suicide stigma

Exploited — Week 16: One Year Later

October 11, 2025

Most of our wounds remain safely hidden in our own psyches. Often, we pick and choose whom we share our deepest thoughts and hurts. We choose to share with “safe” people and find healing in that shared space of community, grace, and love. We choose not to share with people who are “not safe:” people who would misunderstand us, minimize us, or intentionally harm us with this sacred information. In this way, we manage our pain. We protect our hearts. This is safe.

Privacy is seldom discussed amongst mourning communities, and I suspect scarcely thought of by those who support survivors.

Police, media, and gossip often accompany sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic deaths. At a minimum, police create reports and etch into public record details that feel so intimately private. It’s not often that our most painful experiences are published to the world.

When this happens, multitudes of “unsafe” people have what feels like limitless access into the pieces of survivors’ hearts that are still bleeding.

These unsafe people take that information and form conjectures meant to pierce the bleeding hearts of survivors. Or maybe they’re not meant to… but they do.

People I would not choose to share this information with know the final details of my mother’s life. These facts that feel so close to me, so personal to me, so private to me, so painful to me are in the reckless hands of unsafe people. People who don’t know me well, people who don’t know my family well, and people who attempt to weaponize that information against us.

Pain and rage and mystery tend to create delusional stories in hurting people’s hearts. No one wants to accept this reality, and so they make up their own and kill her survivors in the process.

Stigma. Once more, here it is: I think some people would have rather I died than my mother. I think some people would have rather everyone in my family died rather than my mother. I think some people still want us to die. That’s what their actions communicate, that’s what their rumors point to, and that’s where their conjectures conclude.

And then you don’t know who to trust. Who is safe? If I speak with them, will they use my words against me? Will they use my words to harm me and my family? So then I withdraw because no one feels safe anymore.

How exhausting.

I just want to mourn my mom. My mom.

It’s so messy, all of this surviving suicide.

They want us dead or perhaps they want us more injured than we already are. I’m really not sure what they want, but it only creates more suffering.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want my Dad to die. I don’t want my brothers to die. My Mom and my brother are already dead. My mom is dead.

Suicide survivors need your support: we need you to acknowledge and affirm our pain. We need to know you see us in all of our pain. So much of support is simply helping us tend to this pain and to care for ourselves when we feel as though we can barely stand.

It’s so painful when these private details are published to the world. Anyone can bring it up at any time, no matter how unsafe they may be. But that’s just the reality of loss.

I just want to mourn my mom.

I miss you, Mom.

October 11, 2026

Ah yes, I remember finding out that my mother’s family began sending out my mom’s police report to the whole world. They would ask the most random people if they wanted the report. It didn’t matter how individuals responded — they’d send out the information whether people wanted it or not.

Then they’d tell everyone how awful my family is and would rage at anyone who attempted to share a different perspective.

Like I wrote last year, it still feels like they want me to die. Like they want my whole family to die.

Sigh.

I cannot imagine intentionally inflicting added pain on people while they’re enduring life’s most intense atrocities. That is evil.

People who partook in that campaign and added to our suffering — their actions were evil. Their motives were wicked.

I have been amazed how some people who called my mother “friend” treat me now. I was amazed at how her church treated us, and how they ostracized us.

It blows my mind.

My grief, my vulnerability, my privacy, and my mother’s death were exploited by the family and church community I should have been able to trust to treat me with compassion, dignity, and love. They should have protected me.

I won’t minimize the evil that my mother’s family and church inflicted upon my family. I am grateful, though, for the clarity and life I’m building without them. I’ve realized and unlearned so much since saying goodbye to them, and it’s so freeing.

I wish my mom would have lived to experienced this freedom, too.

Remembering — Week 15: One Year Later

October 3, 2025

I loved my Mom.

When you lose someone, loss tends to multiply all around you. There’s the one massive loss followed by a series of losses that convolute your grief and make it all so difficult to process.

There’s the drama, the unexpected twists, and the complications you would not fathom. There’s blame, stigma, and criticism waiting to greet you at every turn.

And, oh yeah, there’s the fact that someone you loved died.

The initial months of grief bring triggers you don’t know you have. One day, I’ll get used to them and have a better idea of what will cascade in outbursts of tears or uneasy anxiety, but for now, it could be anything.

So much feels stolen when someone dies. Suddenly Mom dies and my whole relationship with her is available to the watching world. People are drawn to chaos and redemption: some turn away because it’s too painful to watch, while others lean in and hope to see a brighter day.

