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Posts tagged with “suicide”

How to Move Forward After Loss: The 3 Phases of Healing

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“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass. You won’t feel sad forever. At some point, you will feel happy again. You won’t feel anxious forever. In time, you will feel calm again. You don’t have to fight your feelings or feel guilty for having them. You just have to accept them and be good to yourself while you ride this out. Resisting your emotions and shaming yourself will only cause you more pain, and you don’t deserve that. You deserve your own love, acceptance, and compassion.” ~Lori Deschene

To this day, I still remember that call. I had just …

Your Life Can Always Take a Different Direction

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How I Feel the Best I Can Despite My Struggles with Depression and Anxiety

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“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.” ~John Green

I remember being fifteen. I was a high school freshman who loved drawing, books, Harry Potter, and Taylor Swift. I hated math class with a passion. I had a loving family and a small white dog named Maddie. I wanted to be a writer, and to have a boyfriend. I also wanted to die.

It started in seventh grade, when my best friend, Meghan, dumped me. You hear about romantic breakups all the time, but no one seems to talk about friendship breakups. They hurt a …

How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It

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“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

Few things have the power to totally transform one’s life as gratitude. Gratitude is the wellspring of happiness and the foundation of love. It is also the anchor of true faith and genuine humility. Without gratitude, the toxic stew of bitterness, jealousy, and regret boils over inside each of us.

I would know. As a teenager and as a young man, I lived life without gratitude and experienced the terrible pain of doing so.

Outwardly, I appeared to be a friendly, happy, and gracious person. I …

How ‘Griefcations’ Helped Me Heal from Loss and How Travel Could Help You Too

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“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” ~Danny Kaye

The brochure read, “Mermaid tail, optional.” What forty-something mom doesn’t have a shimmering fish tail tucked in her closet for just the right occasion? Not me. I live in Minnesota. I’d borrow one when I got there.

I took a flight from Minneapolis to Panama City, and then a water taxi to a backpackers’ resort. Not the kind with frozen cocktails and bad DJs. The next thing I knew, I was on a sailboat, swinging from an aerial circus hoop suspended over the sparkling Caribbean Sea, dressed as a …

Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

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“Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert…)

Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

My son …

How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life

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“When you’ve reached rock bottom, there’s only one way to go, and that’s up!” ~Buster Moon, from the movie Sing

When I first heard this saying, as I was watching the movie Sing on my way to another continent, a small light bulb lit up inside me. As I sat with this sentence, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t agree more.

After hitting my own rock bottom a couple of years ago, I know that once you get there, there is no place you can go that is lower. It’s the final breaking point.

And if there is …

My Dad Died From Depression: This Is How I Coped with His Suicide

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“Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

When I was seventeen, my dad died from depression. This is now almost twenty-two years ago.

The first fifteen years after his death, however, I’d say he died from a disease—which is true, I just didn’t want to say it was a psychological disease. Cancer, people probably assumed.

I …

Why I Broke Down Mentally While Striving for Work/Life Balance

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“Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, the holder to be held, and the lover to be loved.” ~Unknown

I was breastfeeding my infant son when he bit me. That bite set the stage for a deeper unraveling then I could have ever imagined.

I unlatched him, handed him to my husband, and got in my car. As I was driving I began to lose the feeling in my hands and feet. My vision started to blur, and my breathing was fast and shallow. I was terrified I was not going to make it back home. …

The Enduring Pain of Losing Someone You Love to Suicide

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“The reality is that you will grieve forever.” ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler

March is always hard for me. Has been since March 21, 2017. That’s the day my eldest son, then twenty-seven, found his father hanging in our basement. I apologize for being so brutal.  But it was.

What no one tells you about grief, what catches you by surprise, is the fact that you can be five years out and still, when March comes around, you can find yourself in a fetal position on the ceramic floor of your kitchen—howling like a wounded dog because a memory …

Why Fibromyalgia Is the Greatest Gift of My Life

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“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” ~Rumi

TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains discussions of difficult topics, including suicidal depression and a fatal car accident.

I’ve always been an active, athletic person. In my twenties I was huge in tennis, squash, and swimming, and I began every morning with an intense workout that cleared my head and let me confront the day’s challenges with a relaxed, positive attitude. So, when I started experiencing mysterious pains and fatigue that didn’t go away no matter how much sleep I got, my life was turned upside down.

