My Forever Son: Grief and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide

My Forever Son: Grief and Healing After Losing A Child to Suicide

Summary

My Forever Son: Grief and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide is a profoundly moving blog that speaks directly to anyone who has endured the heart-wrenching loss of a child. It intimately chronicles a mother’s experience with grief and the delicate journey toward healing following her son’s suicide. Author Beth Brown courageously opens her heart, creating a tender and supportive space for those who are wrestling with similar pain. My Forever Son serves as a beacon of comfort for parents navigating this unimaginable path, providing solace and understanding in their darkest moments.

I hope that someday we will have a better understanding – one that perhaps permits us to give grace to the one who took their life and see it as something that happened to them, rather than something they did to themselves and others. –Anonymous

• My Forever Son blog showcases stunning imagery from the author’s gardens, which offer tranquil moments. They provide peace amidst the grief journey.
• Emotional poems delve into a parent’s mourning process. They examine deep loss and the quest for understanding, encapsulating despair while simultaneously seeking solace and healing.
• Through deeply moving personal stories and insightful reflections on grief, Beth offers comfort to grieving parents. Her candidness illuminates her search for meaning in the midst of sorrow.

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Message of Hope

“I used to think healing meant forgetting. Now I know it means carrying my child’s memory with me, letting it shape the way I love others.”
—A parent in healing

Related Reads

• What to Say to Parents Who Lose a Child to Suicide
• Navigating Grief After Losing a Child to Suicide
• Understanding Grief: 3 Years After Losing a Child to Suicide
• Finding Hope, Healing, and Resilience in Nature
• Healing Grief: Poetry for Parents After Child Loss to Suicide

Must-Read Posts

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Fresh Poetry and Articles

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Coping with Grief and Finding Healing

“To Hold This Pain and This Beauty Side-by- Side”

The light is soft, it is beautiful here, there is a breeze. The pain is always there for us. It will be waiting at the apartment when we return tonight, it will be lying next to us in bed or come to us when we wake; we always have it. But we have to let this beauty in, too. That will be the work of all the rest of our days: to hold this pain and this beauty side by side, without letting the one crush or crowd out the other. We have to let this beauty in, too.

Sarah Wildman, “I Am Trying to See What My Beautiful Daughter Saw,” Aug. 25, 2023, New York Times

Grieving the Deep Wound of Losing My Son to Suicide

Healing the deep wound of losing my son is ongoing in my life. It always will be. Always he is there. In my sleep, my waking hours. On his birthday and mine. When on his memorial date I go to see him where he is not. His grave. For he walks with me. We remember, and I smile with love and with heartbreak. These are not easily separated. Ache and love walk together, joined in my heart. In early grief, only ache flowed through me. All the time. Everywhere. In his room. In my work. I couldn’t breathe without him.

Healing Through Carrying Pain and Love Together

Now, thirteen years later, my love for my son and my ache of missing him have joined together. My ache is my love, and I have grown accustomed to carrying the weight. I have moved forward in my life. Not moved on, for that implies I left something, someone, behind. Dylan is always with me. Nudging me to smile at the little things in life. The silly antics of my two rescue kittens. The depth and brilliance of my gardens–flowers, shrubs, trees, a water pond. He reminds me how precious life is. How fragile.

My Forever Son Reminds Me How Precious Life Is. How Fragile.

I capture life’s fragility in my photographs of my gardens. I find color, hope, and peace in nature. Spring brings the reawakening of all the flowers, shrubs, and trees that lay dormant over the long, cold, bitter months of winter. Each year, purple and yellow crocus emerge from their winter’s sleep. Then yellow and white daffodils bloom. Shortly thereafter, red tulips rise tall, even when cooler temperatures still prevail. But come spring, when the brilliance of sun, blue skies, and flowers seemingly appear against an impossible, immutable winter,I find hope in nature’s resilience.

Message of Hope 

“I still ask ‘why’ every day. But I’ve learned that I can carry my questions and my love together.”
—A parent in healing

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Finding Hope and Healing Resources

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Key Resources for Navigating Grief and Guilt

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Essential Support Resources

Professional Organizations

American Association of Suicidology
suicidology.org • (202) 237-2280
Promotes public awareness, education and training for professionals, and sponsors an annual Healing After Suicide conference for suicide loss survivors. In addition to the conference, they offer a coping with suicide grief handbook by Jeffrey Jackson. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

The Compassionate Friends
compassionatefriends.org • (877) 969-0010
Offers resources for families after the death of a child. They sponsor support groups, newsletters and online support groups throughout the country, as well as an annual national conference for bereaved families.

The Dougy Center
The National Center for Grieving Children & Families
dougy.org • (503) 775-5683
Publishes extensive resources for helping children and teens who are grieving a death including death by suicide. Resources include the “Children, Teens and Suicide Loss” booklet created in partnership with AFSP. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention and Aftercare
thelink.org/nrc-for-suicide-prevention-aftercar • 404-256-2919
Dedicated to reaching out to those whose lives have been impacted by suicide and connecting them to available resources.

Tragedy Assistance Programs for Survivors (TAPS)
taps.org/suicide • (800) 959-TAPS (8277)
Provides comfort, care and resources to all those grieving the death of a military loved one through a national peer support network and connection to grief resources, all at no cost to surviving families and loved ones.

LOSS
losscs.org
Offers support groups, remembrance events, companioning, suicide postvention and prevention education, and training to other communities interested in developing or enhancing their suicide postvention and prevention efforts.

Online resources

Alliance of Hope
allianceofhope.org
Provides a 24/7 online forum for suicide loss survivors.

Help Guide
helpguide.org
Provides resources and tips for how to navigate the loss of someone to suicide.

Parents of Suicides (POS) – Friends and Families of Suicides (FFOS)
pos-ffos.com
An internet community to connect parents, friends, and family that have lost someone to suicide.

SAVE: Suicide Awareness Voices of Education
save.org/programs/suicide-loss-support • (952) 946-7998
Hosts resources for suicide loss survivor including a support group database, newsletter, survivor conference and the Named Memorial Program, which offers a special way to honor your loved one.

Siblings Survivors of Suicide Loss
siblingsurvivors.com
Provides resources and a platform to connect with others that have lost a sibling to suicide.

Finding professional care and support

Find a mental health provider

• afsp.org/FindAMentalHealthProfessional
• findtreatment.samhsa.gov
• mentalhealthamerica.net/finding-help
• inclusivetherapists.com
• afsp.org/suicide-bereavement-trained-clinicians

Find a provider for prolonged grief

• prolongedgrief.columbia.edu

Find additional resources for marginalized communities

• afsp.org/mental-health-resources-for-marginalized-communities

Crisis Services

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
988lifeline.org
Call or text 988 (press 1 for Veterans, 2 for Spanish, 3 for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults) or chat 988lifeline.org
A 24-hour, toll-free suicide prevention service available to anyone in suicidal crisis. You will be routed to the closest possible crisis center in your area. With crisis centers across the country, their mission is to provide immediate assistance to anyone seeking mental health services. Call for yourself, or someone you care about. Your call is free and confidential.

Crisis Text Line
crisistextline.org
Text TALK to 741-741 for English
Text AYUDA to 741-741 for Spanish
Provides free, text-based mental health support and crisis intervention by empowering a community of trained volunteers to support people in their moments of need, 24/7.

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