Storm Season
With the recent anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29th, a day that also marks the anniversary of my husband’s death by suicide, I can’t help but see parallels for those left behind in the wake of tragedy, and the communities that surround them.
My husband ended his life eleven years ago. The long aftermath has felt like living in a town ravaged by different storms over many seasons. Some resources are available for immediate needs, but we survivors must pick up the pieces hour by hour, one day at a time, year after year to find a new “normal” and forge a lasting path to recovery. During that time, public attention often shifts to preparing for the next storm and improving forecasting models. Or, in this analogy, preventing another suicide.
Prevention is critical. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, a time to raise awareness, remember those affected, reduce stigma, and promote action to address an urgent social issue that takes almost 50,000 American lives each year. Good organizations and people are doing important work to reduce that number and the accompanying ripple effects of grief and trauma that impact millions of others. I am deeply grateful for the enormous care and energy invested in each life saved and loss prevented; I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone else.
At the same time, prevention messaging can be difficult for those of us left behind as we figure out what’s next for ourselves, one another, and especially our children. Mine were three and four years old, asleep in their beds when they lost their dad. I was flying home from a work trip. Prevention was not on our radar.
The Alliance of Hope runs a Suicide Is Complicated campaign to increase awareness of the complexities surrounding suicide and suicide prevention, and to grow support and understanding for suicide loss survivors. I haven’t worked with the Alliance, but I identify with its founder’s observation:
Many [survivors] say that prevention messages leave them feeling guilty, upset and fearful of being judged—as if they “dropped the ball” and hence their loved one died. . . many loss survivors feel alone with these thoughts. They suffer in silence, reluctant to share their own experience in the face of large-scale campaigns led by mental health experts. And they don’t want to criticize a campaign that just might do some good.
Postvention Is Prevention
Care for the bereaved in the aftermath of suicide can lead to a reduction in deaths by suicide. Research shows that suicide loss survivors are at higher risk for many health problems, from depression to cancer, and are more likely to end their own lives compared to the general population. According to recent studies, for every death by suicide, between fifteen and thirty family members and close friends are severely impacted, and up to 135 people are impacted in some way. Consider that an estimated 49,300 people in the U.S. died by suicide in 2023, and that overall suicide mortality has risen more than 30% since 2000, and it all adds up to staggering accumulated pain and suffering over the years. Many millions of aching hearts still beat among us, each one more vulnerable to taking their own life.
I will never know if my husband’s death was preventable. Besides his forty years of life before we started dating, including a possible undiagnosed neurological disorder, he was understandably upset after I told him I wanted a divorce. So upset that he couldn’t live with the pain, according to the note he left. But was there a direct link between this hurt and his death? I don’t know. Others felt I bore some responsibility, as I would learn in heartbreaking emails and conversations. Likely these people suffered greatly from the unanswerable question of whether we, any of us, could have prevented such a devastating outcome.
When Prevention Isn’t on Your Radar, or Isn’t Successful, What Then?
I’ve lived every day of the last eleven years into that question. When nothing made sense, and I felt utterly alone, reading someone else’s words was my only comfort. Poets became small beacons in the fog of shock and grief.
I am out with lanterns looking for myself. – Emily Dickinson
Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive. – David Whyte
my heart woke me crying last night how can i help i begged my heart said write the book – Rupi Kaur
When things started making more sense and I began writing about my experience, I considered this question more concretely, more practically, to pass on what wisdom I can to others who may find themselves in a similar fog. Below is a condensed version of how I rebuilt our family life. It’s more of a “how we” than a “how to,” a series of hard-learned lessons offered with deep hope that they might make another person’s path a little gentler. They are the basis of a book I’m writing about my experience.
Find, and face, difficult truths. Seek a variety of sources and ask hard questions, allowing for all shades of gray and seeming contradictions. My husband loved our family and shattered it. I loved my husband and couldn’t stay in the marriage. It can feel like a train wreck, but there’s no less wreckage with denial, only prolonged pain and weariness from the work of looking away.
Take care of your body, and other bodies in your care. Although clichéd, focusing on physical health was a key part of my survival. In desperate times, I relied on instinct more than clear thinking. But healthy food, ample rest, drinking often (mostly water and tea), and regular, if gentle, exercise were the building blocks of our recovery.
