Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Your Journey through Grief

By Michelle Ann Collins

How will I survive this loss?

When her life shifted from fairytale to nightmare due to her husb

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saved By Story Publishing
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986957845

Michelle Ann Collins

As the founder of Inhabit Joy, Michelle Ann Collins partners with individuals who have suffered grief, injury, or other types of loss as they recover, reclaim their wholeness, and build resilience for life's inevitable challenges. After a series of losses, including the death of her mother, her husband's suicide, and continued estrangements from primary family members, Michelle combined the tools she had collected as a yoga therapist and wellness coach and studies in positive psychology, neuroscience, meditation and mindfulness, and spirituality to turn post-traumatic stress disorder into post-traumatic growth and resilience. With the addition of a certification in grief education and several bestselling books in which she shares her story, Michelle is helping others transform from barely surviving to joyful thriving. Deeply connected with the healing powers of nature, Michelle spends her leisure time hiking among the trees or paddling on the rivers near her home in Portland, Oregon.

Book preview

Introductions

Crawling

into the Cave

The Grief Cave

Allow me to send you a big virtual hug. I am truly sorry this book has come into your world because it means you have suffered a terrible loss. I am happy, however, that you have found it because it will help you realize you are not alone on this painful journey. It is meant to help ease your suffering and support you on your path towar d healing.

My husband, Glen Collins, died by suicide in 2016. Recovering from the grief and trauma of this loss sent my life in a completely new and frightening direction. In this book, I share the knowledge and skills I gained during my journey. My goal is to help other suicide loss survivors have a more educated and, therefore, easier journey. When discussing my partner, I use he or him because I lost my husband; when addressing your partner or others, I use they or them. Please feel free to mentally change the pronoun and relationship details to suit your specific situation.

Context is required for understanding. At first, I had absolutely no context for this experience. As a writer and teacher, I often use metaphors to simplify complex concepts and wrap my head around difficult pieces of information or challenging experiences. I’ve come to think of the weeks, months, and years after Glen’s death as picking myself up from a shocking fall. It was as if the ground beneath me had just disappeared and I had fallen into a dark, scary, lonely place. At first, I couldn’t even grasp where I was or how I got there because the darkness was so thick and all-consuming.

Have you experienced days, weeks, months, or maybe even years during which you can’t get your brain to even understand what happened?

That’s what I’m talking about.

I call that place the grief cave.

After Glen’s death, I tried to figure out how to stitch my body, mind, and soul back together. I had to do it mostly on my own, save for a few helpers. One of the most difficult things about the grieving process is that no one truly knows what you’re going through. Even though your helpers may have experienced grief and loss, this loss is uniquely yours. Plus, many of them are dealing with the shock of their own fall and a gross lack of education about how to help someone through the experience of trauma and grief. Understandably you may feel isolated, but you are not alone. It is possible to get the support you need. You’re already doing it by reading this.

I’ll help you find your way out of the darkness. You are not alone.

In the beginning, I was buried by grief, trauma, and sorrow in my grief cave, and I rejected the whole idea of a new life. I thought I would never want to see the sky or feel the warmth of life again. My supporters (friends and therapists) pointed me toward the supplies, skills, and tools I needed to begin my journey out of the darkness, but starting the journey had to come from me. The shift toward healing happened when I realized I was obligated to continue on to live a full life. I needed to continue on because I still have a life to live. And to truly honor Glen’s memory, I need to live the best life I can.

In this book, I share the knowledge I gained on my journey to healing as well as practices I used and continue using to help me live a fulfilling life every day. I still experience grief, but there is also love and joy. World-renowned grief expert David Kessler reminds us that to live fully, we must grieve fully. I pray the tools that helped me process the trauma and pain and helped me grow strong enough to emerge from the cave and journey forward on a healing path can now support you as well.

We’ll start in the grief cave—that dark, lonely place that feels so isolated and hopeless—and I will show you the supplies you need to use to move out of the cave. When you leave the cave and begin the next leg of your journey of healing, it will be beneficial to have a set of practices that will help you rest, assess, and release burdens when the journey and that grief backpack you are carrying is burdensome. Then you will begin the climb up some of the most important hidden staircases in the grief process. Climbing comes with pitfalls, switchbacks, obstacles, and unexpected interference. A byproduct of climbing, however, is gaining insight and strength into the climb itself, so when you meet obstacles, you can maneuver around them or find someone or something that can help remove them or make them manageable. Finally, you will summit. You will reach that place where the love outweighs the pain. From this beautiful place, where your heart and life are full, you will hold your loss close to you and honor it—and your strength—with love and grace.

Honoring Your Cave

I don’t know that a book like this would have helped me in the earliest days after Glen’s death—the acute phase of grief. I probably would have thrown it across the room in disbelief that some well-meaning friend was brazen enough to give me a how-to-get-through-it book when I believed there was no through. I believed I would always feel as awful as I did on that terrible day Glen died. My world turned completely upside down, and I felt nothing but pain. I believed I was the only person who had ever felt such pain. How could a total stranger know anything about how I’m feeling or what I need? would have been my likely response. I wouldn’t have believed anything could help. I imagine, from the depths of darkness I was inhabiting, I would have said something like What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t read a book and think about healing. I don’t even know how to get out of bed and put on my shoes right now!

