Suicide Widow Etiquette With Marlie Rowell - Content Warning

*Contains discussion of suicide* After Marlie Rowell's husband took his own life, she became a suicide widow. Her art project and website Suicide Widow Etiquette sheds light on the shamed, hidden conversation surrounding suicide. We're talking about how we must "feel to heal," how secrets keep us sick, and, my favorite... the refrigerator analogy of grief. Marlie is also sharing her suicide etiquette tips for friends and family of those grieving a suicide.

Transcript

Hi there,

Grave Grower,

And thank you so much for listening to this episode of Coming Back on Insight Timer.

Just a heads up that this episode does feature conversation on the suicide of a loved one and living life after a loved one dies by suicide.

Marley,

I am so delighted to have you on the show as a referral from our very own Jessica Waite,

Who came on and talked about her blog called Endless Stories.

I landed on your website and instantly,

Like,

Gasped,

Like,

Lost the breath out of me because your combination of art and words and reality is kind of like a very,

It's a gripping and tender punch in the face,

If I can say it that way.

So I'm just so excited to have you here,

And if you could please share your lost story with us.

I'm honored to be here,

Thank you.

I am a suicide widow,

But we never compare grief and we don't want a contest for what is the worst grief ever,

But I do have to disclose that as suicides go,

My husband's was,

And these are words you never use with a suicide,

But kind and gentle.

So he was struggling for many,

Many years,

Over a decade with mental illness,

And literally at the time of the suicide,

He wore out trying to live.

It was really his hospice.

So we had clarity about how ill he was.

It was a sucker punch to others because we were doing such a masterful job of pretending everything was okay.

I didn't realize how masterful that was until after his suicide,

But then my father died six months after my husband,

So I ushered my mother into widowhood and I was struck really sucker punched by the difference between an 80 year old man dying of heart issues,

A respectable death,

And the way grief was processed for a suicide of a 57 year old man,

Who quote had everything going for him.

So that launched me into a really profound,

Sacred journey with grief,

And I think the best way to sum it up is an Ian Thomas quote,

Everything has changed and yet I'm more me than I have ever been,

And that is really my truth.

Oh,

I'm so fascinated by this idea of becoming more of ourselves in grief because this is something that has resonated true in my own story as well,

But at the beginning,

We definitely don't feel that way.

I feel like we almost go through an identity crisis,

So can you speak more on that?

Oh yes,

Before my husband's death had actually worked with people as a Stephen minister,

Helping people with grief,

Whether it's death or divorce or whatnot,

So I sort of naively thought,

I got this,

And I set out to intentionally grieve and realize I didn't know anything about the power of being,

Again,

Sucker punched with grief,

And one of my favorite examples is the refrigerator,

And anyone that's lost,

Someone knows this,

Is you'd open the refrigerator and I'd see things that my husband ate that I didn't,

And then gradually those things died,

And they died slowly,

And so you'd start throwing out this because it was growing,

Things were inappropriate,

And then throwing out that,

But the saddest day was when I opened my refrigerator and he wasn't there anymore,

And grief is really powerfully disarming.

It just takes your breath away because you don't realize how every day and every circumstance in your world revolved around loving another person in direct and indirect ways,

And I wasn't prepared for that,

But I realized grief is pure love.

It's like,

You know,

You don't grieve anything unless you miss it,

And I loved my husband,

And I love chocolate.

If I run out of chocolate,

I grieve that,

And I don't think as a culture we grieve well at all.

We're really hell-bent on being fine,

Thank you very much,

And no one's fine after a suicide,

And really no one's fine after losing anything precious to them.

I'm so curious about this idea of we grieve anything that we miss.

Yeah.

Because I would grieve chocolate too if it wasn't in the world,

In a totally different way than I grieve my mother,

Obviously,

But it brings such validity to this idea of once it's gone,

Once you've lost,

You're allowed to grieve something.

I think so many people think that grief has to be death,

But it doesn't necessarily.

No,

No,

No,

No.

I think,

Honestly,

In grieving death and grieving my husband,

It's,

Yes,

I'm grieving the person,

But I had to grieve my whole future was suddenly not what it was going to be.