Today, I remember our smiles. I remember my Mom’s beautiful enthusiasm and I remember us rejoicing together, enjoying one another’s companionship. I remember her warmth and endless laughter, I remember her closeness, and I miss her.

October 6, 2026

I wonder, if we were to read the pages of our own lives, would we see clearly the good that comes from anguish?

An excerpt I l wrote in the back of a book. February 24, 2025.

* * * *

There are so many little things I miss about my mom. I’m being able to call her and talk about nothing. I miss the way she laughed. I miss her blind optimism, but perhaps that was just something she faked. I miss her smile. I miss the way. She celebrated little things. I miss being able to talk to her about my life. I miss having someone who actually cares about all the stupid tiny details of my life the way she did. I miss how effortless it was to enjoy life when she was alive.

I loved my mom, and each day I grow more convinced that Love is the only eternal thing. Love does not fade. I’ve been grieving my family for so long, I’ve learned that Love never ends, even when those you love are buried beneath the earth.

Added, Inflicted Suffering — Week 13: One Year Later

September 21, 2026

I’m a little “late” to write this post because I have been so enormously frustrated and exhausted.

Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.
John 8:7

Within the past month, there have been some who surmise that they have discovered the answer for “why” my mother ended her life, and with that “answer,” they cast stones at my family.

Lovely.

In the name of love for my Mother, they seek to harm those she loved most.

Those who believe they discovered the answer claim that they saw the signs, and, to that I ask, “why did you not share them?” If you think you found the root cause, if you think you saw it while she still lived, why were you silent?

Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

There is no room in this sacred space of mourning and bereavement for blame, self-righteousness, shame, and condemnation. It is shame that kills us most. Do not speak of things you do not know or understand. Do not assume to know the mind of the departed. Do not impart discord, hatred, and cruelty on her survivors.

Victims and perpetrators, that’s what everyone is in the wake of a suicide, including the one who physically died. Those left behind simply become more dead than alive, people walking without their hearts. Sullen, sunken, and tired eyes barely greeting those around them.

There is much we do not know, and there is much we do know. Do not be foolish enough to think that you have it figured out, and do not be cruel enough to speak abhorrent conjectures into existence.

This is the mess that fuels the stigma suicide survivors live through. This is the loss that begets loss, the suffering that begets suffering.

Yes, it’s harsh. Yes, it’s cruel. And yes, unfortunately, it’s the reality.

* * * * *

For those seeking to help and ease the suffering, the best thing you could do for your friends in mourning is simply to show up and listen with empathy and understanding. Advice doesn’t help. Platitudes don’t help. Conjecture doesn’t help. Empathy and compassion help.

Calm kindness helps. Showing up helps, checking in helps.

Reader, may your lives never experience this horror [again], and may love and compassion greet you. may kindness and humility envelop you. May reconciliation find you. May peace carry your broken heart.

September 19, 2026

Not much left to say about this, other than shout out to my Mom’s family and church for adding to our suffering in such a sinister way.

Reading my own pointed words from a year ago, I feel compassion for the panicked woman reacting to added atrocities. I’m not sure how she made it through it, but I did.

* * * *

Words stab, they leave holes and wounds left for victims to mend.

Duplicitously, words are one of the few ways to mend wounds left behind by cruelty. To heal from harsh words, we have to speak them and share our stories with empathetic witnesses.

Why are we a people so afraid of grief and honesty? It’s like people can understand the need to share frustrations and emotions, but when it comes to grief people assume it cannot be spoken. But we must speak about the things that overwhelm us, especially grief.

A Suicide Survivor’s Perspective on Suicide Prevention — Week 12: One Year Later

September 12, 2025

Happy Suicide Prevention Awareness Month 💜🩵💜

I write, with a pit in my stomach, dryness in my mouth, and fear behind my eyes.

For years, I’ve dreaded this month. It’s a month in which I felt so invisible and so abundantly reminded of my own pain. No one really cares about awareness months, except the people whose lives they reflect. For suicide survivors, it’s a tiny little broken community, screaming out in the darkness. It’s not like heritage months or LGBTQ+ months or even cancer months, which all seem to have so much support… because so many people are affected by prejudice and cancer.

Of course, I have been well aware of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, but it felt as if no one else really was. September meant annual Suicide Prevention trainings at work, where I’d cry to myself during my computer-based trainings, or fight not to weep during the in-person HR trainings where no one else was affected… except me.

Quite honestly, Suicide Prevention Awareness Month feels like a giant shame-fest for survivors. “These are the signs,” the trainings warn. Only, the thing is, we can see all of the signs, take all the right actions, and people can still end their lives.

So I sat isolated in trainings, and reflected on all the help we did get for my brother Patrick. All the signs we did see. All that we did do.

