Dear Reader,

After my father’s suicide, I searched for books to help me through my grief process, but there weren’t many available, especially not one page meditations. The nature of recovery from a loved one’s suicide, for me, was silent.  The people who knew of my loss did not know how to console. I rarely spoke about my father’s suicide.  I was afraid of what others may think of my father or me.  Unearned shame kept me quiet. I needed words and feelings from someone who had walked down the same path.  I did not need graphic descriptions of a person’s suicide.  I couldn’t deal with words that brought home the horrible scene of finding my father.  But still, I needed to know those churning feelings inside me were normal. With the thought that possibly another person could relate to my feelings, writing them has been a catharsis.

For me writing has always been a release.  There was an old game I used to play as a child called pick-up-sticks.  The object was to remove one stick at a time without moving the others.  That’s what writing these meditations has been like for me–picking up one thread of thought at a time to look at and express.  Singling out and developing my thoughts and feelings into concise words was difficult and frustrating. Yet, it left me with a clear heart and the ability to get on with my life.  Writing these posts were both my own cathartic attempt to make some sense of what happened to me after my father’s death, and hopefully an effort to help others cope with their sorrow.

Efforts at good writing ask the writer to always speak their truth.  I did not whitewash the pain.  If you have lost someone to suicide, I hope my truth will not cut sharply into your agony.  And painful though they are, I believe these reflections have a healing grace.   I hope that you will find something in them that will help.

Sincerely,

Karen Phillips