So all of your dreams have to be rearranged,

And that was the gift.

It was like,

Oh my God,

Who are you now,

And what does tomorrow,

How are we going to reconstruct that?

And I'd been living such a lie,

Really,

To be honest,

In protecting his image,

Because as much as we give verbal service to understanding that mental illness is an illness,

Not a weakness,

We really don't.

And so we covered up as best we could.

So I had to really sit down and go,

Wow,

Who are you?

And then there was the hush,

No one wanted to talk about the suicide,

And I needed to own my truth if I was going to heal.

And it's been 10 years.

If someone is grieving a suicide,

First of all,

I am so sorry.

And I fortunately had a person tell me early on that trauma takes seven years to really process.

Seven years is a very long time.

And of course,

I was going to excel at that.

So at six,

I thought it was pretty good and realized,

Oh,

Really,

It took me all seven.

And you always grieve.

I mean,

I will always miss my husband.

And should he was a wonderful man.

But secrets make us sick.

So that was kind of my mantra is like,

I've got a feel to heal.

And I got to dredge out all those things that I've been pushing away,

Look at them,

They're never scary once you get them out.

And,

And really own who I am,

What I want.

I didn't know what I wanted.

That's a tragic thing to not know what you want.

So I'd live my life accommodating everybody else's needs,

Honest to God up until that moment.

So the blessing is I'm finally me.

More me than I've ever been.

I want to circle back to this idea of like,

Covering it up or just not having the larger conversation about mental health and maybe what that looked like in the day to day that masks this so well,

Because I think that suicide inherently has a shock value to it.

But when it's unexpected,

Especially by family,

Friends,

Relatives,

Co workers,

The circle goes out and out.

Now,

It almost seems like there's an added layer because there wasn't sign of a visible struggle there wasn't.

I don't know,

There was just no,

There were just no clues.

And that's something I think that survivors of suicide struggled with so much is that what we didn't see a thing we couldn't have known.

And I,

I had the knowledge and the actually the constant struggle of trying to help my husband heal the depression.

So I was super aware of how bad things were.

He was a pediatric dentist.

And you know,

He,

From the time he pulled out of the driveway and went to work,

I think he used every ounce of energy to just try to get through the day.

And then when he came home,

There was nothing left.

So we were living in a very dark,

Exhausted nights are terrible for people with a very profound depression.

So I didn't have that experience of not knowing.

Some other some people who knew my husband did not know,

Well,

Very few did know,

But by the end,

He'd been hospitalized for almost three weeks,

And they try not to keep you for a single weekend in a psych ward.

So,

And I'm thankful for that,

Because that was another layer of we've tried everything.

And I equate a really profound depression being very much like cancer.

Cancer eats the healthy cells in our body,

And depression literally can eat at the rational thought process in the brain and robs you of reality.

And ultimately,

That is what happened to my husband.

We all have those dark voices in us that tell us that we're not worthy or who do we think we are that we could do this.

And with depression,

A real clinical depression,

Those are really toxic.

And that's where he was.

So at the moment of his suicide,

My children and I had clarity about he really,

He had suffered so much.

And we were not relieved,

But we were glad he was out of his angst because he really was living in angst.

And this is a story that is not told as often.

I think more often than not,

People view suicide as a 100% tragedy,

Or a 100% this should have never happened.

And this story has actually been told on coming back before,

I believe,

I mean,

Maybe season one or two with our guest Cindy Klinger,

Whose father was on antidepressants that gave him a side effect known as akathisia.

And so he took his own life as a result of the side effects of what was supposed to be healing him.

And they knew it was coming,

They saw it coming.

And so there was this sense of,

Like a pressure being uncorked,

Or like,

Almost like at last.

And that's such a hard thing to say,

Because the norm is such a hard thing.

It's such a hard thing,

Because the norm is to fight suicide period.

Of course,

And we did.

You know,

That's why he was hospitalized.

And he was earnestly trying to feel better.

So when people talk about suicide being an angry app,

There are those,

But that was not the case here.