I reflect on my last conversation with Patrick, when he told me “Hopey, you’re my hope. You make me believe that we’ll really beat this.”

This is the first year that it seems other people are aware of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month: it fills my Facebook and Instagram feeds with posts of warning signs, of fundraisers, of hope, and of so much sadness. It’s strange, and it still feels so icky.

For my Mom, there weren’t signs. It’s a terrifying reminder that, if someone really wants to die, he or she will ensure that we can’t stop them.

Where is the hope in that?

I’m not sure. I’m not so sure there is any hope to prevent suicide. For now, you can hope for me, and maybe I’ll find hope again someday.

What I do know is that this world was a much brighter place with her in it, and the world is a much brighter place with you in it, too.

September 13, 2026

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we cannot prevent suicide. Not really. I think that it’s too late by the time someone gets to the point where one wants to end one’s own life. People who want to end their lives do it, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

It’s ironic — we teach people to “look for the signs” before someone’s life ends in suicide, and then we teach survivors to say “even if” after the fact.

“Even if I checked in more.”

“Even if he or she spoke up.”

“Even if I was more involved.”

Our ideas about Suicide Prevention detail a broken system: we can’t tell preventers one thing, tell survivors the exact opposite, and attest to making progress.

Suicide prevention begins long before someone starts to exhibit warning signs and before someone utters woeful statements.

Suicide isn’t simply a collection of symptoms — it is the result of profound mental and emotional distress. It can be the consequence of an unhealthy mind or a mind in crisis, a mind that struggles to perceive reality clearly.

Sometimes you can tell when someone is physically sick, sometimes you have no idea: it’s the same with mental illness. People experiencing suicidal thoughts may be suffering deeply while simultaneously being unable to recognize how unwell they are because stigma, fear, and the illness itself distort their perception.

That’s the frightening thing the mind unwell — it can convince someone that he or she is okay. It can convince someone that everyone else is the problem. It can convince someone that seeking help is more dangerous than seeking treatment. It can convince someone that death is the only end to pain. The idea that death is the only option to end suffering is both untrue and terribly tragic.

* * * *

We can’t prevent suicide by looking for signs.

We can’t prevent suicide by being kind — though kindness helps.

Perhaps we can prevent suicide by listening to the narratives that people speak; especially listen for changes in someone’s thinking, relationships, and perception. Maybe then, we can notice threads of delusion or unintentional self-deception . Sentences that do not sound quite right — not only about self-harm, but about someone accusing everyone around them of being destructive. Discord can be one of the earliest signs of mental distress. If we do hear stories echoing oddities or triggers [reactions that contain more emotion than one may think appropriate, which often point to deeper wounds], perhaps we can prevent suicide by calling that out and helping others realize that they may need professional treatment.

Perhaps ending the stigma and the denial about mental illness will help individuals’ awareness of and willingness to connect with personal care.

At the end of the day, if someone is in such profound distress that they believe they need to die in order to survive [again, this is a clear sign of mental unhealth/severe mental distress], they may succumb to viewing death as the only way to escape their suffering, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop that. Everyone has the power to choose and the power to act.

If you have had this thought, please seek professional care — you are suffering and you deserve help. Your thoughts do not make you broken, and your suffering is not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that you are struggling. There is no shame seeking help. Choose life. By seeking help, you will discover renewed life beyond your suffering. Healing mends hurts. It does not erase them, but healing will transform your life into something beautiful and beyond the pain you are experiencing today.

* * * *

So no, I’m not convinced we can prevent suicide, but I am convinced that we can better support high-risk individuals. We can intervene earlier, reduce suffering, recognize vulnerability, and support people better.

There are groups who face significantly elevated risks of suicide and, as such, they deserve particular attention and support.

Suicide survivors [immediate family members of those who died by suicide] are at the highest risk of dying by suicide. Support them.

Middle aged individuals are highly vulnerable. Connection tends to dissipate and unresolved trauma tends to surface — if you are a middle-aged individual, please meet with professionals to help you deal with current stressors, past problems (traumas), and take it seriously. Support them.

LGBTQ+ individuals are highly vulnerable. Stop rejecting people because of complexities / preferences you may not understand. Support them.

Veterans are highly vulnerable. Support them.

Refer to the American Society of Suicidology and the CDC for additional details.

For the love of God, support these people. If you are in one of these four groups, please take care: know that you are vulnerable.

If you have no idea how to support survivors of suicide, a great place to start is by reading Megan Devine’s It’s OK that You’re Not OK. This book isn’t centered around suicide and is a great resource for a lot of different groups, because it will teach you how to speak to people in crisis.

