A Basic Plan for Survival

Choose to Survive. We must make a conscious decision to be an active participant in our own healing process.

Feel the Feelings. We must give ourselves permission to grieve deeply for a season.

Stay Connected. While on the healing journey we must ask God and safe, supportive people to be our traveling companions - to share our sorrow, ease our fears, defuse our anger, and process our guilt. In relationship we have a much better chance to reclaim our joy.

Practice Acceptance and Forgiveness. We must give ourselves grace and truth and time to eventually accept our loss and forgive others and ourselves.

Slowly Get Back in the Game. All the while, we must gently and gradually ease ourselves back into reality.

Be the New You. We are forever changed, yet essentially the same living, breathing, loving, inherently precious children of God.

Share Your Experience. We can now be seasoned traveling companions for other survivors on the recovery road.

--Linda L. Flatt, June 1997 Finding Your Way after the Suicide of Someone You Love Authors David Biebel & Suzanne Foster

Losing someone to a "conventional" death, while difficult, does not interfere with our happy memories of them. But suicide survivors often feel disconnected and "divorced" from the memory of their lost loved one. Because they chose to end their lives - to our rational minds, an inconceivable act - we are now in a state of conflict with them. At some point, we need to "reconcile" with them - and somehow, we have to accomplish this alone.

Unfortunately, this usually takes some time. For most survivors, it's a reward that lies somewhat down the road, after we have passed through all the fury of our emotional gauntlet and achieved acceptance - acceptance of our human limitations, of our loved one's debilitated condition, and of our lives as they now lay before us.

*Jeffrey Jackson Handbook for Survivors of Suicide

Ahh... this is good for dsnerror... He's found this forum and is staying connected!