He was literally wearing out trying to stay alive.

He really just,

You know,

He medications he,

He was eating right,

He was exercising,

He won a golf tournament the week before,

Which none of those things should have been possible.

But he was really rather heroic in the trying.

But ultimately,

It was just too much.

Life was was really hard.

And I watched that.

I mean,

Sit at dinner and cry together,

You can just you can feel the loss of hope in the room.

That's a terrible thing to feel.

I hope no one ever feels that.

But literally that all hope gets sucked out of someone you love,

And you can taste it in the air.

It's tragic.

Yeah.

And I sense that over and over and over again from your story is that this was something.

It's not situational.

It's chronic.

It's persistent.

It's it's ensnaring,

If I can use that word too.

I wonder how you feel about the dialogue about suicide in the world and or how much you participate in it,

Because I,

I struggle to speak on it,

Just from my own experience,

Because I don't have a lot in this realm.

But even to be in online spaces or in person spaces and have people say,

Well,

It's a terribly angry thing to do,

Or it's a selfish thing to do,

Or it's a last resort,

Or it's a threat,

Or you're abandoning family and friends.

Like there's all of these perceptions about what suicide is.

I don't know,

It's so frustrating to be in these spaces.

And,

And to hear these things from people like you,

You don't get it,

Do you?

I think it's good we can't get it.

I'm trying to think of how to respond to this.

The night of the suicide,

There was a crisis chaplain who knew these people exist and he he shows up at everything awful,

A murder,

A house fire,

A fatal car accident,

Suicide.

And I had been taught that suicide was selfish.

And I said,

I know that this was selfish,

And he stopped me.

And the people in the room needed to hear this because they were just they needed to hear it too.

He said,

Here's what I think happened to your husband.

You see that corner in the room?

I think that he was right there at that corner,

And he saw no way out.

He was absolutely bulldozing his way into that corner and there was no other option.

And that's absolutely,

That's when all the hope is gone.

He's really,

My husband was a brilliant man,

Brilliant.

I mean,

Very successful.

But in the moment of suicide,

And during this dark,

Dark,

Dark depression,

He was stripped of his self-worth.

So the internal dialogue that he was replaying was literally killing him.

And I don't think anyone takes their life lightly,

But every suicide,

You can't even compare,

Every suicide is so different.

And the scenarios of circumstance,

I just feel really reticent to make any blanket statement about suicide other than,

I am so sorry,

And there's no graceful way for any of us to process it.

It is really painful.

And then it doesn't help the shame that's piled on top of it.

It's like,

Wow.

Grief is hard enough,

But to them to have that judgment of well,

Like,

Well,

Could you have done more?

Or my favorite is people saying,

Well,

If I'd known,

I would have.

And I'm thinking,

Wow,

Well,

I should have called you.

Not really,

Guys.

I just,

I think we really,

I can say,

And this is the gift I have that I wish everyone did,

And very few people do after suicide.

I do know we tried everything we could,

And it still didn't work.

And he knew that too.

And that's why at the moment of suicide,

It wasn't,

He just wore out.

It's like,

I can't do this anymore.

I really did understand that.

And I think that's really hard for people to hear.

It is because our brains and our hearts so desperately want things to have gone another way.

And to make that,

It's,

What's that book,

The Year of Magical Thinking,

Where we think we can just make these other realities exist just by thinking of them.

And that's incredibly hard to just know that the statement,

There was no other way.

There was nothing else to do.

There's nothing you could have done.

Like,

When you sit with that,

You come to a place not of like airy-fairy acceptance,

But like capital A acceptance,

These are the facts of what happened.

There is no other story.

This is,

Was,

Continues to be the story.

And there's airy-fairy too.

I have had so much,

Oh wow,

Nature has healed me so much.

The continuity of watching the ebb and flow of the seasons.

I live in Oregon,

Lush and green.

That is just the reminder of the cycle of life.

And this was,

Forgive me for saying,

This was somehow the journey my husband was supposed to take,

And I was meant to share it with him.

And that also is hard to say or for people to accept,

But I know it is the truth.