It’s 2026. We are in the age of unlimited digital resources — if you don’t know how to support someone at risk and you want to help — go educate yourself.

A Family Fractured, A Truth Exposed — Week 11: One Year Later

September 6, 2025

I began writing these posts to bring awareness to grief, loss, and surviving suicide.

I lost my brother to suicide when I was 21: back then, very few people in my life had experienced any type of familial loss. I lost my mother to suicide when I was 27, and, still, few people in my life have experienced familial loss.

A majority of people my age haven’t experienced loss, and a majority of people who have experienced loss have not experienced suicide.

Most people reading these posts know me and my family, and have thus now been affected by suicide.

These posts are meant to bring awareness and to highlight a community of mourners. I try to write about my individual experience with grief and it seems that many have found solace and community from these words.

A few weeks ago, I wrote how many have experienced me at my worst while I have experienced them at their best — their tenderest, their most thoughtful, their most considerate, their most generous. It has been beautiful to see people show up for me and my family.

I would be remiss not to mention how this brings out the worst in us, too. Unexpected loss makes people quick to anger or irritation as the brain tries to process a world that no longer makes sense.

Suicide loss forces people to try to find meaning behind a senseless and terrible loss, and this can turn people against one another in the vilest ways. Endless questions of Why did she end her life? exhaust survivors’ minds and, too quickly, the community that should rally to support one another the most instead turns on each other.

In trying to find meaning, survivors can all too easily blame one another — It must have been her job stress. It must have been the church. It must have been her family. It must have been her parents. It must have been her kids. It must have been her spouse. It must have been her sibling. It must have been her friends. It must have been myself. You should have seen the signs. I should have seen the signs.

Do you see how damning those statements are?

Damning.

Those statements destroy, and, yet, those who should support one another the most can viciously accuse one another with similar statements.

People think it. Some people say it. All survivors feel it.

The truth is that all of this is horrific. The truth is that no one on the planet wanted this. The truth is that any of us would have done anything to prevent this outcome. And yet, people still whisper accusations about survivors and can scream them at her closest friends and family members.

Nobody wanted this. Nobody caused this. Don’t blame her community. Don’t blame her friends. Don’t blame her family. Don’t blame yourself.

Don’t add more hurt to the most painful situation imaginable.

September 6, 2026

Ah yes.

This is the post that cost me my grandparents and aunt. Or rather, it simply exposed the rotting beneath our fragile relationships.

I’ve already written of their audacious accusations and the intriguing lengths they went to communicate the misinformation — the hate mail, the phone calls, the texts . I’ve notated how my mother’s church harbored them at our expense, indulging their sinister fantasies, and pretending that I blamed their organization . As classic abusers do, my mother’s family urged people “not to mention anything to ‘the kids’ [me & my brothers] to protect our relationship,” which is really ironic because my aunt was barely involved in our lives. We maybe exchanged one phone call a year.

I don’t blame my aunt for our emotional distance — we’d been long distance family my whole life — but to be so uninvolved with my life, and then to start saying wicked, wicked, wicked things about my Dad and my family right after my mother’s ghastly death?

Oof.

At the time I wrote this post in 2025, I didn’t know half of the insane things my aunt and grandparents were saying. I suspected something because things were just… off, but I couldn’t imagine the things they would do or say.

I should have been able to imagine it, though. They did the same thing to my Momma after Patrick died. They told her she was a terrible parent and that they should have taken Patrick away — they claimed it was Mom’a fault he died.

Despicable.

I’d like to claim that I’ll never understand why my mom allowed them back into her life, but that would be untrue. Love, oh it can be so powerful. It can be so dangerous.

When you love someone, you can let them abuse you again and again and again and you can want them back despite all the atrocious pain they intentionally inflict upon you.

It’s heartbreaking when someone you love mistreats you. Forgiving someone can bring them closer, but when the patterns persist the hurt will repeat.

I understand now that, a year ago, I was writing about a pattern that had already happened to my mother and that I didn’t yet fully recognize was happening to my father again.

I confronted my grandparents after I wrote this post, detailing that I suspected they were saying unkind things.

I asked them to stop.

I told them I loved them.

They didn’t respond.

One year ago, and I never hear from them.

Traveling Bags and Broken Hearts — Week 9: One Year Later

August 23, 2025

Traveling while grieving can become a sick game of “how many places can I be sad in?” Each new experience serves as a reminder of how I can never share any of this with my mom.

