Hi Friends. Welcome back to my blog! I know. I have been quiet. I needed a minute to breathe and regroup. Thank you to so many of you that reached out to me during the past few weeks of quiet time to check on me. Your continued support and empathy continue to touch my heart and it means more to me than you will ever, ever know!

It has been 5 ½ months since my brother, Jamie, chose to leave us. In that time I have learned more about suicide than I had ever hoped to know. In fact, learning anything about it at all was never even on my radar. However, my family and I weren’t given the choice, so here we are today learning more and more about suicide and its aftermath with every day and every month that (painfully) passes us by.

One of the things that I have learned is what it means to be a “suicide survivor”. We all have many labels in life in which we can refer to ourselves: daughter, sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter, aunt, wife, mother, friend, etc. Unfortunately I have added “suicide survivor” to my resume. The term is not even something I was familiar with prior to April 3rd. In fact, the term itself is a little confusing. Many people might interpret it as someone that has attempted suicide and survived the attempt. It’s actually quite the opposite. The dictionary defines survivor as “a person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died”. So, a “suicide survivor” is actually the person/people that have been left behind as a result of a loved one’s suicide.

We get asked often how we are doing now (5 short months later). Are things feeling “back to normal”? Are things getting “easier” or “better”? I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that those questions offend us or bother us. We realize that it is just plain awkward and that the words don’t roll off the tongue easily when asking someone about the recent suicide of their loved one. Believe me, your continued concern and love is one of the only things that has actually kept us going on certain days. But, in effort to continue being as honest and as real as I can be with you about the ripple effect of suicide, I am feeling compelled to answer some of those awkward questions for you and tell you about the past few months.

(As I write about this, keep in mind, these are MY feelings. Every single one of us are grieving the loss of Jamie in a different way. The way I feel and grieve is completely different than that of my parents, or my brother, Chad, or my cousins, or my aunts and uncles, or his children, or even any of his friends that may be reading this. I know we are all in this together, but I also know that we are each our own person and we each feel things differently. I’m not trying to speak for my family as a whole, but as my own individual self and as his sister).

In one of my previous posts (A Life Sentence Called Grief) I talked about my all-consuming grief. I was pretty open and honest about the mental and emotional state I was in at that point of our journey. To be honest, the first few months I was secretly starting to doubt my own survival. Not because of suicidal thoughts, but because my broken heart was so real and the grief was unlike anything I have ever felt. At moments, I literally felt like I was suffocating and that the grief alone was going to suck the very life right out me. In the mornings I felt like a robot on autopilot. I was getting up every single day and going through the motions of my life, but coming home at night after work barely able to function or feel anything but sadness and complete and utter exhaustion. The sad and embarrassing truth is that my 12 and 10 year old little girls were, at times, mothering me and comforting me (alongside my husband) in ways that no child should ever have to do.

In July, just when I was feeling my lowest, I survived by keeping busy. We traveled. We took my parents to Florida to our favorite vacation spot, and upon returning home we went directly to Chicago to treat my parents to their very first Major League Baseball experience at Wrigley Field. We had a great time. In fact, we had better than a great time. It was the first time in weeks that we allowed ourselves to live and to feel something other than sadness. It was also the first time that grief and joy began to collide. I wish that I could convey what that feels like, but I’m not sure my words are adequate enough. It is joy mixed with guilt, mixed with shame, and then mixed back up with more joy just because you are so relieved to remember what joy even feels like, even if just for a brief moment. Regardless, July gave me some much needed, happy and healing moments with my little family and my parents. Unfortunately, when we got home from our travels, I crashed. And, I crashed hard.

The first part of August, I met with Kent, a dear family friend that worked in education for 30 years. He spent the last 22 years of his career as a school psychologist. I was doing research for a piece that I plan to write very soon. Our meeting was enlightening in many ways that I can’t wait to share with you, but because he is a very good family friend it was also a very personal and very emotional (tearful) meeting. Thankfully, given his experience as a psychologist, he was able to see right through me in that hour and a half that we spent together. He asked me what exactly it was that I was doing to take care of me. Here I was researching and pouring my heart into this blog, talking about the importance of mental health, all the while ignoring my own!!!!! Looking back I knew that I needed the help. I mean, for crying out loud, my brother just died by suicide!!!!! OF COURSE I needed help coping with it!!! I knew that the fine line between normal grief and anxiety/depression was getting too blurry for me to continue managing on my own, but it is so hard, my friends, to admit it when you are the broken one. But let’s keep it real here… aren’t we all just a little broken? We are all human and with the human experience comes challenges and struggles. We were born to be real, not perfect. I’ve said it before and I will say it a million times over on this blog; it is OK to not be OK, and I was NOT ok. With Kent’s encouragement and referral I did start seeking psychiatric help from a very good psychiatrist to help me manage this season of my life and I am happy to tell you it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Something else happened in August that I would like to tell you about. I received a private message via Facebook Messenger from one of my daughter’s friend’s mothers. (Did that even make sense? It’s like saying my cousin’s brother’s sister’s dog… Wow. Anyways, I hope you followed that)! The message was very sweet and unexpected and it struck up a brief but very meaningful conversation. One of things she asked me was if I ever took time to read back the articles that I publish on my own blog? She suggested that I do so because perhaps by reading back my own writing I might find a little bit of myself that I was missing; the strong part of myself that others could see through my writing, but that I had lost in my own grief. I didn’t heed her advice immediately. In fact, it was just a few weeks ago after one of my therapy appointments that I decided to do as she suggested. She doesn’t know it (I probably should have messaged her right away to thank her again) but that ended up being one of the best pieces of advice I have received yet. It wasn’t until reading my entry “A Life Sentence Called Grief” that I realized that I actually have come a long ways in just a few months coping with my grief than I sometimes give myself credit for.

So, getting back to those questions that we are so often asked. Are things feeling “back to normal”? Are things getting “easier” or “better”? Even though I know I am making progress in how I am coping and surviving this grief, I stand firm in saying that no, things will never be “normal” or “better” again. Like, never. I am, in fact, doing exactly as the term “suicide survivor” implies. I am surviving. I am learning to adjust to a new life because the life I knew prior to April 3, 2018 no longer exists. That version of myself no longer exists. Period. But am I surviving? Yes. I am surviving. I am learning that the human spirit can be just as strong and resilient as it can be broken. But, it takes patience and it takes time.

Jamie’s suicide has changed the course of my life in ways that I have yet to see take shape. But, I have faith that somewhere amongst all this chaos there has to be a purpose. He isn’t here physically, but he is with me in everything I do. There are brief moments that I swear I can feel his arm around my shoulder the way he would always do, and that I can hear him whispering “Come on baby girl. We got this”. I just know that eventually he is going to help guide me into finding my greater purpose in all this.

In my next post I want to talk about mental health and how it pertains to our children and our schools/education system. Don’t worry. I know I haven’t worked in education or in the mental health industry so I did some research first and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things I learned. And, just last night, I had a pretty amazing break through and an incredibly enlightening experience in my own home with my almost 13 year old. I can’t wait to tell you about that too. Stay tuned!

XOXO – Jennifer

National Hotline for Suicide Prevention: 1-800-273-TALK