And I've had a lot of really powerful dreams and reassurance that he is totally healed.

There's nothing depressed about my husband anymore.

I don't know what is next after this earthly life we live,

But he's let me know that he is absolutely free of the darkness that surrounded him.

And I'm so thankful for that.

And yeah,

People can say,

Well,

That's the crazy suicide,

But you can't take it away from me because it really is my truth.

Well,

And it belongs to you.

You're like,

I mean,

There's no other way that anybody could prove it true or false.

So why not just,

If it's serving you,

Why not hang on to it?

And I would tell anyone grieving anything to do that.

When goodness comes at you,

Instead of thinking,

Well,

That was my imagination.

And it's like,

No,

Accept that and let it nurture you.

I remember the first time I felt joy,

Which you don't feel joy forever,

But I remember I was driving.

I was driving to my husband's office and this leaf,

It was fall,

And this leaf came down and it sort of did pirouettes and then kissed my windshield.

And for just a millisecond,

I felt joy.

I hadn't felt joy in months.

It was fleeting,

It was brief,

But I accepted it.

It's like,

Yes,

That's going to return for me.

It was a gift and I could have ignored it.

That gives me chills because I don't know if I remember my first moment of joy,

But I remember looking around and seeing it in other people and on their faces.

And I was like,

It's coming.

Like I can feel it coming.

It was almost like people have anticipatory grief.

I had anticipatory joy.

I was like,

When is this coming back?

I can feel it coming.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's wicked cool.

I want to touch on something that is literally the name of your work and your website,

Which is etiquette,

Suicide widow etiquette.

And I think there's this concept,

I think we need more etiquette around grief in general,

But that's a whole other podcast conversation.

And what we strive to do so much here on Coming Back is remind people how to talk about grief as opposed to how not to talk about grief.

But what specifically do people need to know when they're talking to suicide widows?

Okay.

Don't try to fix me because you can't.

I wish you could.

And if you could,

I would let you,

But you can't.

So here's really the only thing you can say,

And it's so enough.

And that is that you're sorry.

And they do not be afraid to bring up wonderful memories of the person that has been lost.

That's true of any kind of grief.

There becomes a time when they're so afraid to bring up my husband because they're afraid they'll make me sad.

When really,

I love knowing that he's not forgotten.

And I love knowing that he's more than the way he died.

Just being sorry is great,

But don't expect me to fix your apprehension about suicide.

You know,

Why did this happen?

What could we have done?

Those things don't help at all.

I'm already just trying to still breathe,

Especially in the beginning.

And I really didn't have room in my heart to nurture other people,

Which that crisis chaplain warned me of.

He said,

You take care of no one,

No one but yourself and your two kids,

Because I'm telling you that is all you're going to be able to do.

And that terrified me on several levels.

I sort of knew how to take care of my kids,

But not really.

Never done suicide before since their father had no idea.

But to tell me that I couldn't take care of anybody else when that had been my whole MO,

You know,

I nurture and he was right.

I didn't have anything left.

And then the most scary thing was,

I didn't know how to take care of myself.

I had been so busy putting the emphasis on everyone else,

That I didn't even know what Marley needed or wanted.

And it was truly a sacred time to stop the world and have to figure that out.

My gosh,

I'm embarrassed to admit that.

I was 54 years old,

And I didn't even have a clue.

Are you kidding me?

But that really was my reality.

Do not do what I do.

And the other little bit of advice I would say is,

You know,

They jumped in with you're going to be fine.

And I would want to shout like,

When?

No one is fine after a suicide,

No one.

And that don't cry,

You've got to be strong.

I so believe in tears.

They cleanse everything.

And that's all in the heart.

I just,

My gosh,

That's cathartic.

And why wouldn't you cry?

Especially at the suicide of your head?

I mean,

Come on,

You're gonna cry.

And then the stop saying,

Suicide widow,

My God,

The first time I called myself a suicide widow,

I was being a little snippet.

And the person just jumped on me like I had just committed a felony.

And,

Oh,

You're so much more than that.