Grief mutes the senses and dulls the atmosphere. It prohibits its host from experiencing anything to the full. The infamous brain fog clouds everything one’s eyes behold and rains on the memory of one’s newest experiences.

Traveling is helpful, I suppose, in that it requires a massive amount of focus from one’s mind — one must keep moving, walking towards the goal of his or her next destination. One’s loss can’t be at the forefront of the mind when navigating unknown places, but the ache is there. It’s always there.

The deeper horror of how my mother died resides beneath the exhaustion of traveling with grief. Death is such an unwelcome visitor, knocking on the doors of our lives and bursting them open despite our protests. Illnesses can creep in to poison one’s life, accidents can wreak havoc and destroy life, wicked people can barge in and steal life, but what is this?

What is this?

How terrifying that one’s own mind can betray itself and create death in a most unnatural way. How terrifying that we can’t even see it coming.

And then there’s the stigma: Stigma about grief, stigma about suicide, stigma about mental health, and the deep shame these stigmas create for people who struggle and for survivors left behind by those who lost the battle. Stigmas that prevent people from getting help. How can one reach out for help when everyone around them expects to have the answers?

Our church did not/has not publicly acknowledged my Mom’s death — my mom, a highly influential staff member of the church. What type of message does that send to the stigmatized? What message does that send to the thousand who attended her service and who are in deep mourning?

Maybe they don’t address it because they’re terrified of it, too. Silence always helps, doesn’t it?

Ignoring problems never makes them go away: Silence simply suffocates the suffering, and stigma shames them into solitude.

There should not be shame in “having demons.” Life is abundantly difficult and misery isn’t something to be ashamed of. There should not be shame for having a good life and still struggling with terrible intrusive thoughts. You should be safe to voice that. You should not be shamed or silenced for voicing how horrible life can be and how tormenting your own mind can be. Even God acknowledged that it was not good for man to be alone. Even Jesus acknowledged that life is troublesome. Even Jesus asked for a different way out.

I return home from a trip I aimed to keep very private — there’s a comfort in enjoying quiet and hidden moments after the world discovers something so deeply personal out about one’s life — but all I can think of is the fact that my Mom won’t be there when I get home.

She used to say that she couldn’t wait to get home after traveling because “there’s no place like Florida.” She loved its warmth and its beauty and its vibrancy. She loved that it was home, and she built her home in the loveliest ways.

I can’t reconcile how someone who loved life so much, and who loved me so much, could execute the cruelest action against all that she loved.

I wish she thought that she could get help. I’m sickened that she couldn’t verbalize her struggle. I hate the stigma, I hate the silence, I hate the finality.

If you have ever — ever — ideated, please speak out. Seek a professional counselor and share your ideations. Don’t let shame kill you. Don’t let shame destroy everything that you do love in life.

Be there when someone gets home. Be there when your friend gets home. Be there when your family gets home. Be there to welcome your loved one back. Don’t let stigma take that from all of us.

August 26, 2026

There are so many things that are simply eternally somber when you’re a survivor. Holidays, birthdays, travels, any new experience: everything happy eclipses with hollowness because of the life-sized void filling one’s life.

We survivors simply learn to exist with the void, to carry it with us like another piece of luggage. Sometimes we utilize tools that make the baggage easier to carry, other times it feels as though the weight encompasses us entirely.

This time last year, my sister and I travelled to London with little bags and breaking hearts but we had a lovely time despite the heartache. We conversed while we explored, we reason while we walked, we navigated foreign streets while seeing pretty new things. It was a precious trip and it was a sweet trip. It was fun, too. I look forward to our next trip 💗.

So much of surviving is learning to live with sorrow beneath happiness, to cling to the old and dead while experiencing the new and wonderful.

So much of suffering while surviving suicide is derived from stigma. I don’t know if my mother’s former lead pastor ever acknowledged her death publicly. Again, what type of message does silence send? It saddens me for the people who looked for the church to teach them to mourn and were greeted with silence and stigma instead.

I have a few people who seem to only reach out to me when I write something about that church — that feels icky too, as if they reach out to admonish me or correct my perspective. It amuses me how many congregants are quick to justify their pastors’ transgressions and rebuke the wounded for writing the truth.

Stigma scares people from getting help. It shames them from considering help and hinders the realization that someone may need help. Judgement kills emotional vulnerability and teaches people to keep to themselves. Isolation festers unhealthy thoughts and behavior, and a mind decayed wholly can no longer seek help.

Stigma is not talking about it. Stigma is pretending everything is okay. Stigma is spiritually bypassing. Stigma is dismissing the reality of mental decay.

If we could only teach people to speak instead of to simply obey and conform, perhaps then people would truly be healthy.