After two years …

Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

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“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” ~Umar Ibn Al Khattab

I don’t remember the exact day the message came through. It was from my son, Julian, and he needed to talk to me. It sounded pretty serious. He never really needs to talk to me.

His father was found dead earlier that week. He’d hung himself.

While this news hardly affected Julian at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried.

Our Marriage

We met in a taxi thirty-three years ago. He was the driver, …

When It’s Time to Stop Helping Others and Help Ourselves

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“Do your best and be okay with that.” ~Ursula Wharton

Late one evening I was doing some work at the last minute when my phone buzzed with a text from Alex, my neighbor’s boyfriend. He said he was rushing over and then I saw, “Chris is trying to kill herself. You gotta get in there and stop her.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I stood up too fast from my chair and dropped my phone onto the ugly grey carpet beneath my bare feet. I rushed to Chris’s apartment, which was right next to mine.

Thankfully, the door was …

Why I Couldn’t Find Love and What Helped Me (That Might Help You Too)

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“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the end.” ~C.S. Lewis 

It was a dark January day in 2008 when my auntie called with the news “He did it.”

I felt so confused. “Did he try? Or did he succeed?” I asked as my body moved into shock.

“He succeeded,” she said. And in that moment my whole life changed.

This was a moment I often wished for—my dad was gone.

Dad had taken his life on January 8th, 2008, two days after my twenty-sixth birthday. He …

When You Lose a Loved One to Suicide: Healing from the Guilt and Trauma

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“You will survive, and you will find purpose in the chaos. Moving on doesn’t mean letting go.” ~Mary VanHaute

I was ten years old when I discovered the truth. He didn’t fall. He wasn’t pushed. It wasn’t an accident.

He jumped.

Suicide isn’t a concept easily explained to a six-year-old, much less her younger siblings, so I grew up believing that my father’s drowning was an unfortunate freak accident. It was “just one of those things,” the cruel way of the world, and there was nothing anyone could have done about it.

This explanation more than satisfied me and, other …

What If There’s Beauty on the Other Side of Your Pain?

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“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~Albert Einstein

“I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to be here. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. It’s too hard.”

I’m curious how many times I’ve heard these words over my lifetime. From different people, ages, genders, ethnicities, and walks of life. The words the same, the heaviness no different from one to the next. Hopelessness has a specific tone attached to it. Flat, low, and empty.

Being the child of a parent who committed suicide, there is a …

How I Survived Suicidal Thoughts When I Really Wanted to Die

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**If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts now, please consider speaking with a trained professional through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 1-800-273-TALK.

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca

When I was twenty-four my best friend died suddenly in a car accident. She was like a sister to me, so this plunged me into a deep depression. I had struggled with depression since I was about fourteen, but it became much worse after she passed away.

At times suicide honestly seemed like the best possible solution to what I felt like I knew …

Lessons from a Life Lost Too Soon: Don’t Let Your Inner Critic Destroy You

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“What you tell yourself every day will lift you up or tear you down. Choose wisely.” ~Unknown

It was a story I just couldn’t get out of my head. A young teen had died in a town not far from where I live, a town where I used to live. I knew people who had kids who knew this girl.

I heard she was a swimmer, bright and popular. At first the talk was about how she’d died. I heard someone surmise that she was killed. Someone else said it was a horrible accident, and of course, there were murmurings …

How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

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“No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve battled depression for most of my life. In my younger years, it gripped me pretty frequently. I was first hit with suicidal thoughts at the age of fifteen, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was young and dumb and had no idea what was happening.

When I was twenty-five it hit again. This time, however, I understood the cause. I was getting divorced, and my entire life was in turmoil.

It was at this time that I decided that I was going to do something about it. So, I …

How to Keep Going When You Want To Give Up on Life

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post references suicidal thoughts and may be triggering to some people.

Since my first post on Tiny Buddha entitled “Why I Didn’t Kill Myself and Why You Shouldn’t Either,” I’ve been doing amazingly well. I thought I had this suicide stuff in the bag. I thought it lived in the past. I thought it was no longer a part of me.

I thought I had found my way forward and that I would never feel that way again. I thought my suicidal ideation was a historical part of my existence.

I was wrong.

Tonight, I …