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With Clenched-Teeth Determination - Survivors Keep Going!

by Anonymous 

I was looking for something to write about on the subject of inspiration since we are in the seasons of Passover and Holy Week.  I really did not want to get into the very personal religious aspects of inspiration so I looked up the “Top 12 Inspirational Rock Songs”.   I am certain each of us already has a favorite and one that blasts from the shower and over the noise of the vacuum cleaner.  I am also pretty sure the song changes with any life adjustment and age, of course. 

Anyway, we are Suicide Survivors so what better song than Queen’s “We Are the Champions”?  Here is just one section:   

We are the champions - my friends 

And we'll keep on fighting - till the end - 

We are the champions - 

We are the champions 

No time for losers 

'Cause we are the champions - of the world 

Admittedly, it is not very Easter or Passover-like, but it has a lot of other things going for it.  You can’t resist the beat and people seem to be able to learn the words [if only the refrain] pretty quickly or if they have been to enough youth sports’ events. 

Since it is Spring and time for renewal, I would like to name every suicide survivor, a CHAMPION. Our fight often can be against our own feelings of confusion, guilt, anger, anguish, despair, etc. or it can be against a world of people who barely understand the idea of PTSD grief if not experienced first hand. 

Even after we have melted down to the point of jelly, we pick ourselves back up for another day, a day toward the time when it might hurt even the tiniest bit less.  We pick up our loved ones’ legacies and carry the fire with grace and determination.  When we fall, our fellow champions pick us up more than one time, very often. 

We all have lost one or more most precious and loved people.  Yet we ourselves are not “losers”.  The struggle to make the suicide survival journey is as grueling as they come.  I believe it is in our clenched-teeth determination to keep going that makes us champions. 

Each time we politely and thoroughly explain suicide to someone else, we become champions for the cause of Suicide Awareness.  Some of us are able to save a life even for a stranger in that capacity.   

So when someone says something hurtful or inaccurate or insensitive, remember you are the champion. 

And I can’t resist:  “We will, we will rock you.”  If not today, one day ... 

Enjoy the spring!

The Year Before Last

by Ronnie Walker MS, LCPC

We are beginning a new year.  My hope is that you will find many moments of peace and healing in the coming days. I hope that you will be able to look back over the previous year and see, moments of accomplishment … along with any pain that might have been experienced.

New Year’s Day brings to mind the lament of a mother in a poem by an anonymous author ….  In the poem a mother wonders if anyone will understand that although her child died the year before last, grief is still raw.  Time stands still.

From the poem: 

“They didn't understand, they didn't reason
that last year, for me, the loss was still new.
They thought, "It happened last year,
so long ago, why does she still cry?"
I could see it in their eyes.

This New Year's Day, will it be different?
Will my first thought upon awakening be,
Oh God, my son died the year before last,
not a few months ago, not this year or even last year,
but the year before last?
He will never live in this year.

Will they even listen, should I not look them
in the eyes, for fear that I shall see,
"Why is she still crying? It happened so long ago,
It was the year before last."

Those words that we use
to describe the passage of time,
a few months, this year,
last year, the year before last.
They don't know that time stands still for me.

Will they understand why I cry?
Don't they know
my son just died...

the year before last?”

(Author Unknown)

As we mark this New Year’s Day on the calendar, I want to assure everyone that we in the Alliance of Hope hold no timetable for grief and that you can count on us to be there this year and next, with an understanding that love never dies.

Ronnie Walker MS, LPCP is the Founder and Executive Director of the Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors.  She is a survivor of suicide. 

8 Ways to Survive Holiday Shopping - And Help Others Feel Better, Too!

By Debra Stang

Saturday, December, 2009. I woke up in a lousy mood. The weather was cold and dreary. I had to go to the mall to finish up my Christmas shopping. Oh, and nearly seven months earlier, one of my closest friends had ended her lifelong struggle with depression by completing suicide. To say that I wasn't in the holiday spirit would be an understatement.

The day just kept getting better, too. I couldn't find a pair of socks that matched. One of my cats coughed up a hairball on my purse. The parking at the mall was hideous. I missed my friend Julia, who could always make me laugh about things like that, so much it was physically painful. I'd always thought people were exaggerating when they talked about a broken heart, but my chest actually ached when I thought of her absence.

I was bound and determined to have a terrible day. Just then, the woman parked next to me got out of her car. She looked every bit as miserable as I felt. Watching her, it occurred to me that I wasn't the only person in the world who didn't want to be spending the day at the mall. Maybe I wasn't the only one plowing my way through the holiday season after a loss of some type.

Suddenly, an idea popped into my mind. Even if my day was shot, there was no reason to inflict my bad mood on others. I came up with eight rules that day, and I've used them each year. The result has been that even though I start out feeling dreadful, I usually come home feeling not-so-bad. I'm sharing them here with you in the hopes that they can make your holiday shopping bearable as well.