Photo by Karley Hope Photography

Ghost Stories — Week 6: One Year Later

August 1, 2025

I know pain, I know it well. I am friends with sorrow and companions with anguish. I’ve made a home with sleepless nights and solitary mornings. My eyes sore and strained, my lungs feel heavy and weak.

I have known sorrow for years, it has always been with me. It resonates throughout my mind, into my chest, and it overflows from my eyes.

I was just getting used to happiness. Laughter and joy, for what felt like the first time, finally took residence in my soul. I was healing. I wasn’t afraid of the worst case scenario anymore. I felt freedom and enjoyed the good gifts I had. I felt plenty in my abundance, and I felt safe with my family.

We were building a home here, we were building a life here. Our days were filled with sunshine and laughter. My only concern was what joyous outing we would participate in over the upcoming weekend.

I thought we were in this together.

I thought we loved this life, and maybe we did. I thought we were all healing and moving forward after catastrophe. But while I flourished, part of her soul was dying.

She couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t tell anyone. That will never make sense to me. That will always haunt me. That will always terrify me.

Some days it feels impossible to truly smile. How many days did she feel like that, too?

Every day of this nightmare, it’s like I discover something new. Something new about my Mom, something new about my reality. I’m forced to process a complex piece of information day after day, thought after thought, moment after moment. It’s exhausting. It’s haunting.

Maybe ghost stories were never really about apparitions but about the horrors left behind by the deceased. The painful thoughts they force you to think, the painful loss you have to shoulder. The painful dreams that wake one up in the middle of the night. I feel haunted by my mother and haunted by her actions.

I can’t feel a mother’s love from the grave. Not like this. Not when she leaves me with all this. All I feel is the pain and abandonment from being left behind.

The saddest part is that she never would have wanted that, but she doesn’t get to influence or comfort me anymore.

August 3, 2026

I often think about the line I can’t feel my mother’s love from the grave. It’s still true.

* * * *

This week, Carrie took me to New York for my 29th birthday 💜. We went in February 2019 and had such a delightful time that we wanted to do it again!

Nostalgia, though, delivers a collection of recollections. February 2019 was a mere three months before Patrick (Olivia’s father) died. Olivia was nearly six years old, but she and Carrie were separated from Patrick.

Since that February 2019, Carrie married and got pregnant. Her sweet husband Josiah was murdered during her pregnancy. They had a beautiful baby girl, Josi Faith, the February after his death. Then, my Momma died. Nostalgia no longer carries only happy memories. Instead, it has become an archive of grief and ghosts.

Perhaps we are haunted not only by their deaths but also by the way that loss is tethered to our memories of life.

Three deaths, one birth, all within seven years. It’s a lot to remember. We are tormented by the choices my brother, my mother, and a stranger made. I wrote last year that my mom “couldn’t” tell us about her demons, but, realistically she wouldn’t. She — and Patrick — had the power to share the truth before longing for death overwhelmed their will to live. Each person had the power to make a different choice that would have preserved life, but each chose death instead. That is haunting.

Shrouded with death, we try our best to live. Ever haunted by the past, we step forward into our new lives.

It was a beautiful trip to New York. It was sunny and glorious and fun and wonderful. We laughed, we hugged, we played, we explored.

We live this beautiful mosaic life: we’ve been building it from the shards of glass that shattered from the gunshots that haunt us. Their ghosts, ever with us, and ever reminding us of their absence from our new reality.

May we continue to build beautiful lives.

May life refill us.

May new memories create safe places.

May our nervous systems find rest.

May we always love.

Distraught. On Losing a Parent to Suicide— Day 26: One Year Later

July 17, 2026

Losing a parent feels like losing one’s foundation.

Losing a parent to suicide feels like finding out one’s entire life was a lie.

Distraught – that has been the word most on my mind today.

Suicide makes one relive and rethink every interaction with the lost loved one, and, today, it’s made me angry. I’m angry that my Mom is gone. I’m envious of everyone who gets to have a mom. I see a mother loving her young children, and I think of my mother and how much I know she loved me and our family. But I see a mom with her young children and can’t help but think how could you [Mom] do this to me?

How could she be so hopeless? She truly had so many things she loved, looked forward to, and enjoyed about life. She never uttered a word about hopelessness, but it was there. Maybe it was always there.

Maybe every day for the past 51 years was a blessing, maybe every day was one more day than she thought possible. Who knows? We’ll never know, so it almost doesn’t even matter.

I am distraught. I am distraught that my mother had these thoughts. I am distraught that she couldn’t think of all the beautiful things she had to live for in her last day on earth. I’m distraught because, as hopeless as she clearly was, she did have so much that she loved and so much that she did look forward to.

