Left Behind

What it is like to navigate life left behind..............

Today is worldwide suicide awareness day, to me it's just another day of suicide in my face. I don't mean to sound crude, I realize the importance of awareness but for me and for others like me who have been left behind it's another painful reminder of the nightmare we are living. I'm aware of suicide alright, so aware that it gives me nightmares and anxiety and fear that it may happen again. Every sadness or struggle with depression that wreaks havoc in the life of my family I fear that awful word "suicide" I'm aware all right, probably more aware than the average Joe.

Yet I am also aware of another side of suicide, the ones left behind.

I refer to myself as being left behind.

The ones who are left behind after their loved ones dies from suicide.

The ones left behind to pick up the pieces.

The ones left behind to try and navigate life again.

The ones left behind to try and make sense of the chaos they have been thrown into.

The ones left behind trying to find a balance between mourning and being thrown back into the everyday life that keeps going as much as we wish it would pause.

The ones left behind who fight in exhaustion for their own mental health and that of their loved ones.

The ones left behind struggling to find themselves again.

The ones left behind who are crippled with shame and guilt and remorse and spend years learning to quit carrying that load that was thrown upon them.

The ones left behind to find reasons to hang on, to fight and find hope in the dust left behind.

I am in a sense a suicide survivor, but not in the way you think. Obviously, I am still here so we can all rule out that I have not taken my own life, but my Dad....... he took his and I have forever since been trying to navigate a life left behind after suicide.

Life becomes so different, so much changes around you and in you and you have to find ways to survive yourself, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. You have been left behind, given no choice or say in the matter. Left behind to try and move forward. There is pain in the death of a loved one, but there is a whole new level of pain when its death due to suicide. It is a much different grief process and it is seldom spoken about which leaves those left behind confused and shameful and struggling to cope with how they feel.

For those of you who have been left behind,

First I am so sorry for your loss, I am sorry you have to go through this. My heart aches every time I hear about a suicide because I know the painful path you now have to walk on and the agony of the battle before you. You have been thrown into a deep dark valley filled with so many emotions, it is so dark, it is so heavy, it feels impossible to try and find your way up and out. I get it. I have spent years navigating this reality and I don't believe there is only one specific way to make it through this but rather many ways to help you cope and find life again, here are a few that I found were key to my recovery;

• Grieve your loss

The pain you are feeling, it is real. Cry. Tears are healing. Mourn the loss of your loved one. Give yourself permission to feel the emotions and to grieve in your own time.

There is no timeline for grief, and time does not heal all things, if that were true you could sit in the doctor's office with a gaping wound and in time it would heal on its own. It is not time that heals, but what you do/do not do in this time that heals. There is no set date as to how long you will mourn and the grieving process is different for everyone, there is no one size fits all to this.

The news of your loved one hits you like an earthquake, your entire world falls apart. You'll spend so much time putting your world back together again but the aftershocks will continue to shake the ground your trying to stand on. Throughout the coming years, you will feel the aftershocks in varying degrees, with no rhyme or reason the pain of grief comes in and goes out over and over and over, sometimes triggered by dates and events sometimes something as simple as a song on the radio will trigger profound emotions and memories. Take the time and space you need. Don't stuff your grief, it will find it's way out at some point in time. I have heard of people who never grieved the loss of a loved one to suicide only to seek counselling 30 years later because the grief was finding its way out all those years later. Think of grief as a shaken-up bottle of pop, it is swirling all around in there and is pressuring up trying to find a way to escape eventually blowing the lid right off the bottle. Un-dealt with grief turns into anger, bitterness, stress, anxiety and resentment. Your body will keep score and you will pay the price with your health if you do not allow yourself to grieve.

We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach towards grief because the broken parts want to mend - Brene Brown

• Feel the Emotions

Grief comes in cycles, it's like a wheel of emotions spinning around and around. You most likely will feel anger, guilt, despair, fear, shock, denial and acceptance at some point in this journey, often times over and over and sometimes more than one emotion at a time. This is normal, there is nothing wrong with you. It is important to understand and feel the wide range of emotions that comes with grief after a suicide. Feel the emotions and work through them as they come. If you feel like you are stuck in one of these emotions make sure you talk to someone or join a grief support group. You have been through a trauma, there will be emotions to sort out and work on, and often times it is difficult to do this alone.

You will also feel numb and in shock and have difficulty concentrating and remembering things especially at the beginning of this process. It will feel like you are sitting on the sidelines of your life watching it unfold yet it all seems so unreal, hazy, distorted. This is normal, this will pass, the haze will eventually clear and over time the raw intensity of all these emotions will fade.

The death of a loved one is an amputation - C.S. Lewis

• Talk

The more you seek out counsel from either professionals or trustworthy friends and family the more you will lessen the load of your grief. Talk about your loved one, they will always be apart of you and to not speak of them is to deny their existence, to speak of them affirms his/her life. Each time you share your story you accomplish more grief work. I once wrote in my journal during my grief process that....