1. Don't grumble, whine, or complain even if everything about your shopping experience really is horrible. Keep reminding yourself that it's only a few hours and you'll be back in your comfortable home soon.
2. Greet the bell ringer in front of the store politely, even if you don't intend to give a donation.
3. Smile at the store clerks and take a moment to thank them for their service, even if it wasn't that great.
4. Let an elderly shopper or a shopper with a small child cut in front of you.
5. Donate a toy to Toys for Tots.
6. Buy a gift card for a friend who is struggling financially and send it to him or her anonymously.
7. If you eat lunch at a restaurant, leave the server a great tip.
8. Buy yourself a beautiful ornament or another special gift that has meaning to you as a reward for surviving the day.

I wish you all the best holiday season possible. May you find peace within yourself and joy to share with the world!   

Light Will Return to My Life

"It is in touching the darkness that we come to know more about Life and the Light."

by Ronnie Walker MS, LCPC 

“Facing the darkness, admitting the pain, allowing the pain to be pain, is never easy. This is why courage – big-heartedness – is the most essential virtue on the spiritual journey.  But if we fail to let pain be pain ... then pain will haunt us in nightmarish ways. We will become pain’s victims instead of the healers we might become.” -- Matthew Fox, Original Blessing

In many survivor groups across the world, December ushers in a special ceremony of remembrance and hope.  Survivors gather together during this darkest time of the year, light candles, and recite a communal prayer or affirmation.  Each phrase is punctuated with the sentence: “Light will return to my life.”

During the years I facilitated support groups here in Chicago, we too gathered in a circle and repeated this ceremony.  In addition, members brought photos of loved ones and passed them around.  It felt very special to see the images of loved ones.  Invariably the photos featured faces filled with intelligence, compassion, humor and warmth.  Many were strikingly handsome, surrounded by family … with never a hint of how things would end.  Sharing photos always brought group members closer together.

Sometimes when new members arrived at those December groups, they would tell the rest of us that they had little hope that any light would ever return to their lives ... and we understood how they felt.  In the immediate weeks and months following loss, it is often difficult to believe in anything … much less that “light will return to one’s life." New bereaved survivors struggle … many in the battles of their lives … against debilitating emotions and daunting challenges. Some new survivors report a sort of surreal quality to their first holiday season after loss.  They say they feel profoundly disconnected from the rest of the world, which is immersed in decorating, partying, and buying presents.   

I believe it is particularly important at this time of the year, for our survivor community to reassure the newest members that pain does diminish and transform and that those who have died do not stop being a part of our families.  Those who have died are still loved just as strongly as ever.  We consciously and unconsciously find new ways to relate to them and carry their spirits with us as we complete the journeys of our own lives. 

Carl Jung once wrote: “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness’s of other people.”  It would be hard to find a survivor of suicide who has not been immersed in darkness at some point in the aftermath.  It is in touching the darkness that we come to know more about Life and the Light. 

As this year comes to a close, I want to wish all of our members a peaceful holiday season.  I pray that light will return to your lives in the coming months and years and that each of you will become a source of light and inspiration for others. 

Ronnie Walker MS, LPCP is the Founder and Executive Director of the Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors.  She is a survivor of suicide.  

Aftermath: Thanksgiving Takes Me Back ...

Caroline Donelle

by Caroline Donelle

For the first time in what feels longer than it actually is, I made Thanksgiving dinner for close family members just a couple of weekends ago.  (Here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October.) 

I don’t remember last year’s holidays.  I was still only marginally conscious then, so roasting a turkey this year felt like a big event.  That I completely ruined the gravy didn’t seem to matter.

Three years earlier, I sat in a hotel restaurant eating a Thanksgiving turkey supper the hotel offered to guests who wouldn’t be home for the holiday.  I was the only person in the dining room that night.  It was late and as I sat eating a lukewarm facsimile of turkey dinner, I thought about my daughter who lay fighting for her life in an intensive care unit just a few blocks up the street.  I was staying in the hotel but living in the hospital.

The meal was a depressing meal I’d rather forget but don’t.  Sad memories that fall on such occasions have a way of force feeding the reminder every time the holiday comes around again.  The sadness was less palpable this year but it was there nonetheless.

Before my daughter chose to end her life 21 months ago, we fought to save it.  Three years ago this month, I put my very ill and dying daughter in the back seat of my car and drove 6 hours to Toronto where the possibility of a future lay.  Cystic fibrosis was in control of her life then.  She needed a double-lung transplant and her only hope of getting one was being there.

Doctors had cautioned me against removing her from hospital and taking her on a long car ride to the land of the largely unknown but where the last chance was.  “Do you want to go?” I asked her over and over again while doctors hovered near.  “Yes” she answered breathlessly.  She knew too.  So off we went.  We had reached the end of options here.  We either went or she died where she lay.

Friends called me while in transit later to remind me to dial 911 once I crossed provincial borders so help could be flown in if she suddenly stopped breathing or went into cardiac arrest.  That was pause for thought. 

