What are some of the needs of Suicide Survivors?
Let us be who we've become -- people changed by tragedy. Just try to "be there" and support whatever form our grief takes. Trying to understand is okay, but just caring is enough. Realize that you can't pos-sibly relate to what we are ex-periencing. You don't have to.
Mourning a death by suicide is a lengthy, intense and confusing process. It is also unique; each of us experiences grief in our own way.
Because suicide is a sudden, unexpected and often violent loss, the grief it causes is excruciating, prolonged, and still often stigmatized. This may cause us to withdraw socially. We may even feel responsible for our loss. Those who witness the suicide or find the body may suffer post traumatic stress.
We don't "get over" a suicide. The effects may stabilize, but the loss is forever felt. Our personal values and beliefs are shattered and we are changed emotionally.
Every suicide survivor needs im-mediate support at the time of the loss. Individualized or family coun-seling, medical care, and parti-cipation in on-going support groups can be extremely helpful.
To read a heartbreaking first-hand account of the aftermath of a loved one's suicide, click HERE.
Suicide Survivors
"There are always two parties to a death; the person who dies and the survivors who are bereaved."
-Arnold Toynbee
A suicide survivor is an individual who has lost someone he/she cared for deeply to suicide. The victim may have been a parent, child, spouse, sibling, other relative, partner, or friend. It is estimated that every suicide leaves six to eight "survivors."
More YouTube Videos:
Dedicated to Suicide Survivor's
Katie Couric's Notebook: Teen Suicide
National Survivor's of Suicide Day
Lidia's Story: Suicide Loss Survivor
Clip from AFSP's National Survivors of Suicide Day Program (2009)
"One often calms one's grief by recounting it." ~ Pierre Corneille
It's okay to talk about "it" because that's all that's on our minds. Let any statements we make about respon-sibility, blame, or guilt just flow. It will sort itself out over time. Please mention our loved one, whether it was a child, spouse, sibling, parent or other loved one. Avoid setting any timetable for recovery as there isn't any.
Some suicide survivors find it uncomfortable to speak about the loss. With this in mind, it's wise simply to ask, "How are you feeling? Can we talk about it?" And then be willing to listen.
Taken in part from lifegard.tripod.com.
Grief Can Be a Roller Coaster
Instead of a series of stages, we might also think of the grieving process as a roller coaster, full of ups and downs, highs and lows. Like many roller coasters, the ride tends to be rougher in the beginning, the lows may be deeper and longer. The difficult periods should become less intense and shorter as time goes by, but it takes time to work through a loss. Even years after a loss, especially at special events such as a family wedding or the birth of a child, we may still experience a strong sense of grief.
Source: Hospice Foundation of America
"There truly is no place in my brain where this makes any sense, the experience just doesn't register in any way that is rational or understandable. One minute she was with us, and then.......
I didn't know how I could live without my daughter. I didn't believe that I could and there were countless times that I didn't want to. Somehow, in spite of me, the sun kept rising, day after day, and I kept breathing, minute after minute. I truly believed that such a trauma would make me explode into a million pieces, but it didn't happen. And so I just keep going, a minute at a time, a day at a time."
-NAMI Utah Suicide Survivor
~
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil."
~WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
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