Recently, I shared here two pieces of wisdom to aid grieving: a guided meditation from Belleruth Naparstek and a practical TED-X talk by Amy Biancolli about surviving a loved one’s suicide. As I wrote, I made one of those beautiful mistakes that deepen and enrich the moment beyond what I imagined. I played the soothing guided meditation in the background as I wrote. Usually, I have to avoid other people’s words when I am trying to form my own, but something about her voice and cadence and the import of her words allowed me to do both. Then, a surprise: on my computer, Biancolli’s talk re-opened in a window I hadn’t closed, and her solemn unrelenting pacing-the-stage delivery of her survival
After a suicide, Amy Biancolli tells us, “Grief is a monster.” Having lived through the suicide of a loved one, twice, she knows. A writer, she is able to describe in plain terms the experience of losing first a sister, and then fifteen years later, her husband, to suicide. Further, she is able to describe her journey to understand and accept the new facts of her life – among them that she will not get to grow old with either of these loved ones. In the most practical, feet-on-the-ground way, she describes too how she has survived, and how she helps her three children to survive. She describes the guilt that the experience of losing someone to suicide brings with it – unearned but present n