Grief is like an iceberg, so enormous with many different peaks, I'm floating along carrying this heavy load all the while little pieces of my iceberg are falling off, eventually this load will not be as large or difficult for me to carry

I am almost 11 years into this process and I can say the grief load I once carried no longer feels like an enormous iceberg and although I wouldn't say it is easy now, I would agree that it is not as difficult of a load to carry.

• Take care of yourself

The intense emotions that come following a suicide require some sort of outlet for yourself. Channel this into some sort of constructive benefit for yourself. Our society is big on substances to ease the pain or help you cope. Yet alcohol and drugs cannot bring you lasting peace, they may mask the pain for a time, but as the numbing effects wear off you will soon find you need more and more to "cope", creating an unhealthy dependency all the while still having all the unresolved grief to deal with. Overeating, binge-watching t.v., shopping, and other socially acceptable behaviours can all become unhealthy coping mechanisms, so make sure you are keeping yourself in check. Find ways to better yourself, release your negative emotions through exercise, walks, bike rides, join a local sports team. Physical exercise is one of the biggest stress relievers and it is good for you! Try journaling your emotions, build something, paint something, dig in the dirt of a flower bed or garden, clean your house (some people actually find this therapeutic). Find a healthy outlet and remember the things you love to do and do them whether you feel like it or not.

Try not to over-commit to too much and bury yourself in busyness. This is also an unhealthy coping mechanism and it will eventually catch up to you. Know your limits and don't be afraid to say no to outside commitments right now. It is easier to over-commit and stay so busy you don't have time to think about your loss and grief than it is to allow yourself to feel the emotions and grieve, but this coping mechanism is temporary, I speak from experience that it will catch up to you. I kept myself so busy and exhausted that I had no time to think about my Dad's suicide and grieve properly, eventually I paid the price in the form of anxiety and panic attacks in the middle of the night.

• Live your life

Do not allow yourself to feel shameful or guilty for living, for smiling or laughing. Keep living your life as best as you know how to. There are still things to live for even after we lose someone to suicide. Moving on does not mean letting go. You will need to find ways to see the light again, it is unhealthy to stay in the darkness. It is okay to grieve for a time, but eventually you need to get back out there. Staying in the grief pit day in and day out, hour after hour is exhausting and defeating, you won't get anywhere staying stuck down there. If it is close to a holiday, keep your family traditions. There is comfort in maintaining traditions. In time consider volunteering somewhere, when we put others needs ahead of our own we keep from falling further into a hole. There is research on the mental health benefits of volunteering such as gaining a sense of purpose & meaning, helping to keep the mind distracted from negative thinking and falling into despair and helping to reignite a passion for life.

Start a daily gratitude journal, it is so easy for our minds to focus on the negative and for all the things that are wrong in this life to take precedence over our thoughts but we have the power to rewire our brains towards positive and seek the good in the world. It takes daily effort and in the dark trenches of grief can be a very difficult practice to start but in time positive thinking becomes your new way of thinking. You have lost much, don't overlook the goodness that is still all around you. Joy is a choice, choose it.....daily.

• Seek God

I know some of you don't want to hear this, but I truly believe in the healing power that Christ offers. He took my pain and trauma and is bringing good out of it. He walked me out of the darkness and into the light and my story is helping others to walk through theirs. Through my Christian community, I have learned to live again and I don't think I would have made it without Jesus in my life and without the love and care my fellow believers have shown towards me. My pit was too deep, my despair too much for me to bear on my own. The Bible offers much hope and healing, I hope you turn to it or seek out a church to find help and encouragement and support from other believers.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it - John 1:5

• Learn to Let Go

Survivor's guilt is a major setback to healing. Let go of any guilt and stop blaming yourself, you are not responsible for the decision made by someone else to take their own life and you cannot fully recover from this until you understand and truly believe that and let it go. Let go of the "what if's" and the "why didn't I see this coming". Let go of that which you cannot change. This is difficult. You may be seeking for answers to your questions and you will drive yourself crazy trying to understand. We may never know why our loved ones did what they did and at some point you'll have to accept that you will never get the full explanation you are searching for.

• Expect setbacks

You may make great progress only to fall right back into the dark valley of despair again, you haven't failed, it isn't so much a setback as it is a part of the journey to healing. This process is not a straight line but feels more like a roller coaster ride from hell that seems like it will never end, but it will, in time. Be patient with the process.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness - Desmond Tutu

You will forever be changed by this tragedy. You will never "get over" it. Your gaping wounds will close in time, but there will always be scars left behind. Bittersweet memories of a life once lived and a soul deeply loved and lost. You will carry these scars forever, they are woven into the fabric of your being for the rest of your life. There will be days when the hurt is too much to bear and you think you will never ever get past this, believe me, it will in time whether through your own efforts or in spite of them, it eventually will get better and you will learn to live fully again...... left behind.