That's not who you are.

And I'm thinking,

Wow,

Of all the things that have happened in my life,

The birth of my children and the suicide of my husband are the major game changers.

And if I have to suppress any of those,

I'm in big trouble.

This is a big piece of my future perception of the world and the way I'm going to walk through it.

And then the other thing is,

This is what I was really at risk of doing,

Because this is how I was raised.

And it can sort of work for a while,

Is the push to just keep her busy.

And I just had to drop out of everything.

In fact,

The only volunteer thing I kept,

This is not funny,

But I served lunch at the Union Gospel Mission one day a week.

And I could go in there and I could have bloodshot eyes from crying all night.

And I could have dirty hair and be a mess from just grieving.

They didn't know and I blended in.

And it was like,

These are my people.

I didn't have to put on a good face at all.

I could just be there,

Be of service and leave again without having to say I was fine or pretend I was fine or accommodate anyone's anything.

I could just scoop food on a plate and hand it.

I mean,

I love doing it,

But at the time,

It was really therapeutic.

It's just a reminder that we all struggle.

Yeah.

And it reminds me of this Brene Brown quote,

And I'm probably going to butcher it,

But it's something along the lines of each of us needs a soft and welcoming space to practice our own unfolding or something like that.

But it's like,

We need these spaces where we don't have to show up in a suit of armor or in a mask in order to just let the emotions and let the experience do its work inside of us.

Yes.

And accept them ministering to me,

Which was really what was going on.

That's pretty amazing.

What was it like to suddenly be somebody who received,

As opposed to give,

Give,

Give,

Give,

Give?

Very disorienting.

I was not good at it for a long time.

I somehow equated being needy and vulnerable with being weak,

Which is exactly the opposite.

And I know now the single best way I can honor my husband and his struggle is to stay as emotionally,

Spiritually,

And physically healthy as I can.

And that honors him on every level.

But to do that,

You know,

That takes an army.

I have,

I have wonderful friends,

But I,

I have to say the nurturing I got through nature and through dreams at night,

Those what we could call airy fairy things.

Those really propelled me to know that I am never alone.

Ever.

I may feel that way,

But I'm not.

You're not either.

No one is.

I mean,

Really there is this massive love just waiting to,

To buoy us up when we need it the most.

Vulnerability is such a gift.

And it's amazing.

I'll speak from my own experience here that once that reality sets in one time,

That you're never alone,

Like it's,

It's the weirdest thing.

It's like,

It's impossible to sever.

So even now when I'm feeling at my lowest and darkest and most helpless,

I,

You know,

What's funny is I don't remember the time when I started to feel less alone again.

I remember the time when I felt even darker and I was like,

You remember when I thought I was really alone?

And that's what does it for me.

I'm like,

Remember when it was darker than this and we really thought we were alone.

So this is like nothing.

Like I can handle this even though in the moment I'm like crying my eyes out in the bathtub.

Absolutely.

But I think that is where we're like most held,

Honest to God.

I think that I grew up in a really Christian environment and I kind of think that the whole faith thing got it exactly wrong.

When I was at my darkest and I'm crying and I'm pissed off at God,

It's like,

Come on,

This is like,

Where were you?

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Then I have this love that can hold me and dry my tears and say yes,

Get it all out.

And I have this credible God that,

That knows what suffering is on a level that I'll never know.

When I'm,

When I'm feeling rejected and judged because of the suicide,

I have a God that was more rejected and judged and still is.

So there's a oneness there.

I'm not articulating this well at all,

But it's,

There's like comfort there where I realize,

Okay,

In my darkest,

Ugliest,

Messiest tears,

That's where I am actually the most spiritual because I'm being pure,

Honest,

Truthful with what from my gut is,

Is literally pulling me apart.

And that's when it comes back together.

It's a scary place,

But I just don't think you can heal unless you go all the way to that bottom before you can start to come back up and you're never alone in that bottom.

I had the privilege recently of being on a podcast called Thank You Heartbreak with another one of the guests from our show.

Her name is Chelsea Lee Trescot.

