Archives for category: healing

My Radio Interview With NPR Boston’s Kind World Series

April 28, 2016 //

I will admit that it was hard to revisit that morning, when I learned of my father’s suicide while standing in the middle of Whole Foods. But I am moved and incredibly honored to have the chance to tell my story out loud as part of this radio interview with Erika Lantz of NPR Boston’s Kind World series. It is my fervent prayer that my words have reached those strangers in one form or another. And I hope that through my voice, the voice of my friend Pam and the retelling of that dark morning, I can help to further humanize the truth of suicide loss and the pain that we, the survivors, must endure.

Here is the link to the radio interview:

WBUR Boston’s NPR News Station Kind World #24: Imprint

Categories Coping with Suicide, healing, loss, mental health

When a Final Conversation Brings Some Understanding

April 21, 2016 //

Today I am sharing some reflections on one of the final and most heartfelt conversations that I had with my father, just before his suicide. Words that bring me some understanding, even if they can’t ease the pain.

“My father’s suicide was not a selfish act. It was not the act of a coward. It was the act of a man who was in agony and didn’t want to hurt anymore….”

To read more visit Our Side of Suicide

Categories Coping with Suicide, family, healing, loss, mental health, Uncategorized

Finding My Way Back to Faith & God

April 15, 2016 //

I don’t know how to talk to God since my father’s suicide.

Faith asks of me that I trust in the untouchable, the unknowable.

But I have lived through the unimaginable, the unbearable, and the unforeseeable.

Perhaps it is life itself that I do not trust.

God is the scapegoat

Because I still need a place to lay the blame;

Undeserved as it may be.

I close my eyes and imagine standing in front of God.

Laying out all of the shattered pieces that I have gathered up

I ask, “What now?”

And God answers me, “Entrust me with one fragment at a time.”

“Where do I begin?” I ask.

“Give to me a piece of your pain, that I may carry it and make your burden lighter.”

I don’t know how to talk to God.

But the tears flow.

I allow God to gather them as they do.

A piece of my pain is now in God’s keeping.

I’ll learn to trust again one broken piece at a time.

Categories Faith, healing, loss, Nourishing Self

A Passover Reflection for the Survivor of Suicide Loss

April 10, 2016 //

A Passover Reflection for the Survivor of a Suicide Loss

Written in loving memory of my father, Lowell Jay Herman, z”l, who took his own life on April 20, 2015

Oh Holy One,

I lay before you the broken pieces,

The fragments, once whole, now shattered by suicide loss;

Like the tablets that Moses threw to the ground.

I have wandered through this valley of shadows, this land of traumatic grief;

Just as the Israelites wandered the desert in search of a Holy Land.

But my grief knows no final destination.

Rather it is a continual path that I must travel.

It is as though I stand at the shores of the Red Sea.

One year after my father’s suicide, I am parched and so very tired;

But the waters do not part.

I hold no staff imbued with holy powers.

I must simply wade into the waters, trusting in you just as Nachshon did;

An act of trust, and faith that you will carry me through.

But my faith is shaken.

Though I do not cleave to idols that promise an end to my pain;

I have struggled to entrust it to you.

When Miriam was struck with leprosy, she was shut out from her people.

With the passage of time, the prophetess returned.

I too have felt shut out of my faith.

I have cried out for healing, just as Moses did for Miriam.

I have reviled you God.

I have pleaded with you.

And I have sat with you in silence; tears my only words.

Esa einai el heharim me’ayain me’ayain yavo ezri

I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come?

This Passover, answer me God.

I have tasted the bitter tears.

Help me to once again savor the sweet.

Let my faith be the mortar that mends my soul.

Instill within me the courage to wade into the waters; bravely like Nachshon.

May I find in them the healing that Miriam’s Well brought to the Israelite people.

Strengthen my legs to carry me across.

And just as you guided Moses on the journey, be my compass.

Oh Holy One, restore my spirit and my soul, that they may carry the fragments of my broken self with honor and dignity.

Open my heart to renewal, to shalom, wholeness; that I may carry both the hurt and the healing in the sacred space of my heart.

Help me to return again to trusted covenant with you.

You never lost faith in me. Help me to find my faith in you once again.

Categories Coping with Suicide, Faith, healing, loss, Uncategorized

Dear Self~One Year After Your Father’s Suicide…

April 4, 2016 //

Dear Self,

I know that you are hurting. The date on the calendar is looming and soon you will mark the one year anniversary of your father’s suicide. The mere thought of it feels like a ton of bricks have been laid upon your chest. It is hard to breathe, and even harder to fathom that 365 days will have passed since your world was changed forever.

I know that you are tired. It’s okay. You have been a full time student of traumatic grief. You have sat in support groups and therapy, facing the hardships head on. It is called grief work for a reason. The stages of grief have been anything but linear and navigating through them is depleting. Some days all you want to do is lie in bed, and pull the covers over your head. It would be easier to hide from all of the emotions, the firsts, the triggers and the loss. But you don’t.