I am distraught because I am angry with my mother for choosing this. I am angry at God for allowing it — which is likely bad theology, honestly. God gave man the power to choose, and my mother chose poorly on that day. I am distraught because I have to have all of these thoughts and think through all of these things. I am distraught because every day feels like I’m learning something tragic I didn’t know — as if my life hadn’t had enough tragedy in it already.

Thanks, Mom.

I am distraught because I loved my mom. I loved her so much, and any of us would have done anything for her. I am distraught because she hurt immeasurably bad and there is nothing I can ever do about that, ever. I am distraught because I will carry this devastation with me for the rest of my life.

I am distraught because I know that God is good, and that God will bring good and beautiful things into my life — things I will never get to share with my mother, whom I loved so much.

I am distraught because I have to watch my Dad and brothers not have a wife and a mother. I am distraught because I have to watch my husband and my in-laws not have their mother in law. I am distraught because I have to watch her friends not have their friend. My beautiful Momma.

I am distraught because she did this. I am distraught because, in her mind, she had to do this. I am distraught that people’s minds can do that to them.

I am distraught that little things in my house get messy — my bathtub needs cleaned, my library has books and pens that I don’t know what to do with because I’m still using them and still reading them.

I am proud. I am proud that I am brushing my hair every day. I am proud that I am getting up every day. I am proud that I am leaving the house every day. I am proud that Dad and I are going on bike rides every day. I am proud that I am eating every day. I am proud that I am showering [almost] every day — sometimes I don’t remember if I have or haven’t showered, but I know I’m brushing my hair and teeth each day. I am proud that I am exercising every day. I am proud that I am going to therapy. I am proud that I am doing the bare minimum to at least be physically okay. I am proud that I started reading my Bible each day. I am proud that I am letting people help and support me. I am proud of a lot, and I am thankful for a lot.

Parents really are foundational. I feel like a house whose foundation has cracked in half. Restore me, Lord, for my foundation crumbled.

I have enough without my mom. My life is still good without my mom, but, God, I wish I had my mom to share my life with.

July 17, 2026

This post resonates with me deeply.

I vividly remember the utter anguish of those mere 26 days after suicide destroyed her. Back then, it was unfathomable to imagine living without her. Now, I’ve already grown accustomed to her absence, but all of life remains foreign to me. Existential dread fades to a quieter, guttural anxiety; no longer the terror of losing her, but the constant ache and exhausting reality of living without her.

I’m still distraught about everything mentioned a year ago, and I always will be. I’ve learned how to carry the anguish, the disappointment, and the horror of it all.

* * * *

The American Society for Suicide Prevention asserts suicide is not a “choice” that its victims make. Our laws even protect people by means of an insanity defense: defendants admit their actions but cannot be found culpable because of their severe mental impairment (illness).

I’ve read that calling suicide a choice is both inaccurate and increases the stigma around it. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Refusing to label suicide as a choice destigmatizes survivors — no one looks at the survivors of those who have died of cancer and blames family members. No one questions, “what did they do to them?” when someone dies of an illness. No one thinks their family is better because disease takes the life of someone else’s family.

In the same way, I suppose it does destigmatize those who died by suicide — no one calls those who died of an illness cowardly or selfish. No one claims it’s a person’s decision to have a fatal disease.

If we understand mental illness for what it is — an illness — they’re right. Rational people don’t make irrational choices and, ultimately, suicide is quintessentially irrational.

Maybe the act of suicide itself, like every other illness, is not the choice but the consequence of what happens when someone does not seek proper medical treatment and intervention.

The knowledge of having an illness or disease, however, provides the choice [and the responsibility] to seek treatment.

People who ideate — people who think things like “I’d be better off dead,” “they’d be better off dead,” “if I could just die and go to heaven, it wouldn’t have to be like this anymore,” “it would be easier if I were gone” — have the choice and the responsibility to seek treatment. These are neither normal nor safe thoughts: they are clear indicators that you are suicidal. Wishing away your life in the hopes of heaven isn’t faithful, it’s suicidal.

I think some people may not realize how mentally unhealthy they are because it’s common for people to joke about death. I hear phrases like “kill me now,” or “shoot me if ___ happens” or “it’s so boring, I’d rather die than sit through ___” weekly, if not daily, laughed at as sarcastic comments. These phrases normalize suicidal thoughts. Some churches unintentionally perpetuate this in their messages on heaven and Christ’s return — longing for Christ’s return as if He didn’t already bring salvation to earth. It’s not a healthy teaching to preach people to wish their lives away; it’s not preaching salvation, it’s preaching suicide.

