Supporting a Survivor of Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Co-journeying through Grief

By Michelle Ann Collins

What can I do to help?

When her life shifted from fairytale to nightmare due to her husband's d

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saved By Story Publishing
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986957869

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

Acknowledgments

Gratitude creates the threads from which we weave the tapestry of a joyful life.

I am grateful to you for holding this book in your hand; may it offer you some comfort as well as the knowledge and skills to help you and your survivor through this difficult time.

I am grateful to everyone with whom I have shared my journey. Whether a helper or an obstacle, you are my teacher, and you have contributed to my resilience and strength.

I am grateful to Amanda Johnson and the book doulas at True to Intention and Saved By Story Publishing. Without your help, this book would have been stuck in labor forever.

Gratitude also to three of my greatest teachers and mentors, David Kessler, Kristin Meehkof, and Linda Z. Your guidance has lightened my burdens so I could continue to heal. Your ability to shine a flashlight into the pitch blackness of my grief cave and others walking a similar path will inspire me always.

Introductions

Crawling

into the Cave

The Grief Cave

Thank you so much for being such a big-hearted person and picking up this book to learn the best way to support a loved one who is suffering from the loss of their spouse or partner. That is huge. Please stop right now and give yourself a big high-five or hug for that.

To clarify terminology right away, I’ll refer to the surviving spouse/partner as survivor and to you as companion. You are accompanying the survivor on what is likely the most difficult journey of their life. Thank you for that. It takes great strength and patience to support someone who is suffering so deeply.

The person you are supporting is in such deep need of support, they probably aren’t even able to express it. This makes it extremely challenging to understand what they’re going through and how best to help them. Reading my book Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss may give you some insight into their experience, and if you can, get them to read it. It will help them.

This book is a true companion guide, meaning it runs parallel to the survival steps I shared with the survivor, and it is written for you—their companion. The purpose of keeping a good portion of the content consistent while adjusting for your particular experience is twofold: one, you’ll be able to see the path to healing the same way they do and be able to quickly locate them on their journey because you’re using a similar map; and two, you’ll have access to the information and practices that will help them heal, but you can use this information to support yourself because you’re likely grieving as well. It’s challenging to support someone in such a difficult place when you’re facing your own shock and grief. I’m glad you’ve found this book because it will help you provide the type of footing your friend needs, realize you are not alone on this painful journey, ease your own suffering, and support you to move forward together on a path toward healing. You are a great supporter.

My Grief Cave

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 while empowering the companions around them to help them while they heal.

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 and your survivor experienced those first few 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 has any idea what we’re going through.

This is the book I wish I could have given my friends who really wanted to support me but had no idea where to start. Today, I know that the ground disappeared beneath them too. They were injured, just not to the degree I was. Their injury, which was also due to my husband’s death, made it hard for them to support me, and I wish they’d had a guide to help them heal as they worked to help me.

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.

Grieving is a solo process, and remembering that will help you support your survivor through it. You are responsible for your grief, and they are responsible for theirs. You cannot do the work for them. That doesn’t mean they don’t need every bit of support you can offer—they do. What I mean is that you cannot do their grieving for them. The best thing you can do is keep yourself strong and healthy so you can help them when they need you.

The first thing your survivor needs is witnessing. This is one of the most difficult and most helpful things you can do for them. Don’t try to make things better by saying anything. Realize your loved one is suffering, and they need to go through this suffering in order to heal and go on with their life.

I know that sounds backward, but to be honest, you can’t make them feel better. You can’t make their pain go away any faster, but you can ease their journey by being present with them and listening as they pour out their pain. Just sitting and witnessing your survivor’s suffering is incredibly difficult, and you may find it too difficult at times. This is why I want you to read this book. You’ll learn exactly what to do and say to support them and yourself through this awful time.

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. You can help your survivor do both! 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 and your survivor 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 both need to use to move out of the cave. When they’re ready to leave the cave and begin the next leg of the journey of healing, they will benefit from having a set of practices that will help them rest, assess, and release burdens when they find that the journey and that grief backpack they are carrying is burdensome. Then you will begin the climb alongside them up some of the most important hidden staircases in the grief process. Climbing comes with pitfalls, switchbacks, obstacles, and unexpected interferences. A byproduct of climbing, however, is gaining insight and strength about the climb itself, so when you two meet obstacles, you can help your survivor maneuver around them, or help remove them, or make them manageable. Finally, you two 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 The Grief Cave

I don’t know that a book like Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss 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. In the early days, all I needed was to be fed, transported (I was too traumatized to drive), and witnessed. I just needed to tell my awful story over and over again to begin processing the whole thing. Your survivor will likely be in a similar state. If you can listen and just be with them, you are doing the greatest possible service. You can offer them a book, but don’t take it personally if your offering is not accepted.

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. If you had handed me Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss at that point, my likely response would have been, How could a total stranger know anything about how I’m feeling or what I need? 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!

If you get a response like that, it’s okay. Just be reassuring. Say something like, It’s okay for now if you want to just throw this book against the wall. There’s no timeline here. I just want to reassure you that I am here for you. You will not always feel the way you do now. It took time for me to realize I wanted to feel better—I needed to feel better. I understood that I was still alive and had an obligation to continue on with 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.

You are a great companion. I can tell because you’re reading this book. There are others who will need to help too—a therapist is key. So is a financial advisor and someone to help with all the paperwork. I had a great trauma therapist and a kind and caring coach.

However, if my other friends had had this book, known more about what was happening inside me and what I needed to regain my strength and face some of the burdens of suffering suicide loss, and known how to avoid compounding the pain, I may have moved through my grief process more quickly.

There’s nothing you can actually say that will help lessen the survivor’s