And I got onto this rant somehow that echoes of what you're speaking of and the line that I used,

And I had never used it before until this day.

I said,

There comes a point when helplessness tips into surrender.

And I was like,

What the hell is that truth bomb I'm dropping?

Cause that's amazing.

And I was so floored to hear it come out of my own face and then to remember how much it resonates with me because it's like in these moments of helplessness,

I am totally empty.

I have no more to give.

I have no more tears to cry.

I have no more rage.

I have no more energy.

And it's in those moments where that huge like swooping sensation of love and not even in a rescuing fashion,

But just in a holding fashion is,

Is wildly present.

Honor it.

Yes.

Don't you think it just totally meets you there and says,

Yes,

Babe,

This is real,

But it's temporary.

And you do surrender and there's this trust,

But you got to get that out.

I just,

I love that point when I,

When I finally got there,

I got there more than once.

And it's cause you can taste that too.

Just like you could taste snow hope,

Which my husband was trapped in,

But I can taste the rebirth of your resilience is just being born again.

And it's stronger than it ever would have been without the pain.

I wonder if this is something that you're willing to share on the show.

And the question I wrote down is what's the story that you tell your kids and what's the story that your kids tell to others.

So how have you constructed or set up your husband's suicide to continue to live in your family story?

The first thing I want to say is when my kids call and something goes really wrong and they are telling me whatever it is,

I listen to that.

And then I say to them,

I'm really sorry.

And I don't know how to fix this,

But I do know that you've been through worse and you survived it.

In fact,

You went on to thrive and you will again with this.

And they always do a pregnant pause and they go,

You're right because they have gone through worse.

Losing your father to suicide,

Losing a father in your twenties is horrible.

Losing him to suicide is really horrible.

But for the story and the family,

I think the cycle that is broken,

That needed to be broken for me,

And I think this is major,

Is I need to tell the truth.

And I was born to tell the truth and I wasn't doing that for most of my life.

And I can just see lots of layers.

I looked all the way back to about age four.

I had been prepared for this moment and I was meant to share this journey with my husband.

And I am born to tell the truth from this point forward because the truth is always pure and not threatening.

There's nothing wrong with,

It's nothing wrong with having a profound illness,

Whether it's cancer or whether it's mental illness,

Nobody chooses this.

And we navigate as best we can and are we into it perfectly?

Never.

But we navigate and that is the truth.

I think that was perfectly said and for what it is,

It's the truth of your experience.

And something that's just so interesting,

Especially in the case of suicide,

Is the compulsion and even the societal pressure to keep it hush-hush or keep it on the down-low.

So to know that your husband's death continues to remain a touch point for you and your kids and you're like,

I'm going to tell the truth from here on out,

Is almost like an insistence on keeping his memory alive.

Well,

And secrets make us sick and I don't want anyone else sick.

I don't.

I want people to own their sorrows and not push them away.

The story I like to give is when my daughter was going through her senior year of college,

They were renting a condo and the woman who had originally owned the condo told them about when she first bought it and it was new construction.

And the woman walks in with her parents who were probably helping her buy it because she was young and they walk in this brand new condo and it reeks.

And this young woman's near tears because this is like horrible and she says to the realtor,

What is that smell?

And the realtor says,

What smell?

I smell,

I think.

And the mother notices that every window in the whole place is wide open.

So she walks around quietly,

Closes every window,

Goes up to the realtor's nose and says,

Really?

You can't smell that?

Turns out a cat had been trapped in the drywall and died.

That is the perfect metaphor for how secrets make us sick.

This condo looks perfect.

Everything about it is brand spanking new,

But it reeks.

And that is the way unresolved grief is in all of us,

Whether it's a miscarriage from years ago or you didn't make the hockey team or any disappointment we have that we've been pushing away and piling it in as one dead cat on top of another because we're fine.

We're going to be fine.

We're going to be fine.

And that is not our truth.

We have to pull all of those dead cats out and look at them and they're never,

Ever as scary when you pull them out and look at them and think,

OK,

Yeah,

I had a right to be disappointed about that.