Every day you get up and out of bed. You put one foot in front of the other and you live your life. You take care of your precious family. You make room for love and laughter. You are present for those you care about. You turn to the things that bring you joy; taking a hike, reading a book, listening to music and the creative joy of cooking. It is time that you give yourself credit for all of that.

You have not hidden from the truth of your loss, not once. You told all who would listen that your father died by suicide. You were honest about his struggles with depression and anxiety. Right from the start you were determined not to allow his death to be a source of shame or stigma. And you wrote the story of your grief, sharing it with loved ones and strangers alike. You have turned pain into purpose, even when you have done it through an abundance of tears.

I know that one year later you look in the mirror and you feel as if your father’s death has aged you. And I know that you are wondering why you are not further along in your healing. Sometimes you allow a perception of weakness to sneak in and take hold. You think to yourself:

If I was stronger, it wouldn’t still hurt this much

If I was stronger, I’d have found a better balance by now.

If I was stronger, my grief would be a thing of the past and I would once again feel whole.

But deep down you know that is not true.

You lost your father in a traumatic way and it has left a painful imprint on your soul. The news of his suicide forever altered you and you were shattered. One year later, I want you to see the strength it has taken to simply gather up the pieces. You are slowly putting them in new places, even if they are held there on little more than spit & a prayer. I want you to honor the emotional healing that you have worked so hard to attain, and that allows you to turn towards life & hope. Anyone can go to therapy, but you do the homework. The session begins and you allow your feelings to come spilling out. I want you to forget about that imaginary finish line on the road of grief and instead look back and see all of the things you could not do or feel in those early days of loss, that now you can. Those are victories & milestones to be savored.

I want you to think about that letter you wrote to the women who cared for you when you got that devastating phone call in Whole Foods that morning; and how it has traveled across social media, around the country and across the ocean. You helped to humanize the face of suicide loss and got people to talk about a subject that most never want to look at, lest it happen to them. Writing is healing for you, but you must see that your writing has helped to bring some healing to others. You have heard from survivors of suicide loss, survivors of suicide attempts and those living with mental illness and something you said allowed them to feel less alone. And in turn their words reminded you of how many accompany you on this journey, strangers in every other way, but connected in this struggle.

You are a survivor of suicide loss. And survival takes strength, tenacity, courage and resilience. To survive is to carry the hardship that life has dealt you and to persevere, to strive to move forward. Survival is the opposite of defeat. So please don’t be defeated.

One day, one moment, one breath at a time you are carrying this loss. And you continue to move through the valley of the shadow, striving towards life’s peaks. Some days your stride is certain & quick. Some days your legs feel weak and you inch along ever so slowly. And some days you take ten steps back and surrender to the sadness. But every day you get up and you keep going.

April 20, 2016 is coming. You will have endured a whole year of firsts without your father. You have honored his memory. You have learned to honor the grief & the loss. But you must also take the time to honor yourself and all of the growth that you have shown. Honor the brave survivor that you are. Let your scars be a testament to your strength & spirit. And keep on striving towards healing, one baby step at a time. You will get there. Look how far you’ve already come.

Dancing with my father… the last dance we would ever share.

Categories Coping with Suicide, Faith, healing, loss, mental health, Nourishing Self, Uncategorized

From Estrangement to Loss & The Gifts In Between

March 30, 2016 //

My family and I were estranged for six years. The reasons are complex, as are most families. But thankfully, the family ties that bind, though frayed & tattered, were never broken. It was Rosh Hashanah (The Jewish New Year) when our healing began. It was Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement & Forgiveness) when we spoke for the first time. And it was Thanksgiving, when we were reunited for the first time.

I remember so well as my husband, the girls and I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home; my father came around to my side of the car. I stepped out of the car and we embraced. He cried, I cried, and we held one another so tightly. And, in that year, as I sat around the dinner table with my own beautiful family, my brother and his family, and my parents, I got to live out in full the truest meaning of Thanksgiving. Yes, we lost six years. We will never get those back. But our story did not end there. It was not the final footnote. And from our pain, our hurt, our anger and our journey through forgiveness, we grew stronger, better. We loved more fully, more honestly, more openly. We became strongest in the very places that had been broken.

Soon, it will be one year since my father’s suicide. It is a painful day for me and my family to contemplate. I feel as if I’ve lived a lifetime without him, and as though he left us only yesterday. Yes, I count my blessings daily and I have found laughter once again. Yes, I am present for my family and my friends, and I turn towards life each day. But the loss has forever altered me and I am still putting the pieces together. But I am so profoundly grateful that I got three and a half more years with my father. I am grateful for every memory that we made, every laugh that we shared, and for every time we said, “I love you.” And I am grateful that I found the courage to reach out in that first letter, that letter that opened the door to a future together, and allowed us to leave behind the hurt, the anger and the sadness that had touched our past.