Cower, cry, pace, rage; physically give in to feelings. For me, the overwhelming feeling was abject fear that someone I loved, particularly one of my kids, would die at any moment. Following that was deep sadness at losing my husband, our love, and our life together; total confusion at how it came to this; and burning fury at having been abandoned to solo parenthood.
Try to connect with others. People usually don’t know what to say or do in tough times, especially if they are natural helpers and are feeling helpless. If I saw people trying, I tried too, and just that action helped. Even if you wonder to what end, cultivate curiosity about different people and perspectives, being choosier about how you spend your time and where your attention goes.
Lend a hand. To me, service means doing something to make someone else’s day or life a little easier on their terms. Mostly I do small things, like eat dinner with a friend’s aging mother, or take others’ kids on an excursion, as countless others have done for me. There is no greater cure for self-pity than responding to another’s need, voiced or not, for a little help.
When someone offers something (help, partnership, fun), say yes. It matters less what the opportunity is than a chance at connection. There is an alchemy to building bridges, a grace in sharing burdens and to-do lists and giggles. It’s hard to explain, but I know it’s true. The love is out there; find it and let it find you.
Go outside. Enjoy nature, breathe fresh air, be still with still being here.
Adjust the dream. I’ve recently moved away from the career path I was on toward something less defined and truer to who I have become: someone who listens more, feels deeper, and understands the power of relationship in rebuilding . . . , well, anything. I am redefining what happiness means and redrawing my map for professional success.
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen
What Can You Do?
I don’t know.
I have no big idea for how to tackle one of the oldest social problems known to humanity (the earliest suicide note dates to 2040 BCE) other than to suggest, as I imagine many others have, that suicide prevention and postvention efforts should be integrated across the spectrum of public health expertise and lived experience.
I have small ideas, thanks to what others did (and still do) for me, and the advocates, therapists, doctors, and others who work on the frontlines of helping people in the wake of a suicide.
In the immediate timeframe, set up one point of contact for the surviving family member(s) to streamline communication and mobilize support from the many people who may want to help. Online care platforms like LotsaHelpingHands.com are an efficient way to organize meals, condolences, and information sharing across a wide community.
Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors (LOSS) is a postvention model in which a team of two or more trained volunteers provides rapid response care when contacted by law enforcement immediately following a suicide. Teams can be located here and new ones can be launched here.
Listen, learn, and show love gently. Sit with someone in silence, send a note acknowledging there are no words to express your sorrow, keep showing up in the months and years ahead. Donate to their kid’s college fund or their loved one’s favorite charity. Go to the funeral. Let them grieve in their way and their time.
What Can We Do?
Because “I don’t know” is more of a conversation starter than ender for me, I’m doing research for my book about how individuals and communities can support loss survivors. One idea is Ring Theory, which I experienced at the time but didn’t know had a name. It places the people most impacted by a crisis at the center of concentric circles of care and suggests “comfort in, dump out” to members of each circle based on how directly the crisis impacts them.
I’m especially interested in the lived experience of people who have supported a family member, friend, colleague, or acquaintance through the loss of their loved one to suicide. If you have such experience and would be willing to share it with me, please contact me using the private Chat space here in Substack or by email at ledawritenow@gmail.com.
My goal with the book and this season of writing is to contribute to a wider understanding of how life-changing suicide is for the people left behind. Those who support us through the darkest days of our lives can help us find deeper appreciation for living itself, one hard, confusing, beautiful day at a time.
****
Since I started by talking about the weather, I will close by saying that just as climate change is changing the world as we know it, it’s possible that accumulated grief from suicide loss across generations will change life as we know it. Good prevention, prediction, and preparation can minimize the impacts of a disaster but they cannot replace care for survivors in the aftermath. Which is key to ensuring the smallest possible ratio of devastated people to potentially devastated people as different cycles of damage and recovery spin on.
That ratio for Americans is precarious right now. We are a group of people teetering on our individual and collective ability to persevere. To will ourselves toward determination in the face of despair while struggling to get a handle on our own experience of tragedy, which is often shaped by unresolved pain and suffering over the years.
The body doesn’t just keep the score, to reference Bessel van der Kolk’s bestselling book, it referees the entire game. So does the planet. Storm season is here for a while.
My brother took himself out the morning after he turned 59. Turns out we are constantly surrounded by people who have experienced untimely deaths of loved ones. I knew Thor professionally but knew nothing about the private life he left behind. Leda, thank you for sharing your story.
This is powerful, beautifully written, and full of nuance and reflection. Thanks you for sharing this.