As time went on, and there’s no telling when this might happen for you, I realized I wanted to feel better—I needed to feel better. I understood that I was still alive and had an obligation to continue living my life. I knew I didn’t want to stay in the grief cave forever. And I needed a guide to help me find my way out.

I had friends helping me with various tasks—first, the tasks of daily living, like eating and driving, and then helping me get out of the house to remember there was life outside. Then I had attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors helping me with the estate legalities, as well as clerks at the various government agencies, banks, and medical facilities where I needed to clear estate paperwork. I also had a great trauma therapist and a kind and caring coach.

What I didn’t have was the warm support of someone who had been through it—someone to hold the flashlight for me and show me the path out of the darkness.

I promise you there is a path, and when you are ready, you will find it. This book and the stories and practices I share can be that guide for you.

A Guide with a Flashlight and More

When my mother died in 2007 after suffering from leukemia, I was sure that was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. After her diagnosis in 2003, I felt like the light went out of my life, and throughout her treatment, it rarely returned. I felt so lost and was suffering more deeply than I thought possible. My yoga practice was my refuge. After her death, I sought out deeper learning in yoga and started teaching in 2008. The more yoga I practiced and learned and taught, the more ease and fulfillment I brought int o my life.

Meditation and mindfulness, especially breath awareness, are part of a well-rounded yoga practice. These practices sustained me through tough times, my divorce, my marriage to Glen, and painful estrangements that some of my relationships suffered.

Losing Glen caused an unimaginable amount of suffering. Between the trauma of our struggles leading up to his death, discovering his body, the complexities of his estate, and trying to help his family, my family, our friends, I got completely overwhelmed. To ease my suffering, I turned to substances and irresponsible behaviors. As you can imagine, this only impeded my progress toward healing. Finally, when I landed in my trauma therapist’s office after a devastating threat by a friend to put me into rehab, I realized I was on the wrong path—one that led to self-destruction, not healing. Even though healing seemed like an impossibility at the time, I knew my therapist was a signpost pointing in the right direction. And because my deepest desire was to feel better, I followed her advice. With her unfailing support and yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices, I quit abusing substances and set out to find as many tools as I could that would ease my suffering and promote my healing journey.

In March 2017, I attended a retreat at The Chopra Center for Wellbeing called A Journey into Healing. Afterward, I began to feel deep and profound changes. It took time and commitment, but as I said, I was going to try anything (legal and healthy this time) to feel better. The retreat helped me more fully understand the connection between experience, processing experience, and health and disease. I began to see my body as one part of a much bigger whole. I realized that the emotional trauma I experienced was living in my body and, if not processed and healed, the grief and trauma I was experiencing—my dis-ease—would likely become disabling physical and mental disease.

I started studying meditation more deeply and expanded my studies into spirituality and consciousness. I’ll share more about the specifics throughout the book, but my main point here is that in order to feel good again (yes, it’s possible) and to heal (absolutely possible), I had to make a real effort to understand what happened to me when I experienced trauma. I had to realize that the experience of losing Glen deeply affected not only my emotional well-being but my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being as well.

I went on to study Ayurveda at the Chopra Center and got a certification in Ayurvedic lifestyle education. I studied yoga for trauma as well as the neuroscience of trauma and grief, and in order to have more tools and learn the language of grief so I could help others, I became a certified grief educator. Working as a grief and wellness coach, I continue to increase my knowledge of and dedication to healing trauma and grief.

I know it may not seem believable right now, but healing is possible! Healing doesn’t mean forgetting your loved one or moving away from them or your love for them. It only means you can live a fulfilling and joyful life with their memory—the new form of your relationship with them.

I’m including mindfulness tools, other health-related insights, and grief support in this book because, frankly, I don’t know any other way to navigate healing.

If any of the tools in this book don’t seem useful or seem too much to you, just skip them for now. You can come back to them later. When you are ready, they’ll be here. Meanwhile, take care of yourself the best you can.

The Truth about Grief and Trauma

There are differences between trauma and grief that, if understood, can give you insight into your experience. While we grieve most losses, especially the loss of a loved one to death, we don’t always experience trauma with the loss of a loved one.

Grief is hard. We feel a loss, and it can send us into deep sadness. We ache for our loved one, and even though we know they will not return, we yearn for their company. It takes a long time for our minds to fully understand our loss. Grief can be filled with so many emotions: sadness, guilt, regret, even love and joy from a happy memory. Grievers may experience anxiety, brain fog, difficulty recalling things, or disorientation. All these are perfectly normal and will take time to resolve. If you find you still have an inability to do normal daily tasks after some time (months, years—it’s different for everyone), professional help in the form of a grief therapist, counselor, or coach is a good idea.

Grief is not a disease; it’s a natural process we go through when