Life can change on a dime. Mine did when I got the call that my father had taken his own life. I guess my message is, where you can, if you can, and however you can, find forgiveness. My father left this world knowing that I loved him. And I know that he loved me. That might not have happened. And I cannot even begin to imagine what that would have felt like.

Families will hurt us, disappoint us, frustrate us & wound us. Some of those things I know are truly unforgivable. But, if they are not, if they can be overcome, looked past or let go of, do it. I regret many things, and I regret deeply that I could not save my father from himself, from his pain, from the depression and anxiety that plagued him. But I do not have to live with the regret of words left unspoken, forgiveness left unoffered and love left unshared. And for that, for the 3 & 1/2 years I got with him, that my children got with him, and for the love that we shared, I am profoundly and wholly grateful. Forgiveness is a gift. Offer it to yourself. It may be one of the most precious and meaningful things you ever do.

My brother Aaron, my mother, my father and me. The last time we would all be together.

This piece was also published on The Good Men Project

Categories Coping with Suicide, family, healing, loss, Uncategorized

To Those Who Call Me Brave for Sharing About Surviving Suicide Loss

March 21, 2016 //

People tell me that I am brave. I’m really not. They tell me that it takes courage to share my story, my loss with others. I don’t know. For me, there is no other way to wear this new aspect of self that is forever ingrained in me. I am a survivor of suicide loss. I didn’t ask for any of this and in truth, I would go back in an instant to the me that I was before: before my father’s suicide, before I became a survivor, before life as I knew it was forever altered…

To read the full post, go to The Mighty: Real People. Real Stories – Deborah Greene

This piece has also been featured in the Voices section of The Dialogue Projects.

The Dialogue Projects’ mission is to create quality products that help fund mental health organizations while simultaneously encouraging the conversation around this topic in the hopes of ending its associated stigma. All products feature an illustrated elephant, our company symbol, to represent the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’. A significant percent of the proceeds from each sale will be implemented into The Dialogue Foundation, which will help support mental health organizations. Click here for a list of the organizations/programs they support.

Categories Coping with Suicide, healing, loss, mental health

On Grief & Brokenness

March 18, 2016 //

together-and-apart-kintsugi-pottery-3-638

The Japanese have a 500-year-old art form called kintsugi, or “golden joinery,” a method of restoring a broken item with a lacquer that is mixed with gold, silver, or platinum.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that practice. This Sunday, 3/20/16, it will be eleven months since my father’s death. Eleven months ago my sense of wholeness was destroyed. My father’s suicide was like a grenade set off in the center of our family. And we who loved him most, were left gathering up the pieces.

Eleven months later, I hold those fragments. There are those pieces of the old me that I can still recognize. And then there are those that are now strange to me, remnants that no longer seem to fit. There is the pain, the sadness, the grief, the anger and the traumatic imprint of all that I have endured and lost. And there too, tenuously I hold newly discovered depths of strength, resilience and courage.

Many days I gather all of these fragments up and I cinch them tightly together. I wear them like armor as I journey through the valley of the shadows. And I tread ever so carefully, lest someone bump into my grief, my sadness, my trauma and cause me to spill those pieces everywhere. Some days I am more successful at maneuvering through the triggers than others. And other days those fragments fall everywhere, and I must stop and face every exposed emotion, every shard, every crack and every fissure. Those are the days that still bring me to my knees and open the wellspring of tears that seem to have no end.

Perhaps grief is not so different from the art of kintsugi. I read that, the kintsugi method conveys a philosophy not of replacement, but of awe, reverence, and restoration. The gold-filled cracks of a once-broken item are a testament to its history.

I carry the pieces that I have now gathered up. How I will wear them and what that will look like is still unfolding. Some days I feel them slowly falling into place, held ever so tenuously in their new found position.. And other days, well other days, they come undone simply by a passing breeze that carries me two steps backward, or keeps me stuck in place.

But I’ve grown tired of seeing those days only as setbacks, failures or another barrier to where I want to be. I know that grieving a suicide loss is a long and difficult road. And I know that there is no finish line that I will cross. It is an ongoing journey, it begins in the valley, but I believe in time there will be more peaks. I’m not naive. I know that this traumatic imprint has forever altered the course I must travel. I cannot set it down and leave it behind. Instead I must carry it. But how?

The ancient Israelites carried the broken pieces of the shattered tablets in the tabernacle, right alongside the second set of commandments given to Moses by God. The whole and the broken, remained side by side, in the Ark of the Covenant. The broken fragments were no less holy simply because they were not intact. And so it is for us—that the whole and the broken exist side by side in all of us and we carry them both within on our journeys. Each is holy, because each represents the story that we have lived.

