"Difficult as it may be to start attending a support group, you will be amazed by the degree to which your issues and concerns are common to others. As you listen and participate week by week, you may find that these fellow strugglers are the most understanding and supportive group of people you have ever known and very likely you will come to count them among your best friends.

Beyond that, you'll find a context in which remarkable healing and reversals can take place, as illustrated by Mark's postscript to a recent email: "The other week, I picked up a wind chime from a local metalsmith. It was crafted from the .38-caliber revolver my dad used to take his life.
I had found the gun a year after my mother's death. It still, after all these years, had the spent shell casing in it. It took the wind out of me to see it, to think of it. My whole life, I had been haunted by this gun and images and thoughts about it. Now it is no more a gun; rather, like the butterfly, it has been transformed into a thing of beauty.

Some nights I wake up in the middle of the night and hear the chimes, and it is the most beautiful, delicate, and sublime sound. It gives me such grateful and happy and loving thoughts. My Uncle John always felt responsible for my father's death, because he gave Dad the gun. Now I plan to take this chime over to my Uncle John's grave and let him know that all is well, that there is peace and acceptance and surrender where there once was only torment."

Finding Your Way after the Suicide of Someone You Love

David B. Biebel, DMin, & Suzanne L. Foster, MA

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Nikki I pray this post will not add to your pain and torment. I hesitated about posting it but found it filled with hope. I also like what it said about support groups.

I wasn't sure where to post this....


http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/schoo..._district.html

((Ms. Alffe)) I think it's right where it needs to be.

thought this may be of intrest

veterans support group needed in the uk and possibly in the USA with increased numbers seeing active service the figures in the below study are worrying

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=2650723