unthinkable, that even when we sat in the office of the university president on Friday afternoon and were told by the county sheriff that they’d found a body, we scoffed and said it couldn’t be him. Then the sheriff said the coach had identified the body, and for me, at that moment, the air above the sheriff’s head split open, a rent in the fabric of the world as I’d known it....

It turns out there are a lot of things the general public doesn’t know about suicide. At least I didn’t know them. And learning about three specific aspects has helped me, a little.

The first bit of information arrived a few days after the event, as I staggered in shock through a neighbor’s tangled backyard, sleepless, unable to eat, barely able to swallow. A friend of our middle daughter phoned to say he’d recently learned something about suicide, following the shockingly sudden death of his own close friend. He felt it was important for us to know, in case we didn’t, that there were two types of suicide: the widely known “premeditated” and the lesser-known “impulsive.”

...Suicide-prevention strategies are based on the theory that a person first thinks about suicide, then plans it, then attempts it, and that this “template” can take weeks, months, or years to unfold. Interventions can occur at various points along the timeline, beginning with the identification of an “at-risk individual” whose progression from one stage to the next you try to interrupt. But people who act impulsively blow past the timeline. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that suicide rates have risen in nearly every state and that “more than half of people who died by suicide did not have a known mental health condition.” Scientists hope that, in time, a set of red flags will be identified for this different sort of at-risk population. But, for now, there aren’t any.

...The second fact I learned about suicide is that about a third of people who kill themselves used alcohol just prior.

And the third, she says, is that just as it it too late to change their minds, many suicides regret their choice. Greene finds that a comfort.

Let’s Talk About Suicide – Spencer J. Cox – Medium

Utah's Lt. Governor is speaking out about suicide to make it safe for the kinds of conversations that can prevent it.

"As the students were leaving, a 13-year old girl asked if she could give me a hug. “Of course!” I replied. As she hugged me, she whispered in my ear, “Thank you for talking about suicide. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and I needed to hear you say that today.” We moved to the corner and talked for a minute. I told her we desperately need her on this earth. She promised me she would stay. She cried. I cried. We hugged again. I grabbed her teachers and administrators, and they promised they would follow up with her and get her the help she needs. I went back to my office with a lump in my throat and cried some more. Life is so precious. Kids can be impulsive. So, let’s do this together. Let’s lock up our guns. Let’s all download the SafeUT app. Let’s put away our phones and start connecting more. And — seriously — let’s start talking about suicide."

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: Let’s Talk About Suicide – Spencer J. Cox – Medium

Let’s Talk About Suicide – Spencer J. Cox – Medium

Going Into Shock After Hearing News of a Loved One’s Suicide | The Mighty

 "Shock is what you feel when you suddenly lose someone who lives in your home. When the shock begins to fade is when you will actually walk into your grief. "

Going Into Shock After Hearing News of a Loved One’s Suicide | The Mighty

Surviving Bereavement by Suicide | Jess Neal

 "For me personally, the shock of suicide reduced my ability to accept the demands of daily life. I felt like I had lost my connection with the person I had once been. I knew I had to do something with my grief, but I didn't know how to begin. I was heartbroken, your entire being literally aches from the pain of the loss of someone so precious to you. I felt so alone, isolated, and dazed. Statistics say that if a child loses a parent to suicide they are three times more likely to take their own life. Thankfully for me I never reached this point but it is easy for me to see how, without the right kind of support and guidance, someone could end up drifting down that road.

In the days following on from my dad's funeral, I did what so many people do after losing a loved one, I went back to my life, the daily grind of living, all the while doing my best to accept my new adjusted life. But however hard I tried, I couldn't adjust. And I was far from accepting. A pivotal moment in my healing was when I joined a support group. They taught me that you have to surrender to your grief in acknowledgement that the only way to the other side is through it.

The best thing I ever did was to reach out to others for help. It saved me. I spent time with others who have been through losing someone to suicide, they have walked this walk and they encourage your need to grieve yet at the same time give you hope for healing. Having unsuccessfully completed counselling previously to this I felt uncertain if this would work, but I was desperate. I was desperate to talk about what my dad had done.

The thing I felt people, including counsellors were depriving me of. "Don't dwell on that; you must remember the good times; don't let suicide be the thing that defines your relationship with your dad." But ultimately it was and still continues to be. My dad made a decision to end his own life. And whilst that sentence is still incredibly painful to write I can now understand the reasons why he made that decision. I may disagree with his decision but I now understand that it was his decision to make. I may still feel pained by his decision but I now understand how I can live side by side with those emotions without feeling ashamed or guilty."

Surviving Bereavement by Suicide | Jess Neal

Kaddish Meditation in Memory of a Victim of Suicide -- Jewish Ritual

"Sovereign of Compassion, I am about to recite Kaddish, to praise Your great and exalted Name, on behalf of my dear loved one ____________, who has gone to their eternal home as a victim of suicide. I am about to say that You are above all expressions of comfort, yet comfort feels fleeting. I am about to call You the Maker of Peace, yet I have struggled to find any peace at all. My mouth, so often silent in shame, fills with unanswerable questions. My mind, so often overcome with guilt and regret, fills also with memories of their love, of their kindness. My heart, so often rent with pain, strains to reach toward You, toward them, toward the community which surrounds me, aware or unaware of my grief. The memory of my dear __________ is far greater than the way they died. May I honor that memory through acts of charity, acts of loving-kindness, acts inspired by hope.  May my giving voice to their silence help me to find healing in my mourning.  May their spirit be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen."


Kaddish Meditation in Memory of a Victim of Suicide -- Jewish Ritual:

Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with Kelley Clink

Deborah Kalb interviews author Kelley Clink about her book, A Different Kind of Same, a memoir of her brother's suicide and the grief that followed.



"My brother’s death shattered that armor. Grief stripped me down to my rawest self, and I had no idea how to handle everything I was feeling. Actually, I didn’t know how to handle anything I was feeling.

And I didn’t know how to talk about it. I was terrified to talk about it. I’d conditioned myself to hide messy and complicated emotions for so long, I was sure that anyone who knew the depth of my grief would turn and run from me, screaming.

Writing broke those big, messy, complicated emotions into manageable pieces. It helped me get some of the chaos out of my head. But most important, when I found the right words for those feelings, when the words came from my fingers instead of my mouth, they were much easier to share."



Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb: Q&A with Kelley Clink

A Woman Writes to Her Husband, Thirty Days After His Suicide

In the End, There Is Only Room for Love | Poorna Bell

It has been nearly 30 days since you held the spark of your life between your hands and pressed them shut. Since then, I have been trying to make sense of the world. In Hinduism - a religion you wholeheartedly set about getting to know even though I had long lost my faith - we have an 11-day ceremony and a 30-day ceremony. I've never understood what these were for. But perhaps they are to mark a set of realisations. By 11 days, I was aware that your death had made me a different person. Everything looked, smelled and tasted different. People that I had known for years now seemed like strangers in the midst of what I felt, and what I thought they could not possibly know about. I saw you in everything. I saw you in the sea, imagining you in the shift, turn and swirl of water. I saw you at your graveside, in the freesias you so loved. I saw you in the birds you had encyclopaedic knowledge about, in the double rainbows that lit the sky the day we said goodbye to you. You were a big, Kiwi man in real life, and yet I saw you in the most delicate of things.

From an essay by Poorna Bell, for her husband: