Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope

Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope

ABOUT THIS POST: Surviving the Suicide of Your Child: Support, Resources, Hope provides a rich bank of valuable information, resources, and support for parents who lose a child to suicide.The author includes personal experience and offers suggestions for support and healing. Included, too, are personal stories and links to relevant resources.

---

When Your Child Dies By Suicide, Grief Can Be Complicated

The suicide of a child of any age presents unique circumstances that can intensify and prolong the mourning process for parents, family members and friends. Suicide is believed to be a reaction to overwhelming feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, helplessness, hopelessness and depression. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the United States among 10-14 year olds and 15-24 year olds, and the second leading cause among 25-34 year olds.

The Compassionate Friends, Surviving Your Child’s Suicide

My Story: Surviving the Suicide of My Son

In June 2012, I lost my twenty-year-old son, my only child, to suicide. I’ve been writing ever since. I started a Google Blogger site (My Forever Son: My Beloved Dylan-Losing My Son to Suicide) in 2015. I was 3 years out from Dylan’s memorial date. I wrote as I felt, slogging through the mess that was left of my life, counting each minute, hour, day, month, year since losing my son to suicide.

In acute grief those first few years, I sought out every means of support. I researched and read about suicide: looking for answers; wanting to know “Why?”; searching for a way to go on, hold on, continue living when all I wanted to do was be with my son.

What Helped: Local and Online Support Groups for Parents Who Lose a Child to Suicide

Suicide is the anchor point on a continuum of suicidal thoughts & behaviors. This continuum is one that ranges from risk-taking behaviors at one end, extends through different degrees & types of suicidal thinking, & ends with suicide attempts and suicide.  

Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Joining Online and Local Support Groups

I joined local and online support groups in my area:

• Parents of Suicide, an online community of parents who have lost a child to suicide. Learn more about Parents of Suicide. Parents of Suicide was, has been, and is an ongoing key source of support and understanding for me. Because this is a closed group of parents bereaved by losing their child to suicide, this group is a phenomenal source of support. If you are a parent who has lost your child to suicide, go directly to Parents of Suicide.

• The Compassionate Friends host meetings in person and online, and anyone who has lost a child may attend. Learn more about The Compassionate Friends. I found and attend a local meeting of The Compassionate Friends. You will find parents who have lost a child to any cause at the meetings. The Compassionate Friends also has an excellent online site.

• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: Learn more about The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Because I lost my son to suicide, I found the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention a rich resource bank for videos, books, personal stories, tips for self-care, and survival strategies when you’ve lost your child to suicide. It’s an excellent resource and has local, state, and national gatherings, including walks you can sign up for to take back the night. The walks are powerful and moving as you meet and walk with others bereaved by suicide.

---

Books and Resources for Grief After Suicide Loss

We bereaved are not alone. When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding.

Helen Keller, Goodreads

Books, Pamphlets, Downloadable Booklets

In the beginning of acute grief, I read everything I could find about losing a child to suicide. I still read books about losing a child to suicide. I found the online sites below helpful as they provide lists of resources and reading material (book lists; pamphlets; downloadable booklets).

• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Learn more about what to read and where to find Books for Loss Survivors.

• American Association of Suicidology. Learn more about downloadable resources and booklets that can be ordered, available at American Association of Suicidology

• Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Learn more about Nationwide Children’s Hospital. See especially Don’t Say It’s Selfish: Suicide is Not a Choice. I have found this resource especially helpful. If you’ve lost a young child, this site can help.

• Survivors of Suicide: Learn more about The Survivors of Suicide

• The Mayo Clinic: Learn more about the Mayo Clinic and suicide grief. This is an excellent online resource for reading about and understanding suicide grief.

• What’s Your Grief? Learn more at their resources at What’s Your Grief? What a great online grief site written by 2 grief counselors. Their rich resource bank of articles that they’ve written includes well-researched studies and methodologies. They add a personal touch by sharing their own grief stories and experiences.

• Parents of Suicide and Friends and Families of Suicide is an online support group that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Moderators (parents with more time out from their child’s suicide) and other parents are always there to respond to you. And if you don’t want to write, you can always read the emails from other parents who have lost their child to suicide. Go to Parents of Suicide to learn more. I find belonging to this group invaluable.

• Faces of Suicide Books, Volumes 1-5. Books written by parents who lose a child to suicide provide shared and unique experiences of parents who lose a child to suicide. Read Faces of Suicide Books, Volumes 1-5.

Helpful Support Resources From My Forever Son

Finding Resources on This Blog

Understanding a parent’s grief after losing their child to suicide can be challenging. You can find resources on My Forever Son that help you understand what parents must move through after their child’s suicide. The resources on My Forever Son also illuminate what grief looks like specifically and especially after losing a child to suicide.

I write at length about some of the more difficult aspects of a parent’s grief. Especially helpful is

I also write songs and poems about losing a child to suicide. You can find a collection of poems at Find Hope Here: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide. Several poems are available to be freely downloaded. Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide is a book available for Amazon Kindle.

Search

Search

---

Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide

Writing to Heal Grief

I write poems about losing a child to suicide to process my grief.

Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide is a collection of poems I’ve written over the course of my grief. The book is available for purchase, and many of the poems are included in this blog, My Forever Son. Go to Find Hope Here: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide for a collection of poems.

Find Hope Here: Poems of Love, Loss and Losing a Child

Download 3 Free Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide

Bury My Heart: A Book of Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide

---

Hope and Healing: Resources from This Blog

---

Resources About Suicide Loss that Can Help

• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: page for survivors of suicide loss.

• The American Association of Suicidology: Suicide Loss

• The Compassionate Friends: “Surviving Your Child’s Suicide”

• The Compassionate Friends offers in-person support groups, as well as Facebook groups, one called “Loss Due to Suicide.”

• Find Support at Alliance of Hope. They provide information, consultations, and support to suicide loss survivors through their website and online community forum.

• “Beyond Surviving: Suggestions for Survivors” By Iris M. Bolton

• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: A.F.S.P. support group listing.

Beyond Surviving: Suggestions for Survivors

Iris Bolton, author of Beyond Surviving: Suggestions for Survivors, has written several books about suicide loss, grief, and healing. Bolton’s book, My Son, My Son, helped me feel less alone. Bolton writes about losing her son to suicide, stories of hope and healing, and grief after suicide loss.

Excerpt from Beyond Surviving: Suggestions for Survivors by Iris M. Bolton:

---

Grief, Guilt, Hope: Resources from This Blog

---

Support: Poems, Books, Personal Narrative from This Blog

---