Maybe people do not ultimately choose to die by suicide, but many have the opportunity to choose treatment and help for their mental illness.

Whether or not my mom chose to die by suicide, she did choose not to seek treatment. That feels personal. That hurts. That is part of what makes surviving suicide so terribly complex.

* * * *

I choose to live.

Despite the pain, despite the tragedy, despite the judgement, despite the cruelty, despite the anguish, despite the horror, despite how hard it is to carry the weight of what I’ve lived through.

I choose to heal.

To prioritize my mental health, to seek the treatment Mom wouldn’t, to live a full life.

I am so proud for the choices I’ve made and the person I have become since Mom’s life ended in ruins. I’m proud of the truths I’ve been seeking, and the lies I’ve rejected; truths built on fear aren’t truths, they’re distortions hiding insidious motives. All those little things, like brushing my hair every day when breathing felt impossible, have added up. I’m proud of who I am becoming and how I’m healing.

May we seek help when we need it.

May humility guide our thoughts and our beliefs.

May we see God.

May we know his compassionate love.

Baskin Robbins — Day 23: One Year Later

July 14, 2025

Adrenalin has faded. Shock and denial slowly sift away, and reality rises like the sun in my tired mind. Tears fall more readily, memories pour out more steadily, and I remain dazed.

Grief shrouds everything, creating fog in every way. I don’t realize how dense the brain fog is until I attempt to have a conversation — it’s like I can barely remember to finish a sentence.

Any chores accomplished are simply done by an automatic response from years of habit. If I take a sweater off or a pair of sunglasses, I place them down and I will completely forget about them, leaving tattered articles throughout the house.

We were quite social today, which is both nice and weird. It’s like re-acclimating into society: it reminds me of being at a restaurant in a foreign country where I don’t know the language or the customs. We’re all still eating, which is pretty universal, but everything else feels so different.

I’m so tired. So, so, tired.

Everything is sad — it’s the opposite of rose-colored glasses. It’s like seeing everything in deep shades of blue and gray, muting colors from the world.

July 14, 2026

Update: I’m still tired. All. The. Time.

Least favorite phrase people regularly say to me: “Tired?? You’re too young to be tired.”

Also way too young to lose a sibling and a parent, but thank you for letting me know that I shouldn’t be tired. It really helps me feel even more isolated and out of place from people my age.

I’m traveling right now for work, and this Baskin Robbins happened to be right by my hotel. I saw my photo from last year and decided to go and honor Momma — B&R was her favorite ice cream shop.

The Danger of Silence — Day 22: One Year Later

July 13, 2025

We don’t have to be afraid of our emotions, we don’t have to be afraid of experiencing deep sadness and despair, but we should be afraid of not sharing those emotions. We should be afraid of bottling up our feelings, we should be afraid to pretend everything is okay, we should be afraid of running/hiding/escaping from our pain.

Pain demands to be felt. When we ignore it or when we hide it from the world, we destroy ourselves. It’s not fun to be sad, it doesn’t feel good, but it is vital to our health and to the health of our community.

Isolation demands secrets and keeps one quiet. Feeling one’s pain will not ruin oneself, but unshared thoughts and feelings can consume their host.

True community, sincere authenticity, and genuine friendship begin when honesty permeates every interaction. The pain that we conceal cannot stay hidden. We cannot protect our hearts from feeling deep heartbreak, but we can grow and heal from that hurt. Sharing our pain creates a system of rivers and waterways that lead to an ocean of safety — it protects from flooding and destruction that unchecked thoughts create.

Yes, enjoy privacy, yes, be discreet, yes, be careful with whom you share your inmost thoughts, but make no mistake: you must share. Be honest with yourself about your thoughts and feelings, and be open with your friends.

The only way we overcome darkness is with light — the light of honesty and truth.

July 13, 2026

I’ve learned that judgement is the greatest predictor of social withdrawal: we share when we feel safe, we hide when we fear punishment, misunderstanding, and loss.

Maybe suicide prevention should focus less on encouraging people to open up, and more on becoming a society that prioritizes psychological safety and cultivates the proper environment for honest conversation.

People don’t speak up when they’re afraid to be condemned or when they fear another’s reaction. Sometimes this fear is based on current intrapersonal relationships, while other times it’s rooted in past trauma.

May we be a people who listen with empathy and kindness.

May we choose to believe the best in our interlocutors.

May our compassion outweigh our condemnation.

May grace lace our conversations, connect our relationships, and strengthen our attachments.