Eleven months after my father’s death, I am like the kintsugi. I felt at one time whole. But loss has left me feeling so very broken. And no matter where the journey takes me, I will carry those cracks, scars and fissures with me. One day my grasp on them will be more certain, and I will find that they have strengthened me. One day I will find that I can look at those broken pieces and know that the best parts of me not only remain, but somehow seem to have more clarity and depth to them. One day the scabs will be more steadfast and I won’t be subject to every trigger opening up my wounds. One day, I will find that I feel less fragile. The winds will blow but I will weather them. I will find that my strength and my beauty lie not in those pieces untouched and unmarred by life, but in those that have known both love and loss, sadness and joy, anger and forgiveness, pain and healing. I will carry with me and honor the me I was before my father’s suicide, and the me that I am becoming without him in my world.

Today I still feel broken. The pieces have been gathered, and I wake up striving to put them together anew. The golden lacquer has been gently laid. I do not hide the scars. Instead I choose to honor them. They are a symbol of my strength, a roadmap of my story. And in that sacred realization and acceptance I find some healing. Because one day is not always within reach. But where I am today, in this moment, is not a failure. It is enough. There is holiness and beauty in my broken self, just like the kintsugi.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. (Rumi)

Categories Coping with Suicide, Faith, healing, loss, Uncategorized

Dear Dad ~ It Was Just a Letter

March 11, 2016 //

Writing is the painting of the voice. (Voltaire)

It is Friday night, and the whirlwind of these last days have died down for now.

I don’t know what I said in that letter Dad to have been the recipient of this outpouring of compassion. I don’t know what I said that took this letter on such a journey out into the world of social media. But it has in fact gone viral.

Here is the truth as I know it Dad. Those beautiful strangers who stood with me on that horrible morning, they are the true authors of this story. They wrote it in deed, I simply gave it wings and words.

Here is the other truth I know. I would have given anything in the world never to have had reason to write that letter in the first place.

I miss you so much Dad. It has been hard revisiting that moment that I learned you were gone, over & over again these last few days. I’ve faced a lot of hard moments, but none like that one.

Dad, I only hope that given this opportunity to share this letter, that I have helped to humanize the issue of suicide loss. I hope that every time people look at that beautiful smile of yours, that they understand that you had a life full of much joy. I hope they see their own family photo in that precious moment we shared on the dance floor three years ago. It is my favorite picture of us. I hope that helps them to understand that we were just a normal family. We loved, we laughed, we fought, we made up, we celebrated, we mourned and we cherished one another. And even with all of that, we lost you to suicide.

I think I’m probably babbling by now Dad. But here is the thing, I just want to pick up the phone and tell you all about what has been happening, all of the good that I am trying to do, the compassionate words that have been shared, the brave truths of my fellow survivors. I want to tell you all of it, because it was you who loved my writing most. But you are not here and that void feels so very palpable tonight.

I hope you see it all Dad. I hope you know what I am trying to do in your memory. I miss your voice. I miss being able to pick up the phone and talk to you. I miss you just being on this earth with me.

Thank you for every kind angel you have placed in my path these past few days. I’d like to believe it is your love reflected back to me in their words.

I can’t type anymore.The tears won’t stop. So I am going to go miss you and cry, like I sometimes need to do. Like I need to do now.

Categories Coping with Suicide, healing, loss, mental health, Nourishing hope, Reflections

Bidding 46 farwell…

January 2, 2016 //

Dear 46,
It’s our last day together. I think it’s fair to say that you truly kicked my ass. I do feel older, silver strands fill my head, my wrinkles are more evident and I’m tired. Yes, you’ll go down as the year that most challenged me, wounded me and fractured my spirit. No, you didn’t introduce those things to me, but surely you made them larger than life.

But you didn’t break me. No! Every day I journey on, through loss, trauma and grief. One step, one minute, one breath at a time. You’ve revealed the depths of my own strength and resilience to me. I can’t always access it but I know it’s there. You’ve continued to bring love and friendship into my world so I never walked through the valley of shadows alone. You’ve heightened my sense of goodness, compassion and empathy. And though you clouded my sense of hope & joy with a thick coating of dust, dulled & tarnished, they still manage to find moments to shine through.

Yes, 46… on this, our last day together I can honestly say you dropped me to my knees, sucker punched me and brought me to depths of despair I’d never known. But, you didn’t break me. I’ll cherish the good you gave me, and there was good… and I’ll bear the scars you’ve left me…and tomorrow, when 47 arrives, I’ll miss the sound of my father’s voice wishing me a happy birthday. But I will celebrate, even through tears, with the bitter and the sweet. Because I am here, because I’m surviving and because I choose to turn towards life day by precious day. You battered and bruised me, but 46… you didn’t beat me.

Categories healing, loss, Nourishing hope, Nourishing Self, Reflections