I had a right to be absolutely heartbroken about something as awful as the death of my husband.

I should be,

Right?

So I get my dead cats out and then I'm fine.

That is the only way you can actually be healthy is to get all your secrets out and own them and realize that it was a rational reaction to be sad to that.

So being sad is not,

Gosh,

We have sadness and we have joy.

It's just part of the human experience.

And don't dismiss that.

Don't run away from it.

Don't hide it behind a wall.

Let it stink.

Because when it troubles,

We never even remember what all we've stacked back there.

So when,

Like a good friend of mine just died three days ago.

And when that happens,

Then,

Oh,

All those other things come up and it's all because I loved this friend.

So instead of being profoundly sad,

Which I am because I'm sad for the loss of him not having him physically in my life,

At least I know that that sadness comes from a place of love and disappointment about what I no longer have.

But thank God I haven't.

I want to know about the art.

Where did that come from?

Because my favorite piece of it,

And I'm going to spoil it for grief growers who have not been to your website yet,

But I hope this drives them to it.

My favorite kind of mini series within the series is Dear They.

And it's like a response to all of the people who say,

You know,

Stop calling yourself a suicide widow.

That's not who you are.

Stay busy,

Busy,

Busy,

They said.

And then you have this retort where you get a chance to say,

Dear They,

Here's the reality of it.

And that's just,

It gives me chills talking about it.

Because when I first landed on your site,

I was like,

Oh,

That's what I wish I could have is an open letter forum to a collective they who just doesn't understand.

If you are struggling with a suicide or any grief,

I hope you will go look because what it is,

Is the art is the contrast between what they told me to do,

Which don't cry,

Be fine,

Stay busy,

Busy,

Busy,

Whatever you do,

Don't talk about suicide,

All those things.

And it's a letter from my soul to them,

Which is really very kind,

Just explaining,

You know,

She has to cry.

She loved him.

It's okay,

You don't have to watch.

I will do that with her.

And then it's always sincerely her soul.

And it is my soul that bubbled up and really nurtured me and healed me through that process.

The same with be fine.

It's like,

No,

I fired her.

She is no longer in charge of calming everyone's horror about suicide.

She's a little busy right now.

She's way too tired to do that.

And but it's written in such a lovely way,

Which wasn't me,

I just have to admit that came out pretty pissed off.

And then I would go to bed and then it would get edited by my soul during the night.

And I get up in the morning go,

Oh,

Yeah,

That is better.

And I would go,

You know,

Edit,

Redo and it was a really cathartic healing process.

And I display them beginning on my husband's clothes and then eventually on mine because there comes a point,

Especially with suicide in the beginning is all about the suicide,

Your grieving is just totally all about the suicide.

And that's the only people can't look at you without crying.

And then eventually it gets to where most grief starts this more about what do I do now?

Who were what is what is the future like?

And then that ends up being on my clothing.

And yeah,

It's,

I hope it I hope it helps people reading it if it helps one person,

They it helped me to create it.

So I love lecturing with it.

I have little miniatures that I can sit around a coffee table and we can talk.

And it really opens up amazing dialogue because I don't care who you are you have.

You have sorrow in your life that you are trying.

A to hide secrets make us sick and B,

You have to feel the heal and don't be afraid of feeling it.

But there are safe places to feel and they aren't in the board meeting.

So yeah.

It's just so striking.

And,

And like I said,

At the very beginning of the episode,

It's something that I saw it,

I guess I felt like I'd been punched.

But also I was like,

Oh,

That's me too.

It just poured out it.

I really Yes,

I made it but I it was I think I was just a vehicle for it.

It just came out.

And in some ways I think that's what we're supposed to be with grief too.

Yeah,

And it is all truth.

Like I said,

It's just,

This is the truth of how it felt and where it was.

And then you know,

It ends with,

You have new dreams.

And it's all about becoming that was before Michelle wrote her book.

And that's true too.

Because you know,

Truth is truth.

And we're all here to become and learn to love better tomorrow than we love today.

That's why we're here.

Reviews

Can you do one about suicide thoughts? My friend is having them.

Very touching