The drive to Toronto from Montreal is a long dull one -- miles of nothing but gas stations and coffee shops and fast food restaurants near small towns off the main highway.  I don’t know what I would have done had something worse happened on that ride.  Thankfully, it did not.  The whole worse-case scenario was already upon us and I was stuck on auto-pilot.  All I wanted to do was give her another chance.  I was driving to get-another-chance town.

Through the Eyes of a Father and a Child

By Robert Hensel

Losing anyone to suicide is extremely difficult. Whether it is a co-worker, a friend, or a family member, there is no situation that does not have an impact on us.

As we approach Father's Day, I want to offer a glimpse through a father's eyes following the loss of his son to suicide, then actress Michelle Ray Smith's perspective following the same type of loss of her father.

Father's Point of View

From an anonymous article by a father reflecting about losing his child to suicide. He said: "I drew some insight from some Pink Floyd lyrics, 'The child is gone, the dream is gone...' Part of me had died in more ways than one; something of me as well as my son was forever gone.

"In Loss and Change (1986), Peter Marris wrote, 'The fundamental crisis of bereavement arises not from the loss of other but from the loss of self.' When a child dies, the 'loss of self' is amplified.

"We have not only lost our child, but also the part of us that they represent. We have lost the future that we would have made together. This is not the aspirations of academic, athletic, or professional success that we may all harbor. It is the vision of being together in the future as we were in the past.

"Parental grief is different. The process is different and so is the aftermath."

The Final Inspection

Unknown Author

The soldier stood and faced God, which must always come to pass

He hoped his shoes were shining just as brightly as his brass

"Step forward now, you soldier, how shall I deal with you?

Have you always turned the other cheek?

To My Church have you been true?"

The soldier squared his shoulders and said, "No, Lord, I guess I ain't.

Because those of us who carry guns can't always be a saint

I've had to work most Sundays, and at times my talk was tough

And sometimes I've been violent because the world is awfully rough.

But I never took a penny that wasn't mine to keep...

Though I worked a lot of overtime when the bills just got too steep.

And I never passed a cry for help, though at times I shook with fear.

And sometimes, God forgive me, I've wept unmanly tears.

I know I don't deserve a place among the people here.

They never wanted me around, except to calm their fears.

If you've got a place for me here, Lord, it needn't be so grand.

I never expected or had too much, but if you don't, I'll understand."

There was silence all around the throne, where the saints had often trod,

as the soldier waited quietly for the judgment of his God.

"Step forward now, you soldier, you've borne your burdens well.

Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets; you've done your time in Hell."

From the Forum: A New Level of Peace

Recently, I've felt a new level of peace. I don't know if it's my daughter's upcoming wedding or time pulling me along (May 22 will be five years since my husband's suicide) or something else, but I can look back now and realize I've been holding on too tightly to his memory putting my own life on hold, still. Oh, there will never be a time when I don't love him, or miss him, or see something that reminds me of the precious love we shared, but this acceptance thing seems to have many layers, and I've found a new one. I feel like I've truly built a new life that is not just "okay." It's good. And it's good that I am beginning to stop living in the past. That was hard for me. He was all I knew. I still feel a little funny about saying all that, but it's true.

The Survivor Experience: Is the Second Year "Worse"?

by Cynthia Slider

The simplest answer to the question, "Is the second year worse?" is..."It depends." What it depends on has several different answers. For some, the first few months are the absolute hardest, and once those pass it becomes, not easier, but less hard, if that makes sense. For some people, the first year is absolutely the worst pain they could possibly feel and after getting through the "firsts" (birthday, anniversary, date of death, holiday seasons that have special memories), it does become less hard to get through the second year and the years thereafter.

Some survivors are in such a "fog" during the first months and year that when the second year arrives, it feels like it is worse, harder than the first one. This is because their minds have gone to such great lengths to protect their fragile emotional state that they have not really had a chance to truly grieve for their lost loved one. Once that fog lifts and the subconscious begins to allow "reality" to intrude, it feels like the pain is once more overwhelming and even worse than it was in the beginning.

Is the pain that comes with reality "worse"? Perhaps "worse" is a poor choice of words and "extremely different" would be more descriptive. I've described the pain of losing my son to suicide as like being on a roller coaster of emotions--the highs and lows hitting fast and furious in the beginning, once I began to become accustomed to the "ride," those highs and lows stopped being so damaging to my emotions.

Debra's Column: Happy Birthday, April Fool

(Note: My friend Julia was born on April 1. She always referred to herself as an April Fool.)

Happy Birthday, April Fool!

It's been almost three years since I've seen you, since I've talked to you, since I've felt your large, comforting arms pulling me to you and heard your laughter, warm and contagious, in my ear.

I wish I could say I'm really angry at you...but I'm not. I believe the pain I so often saw in your eyes was just the tip of the iceberg. You hid the rest from me, from anyone who loved you, and kept the full burden for yourself. It was too large for one woman to fight. It dragged you under.

Perhaps it would have been too much even for an entire army (and believe me, J, you did have at least an army's worth of people who loved you), but I wish you had let us join in the fight.