Holding What Suicide Leaves Behind

Rituals, reflections, and the ache of unanswered questions

This piece contains a discussion of suicide loss and may be activating for some readers. Please care for your nervous system as you need to..

In acknowledgement of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, this post is offered as a space for truth-telling and grief-honoring.

There’s a kind of grief that arrives like a rupture.
No warning. No clean explanation.
Just a before, and an after.

And in the after,
you’re left holding a thousand invisible threads:
The things you didn’t get to say.
The ache of not knowing why.
The love that didn’t get to keep them here.

This is suicide grief.
And it asks different things of us.

It doesn’t come with a script.
It doesn’t get talked about at family dinners.
Most people don’t even know how to ask if you’re okay.

But you’re still living in the after.
And that’s a grief that needs somewhere to go.

All grief is messy.
All grief refuses straight lines.
But suicide grief carries its own strange weight;
not only because of the loss itself,
but because of everything wrapped around it.

It’s being asked not to say the word.
It’s sitting through services where no one names what really happened.
It’s defending the one who died,
or feeling like you have to.
It’s people going silent
or walking away
because your grief makes them uncomfortable.

It’s carrying love and shame in the same breath.
It’s lying awake with a hundred conversations looping in your mind,
trying to find the clue that would have saved them.
It’s a deep, aching silence
where there should have been a goodbye.

This kind of grief doesn’t just ask you to survive the loss.
It asks you to live with the absence of answers.
To re-shape a relationship you didn’t choose to end.
To keep walking in a world that often tells you to stay quiet about how it happened.

And that’s a grief that needs its own kind of care.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is give the ache somewhere to live.
Not to cure it or clean it up, rather to just to keep it from hardening inside of you.

For some, that looks like ritual.

Rituals for the Unanswered Questions

• Burning the “Why”: Write the questions you’ll never get answered (“Why didn’t you call?” “Did you know how much I loved you?”) on slips of paper. Burn them one by one, letting the smoke carry them to a place beyond your keeping.

• Empty Chair Ritual: Place an empty chair across from you, light a candle, and speak aloud what you wish you could have said to them, or what you wish they had said to you. Let the silence hold the rest.

Rituals for Shame and Silence

• Naming Candle: In a private space, light a candle and say clearly: “You died by suicide. And I still love you.” Speaking the truth aloud, even once, counters the silence many survivors are forced into.

• Breaking the Obituary Silence: If their death wasn’t named honestly in public, create your own private “obituary” page in your journal or altar space. Write it as you wish it had been told, truthful, loving, unapologetic.

Rituals for Carrying the Guilt

• Stone Release: Collect small stones, each representing a “what if” or “should have.” Place them in a bowl of water overnight, then carry them outside and return them to the earth, one by one. Speak the words: “This guilt is not mine to carry.”

• Heartbeat Ritual: Place your hand over your heart, feel your pulse, and whisper: “I am still here. Their pain was not mine to cure. My life continues.”

Rituals for Connection Across the Silence

• Letter to the Unanswered: Write them a letter, fold it, and place it beneath a stone, candle, or altar piece. Return to it on hard days; read it, add to it, or burn it when you’re ready.

• The “Missed Call” Ritual: If you replay the moment you weren’t there, create a small ritual of answering: hold your phone in your hand, imagine their name lighting up the screen, and say out loud: “I’m here. I love you. I wish you had stayed.”

None of this erases pain.
But ritual makes pain visible.
It says: this happened, and I still remember.

And if you’ve been carrying a loss like this, if this post feels like it’s speaking straight into your chest, I’d invite you to subscribe. This space exists for the sacred, strange, and deeply human truths that don’t fit anywhere else.

Other days, the body itself needs attention.

The spiral comes, the nervous system surges or collapses, and you can’t think your way out of it.

On those days, small things matter: cold water running over your wrists, a heavy blanket pulling you back into your body, bare feet pressing against the earth. A hand on your chest, saying out loud, “This grief is mine. I don’t have to rush it.” These aren’t solutions, yet they are grounding anchors; we need those.

And then there are the words that live heavy in your chest, the ones you don’t want anyone else to hear.

Writing can hold them for you. A notebook becomes a witness, a place to pour what you can’t speak. You might start with:

• What do I still need to say to them?

• What do I wish they had known about how much they mattered?

• What changed in my story the moment they left?

• What am I most afraid to admit to myself?

You don’t have to share these pages, you don’t even have to keep them.
Sometimes putting the words down is enough to unhook them from your ribs.

And because suicide loss so often hands us shame and blame that were never ours, let me hand you something back:

You don’t have to forgive them.
Understanding isn’t required.
Healing doesn’t need to happen on anyone else’s timeline.
The silence of others isn’t yours to carry.
You don’t need to explain yourself to be valid.
This grief doesn’t have to be transformed into beauty.

You might rage. You still love them. You might feel nothing for weeks, and then everything all at once. All of it belongs.

You don’t have to rise from the ashes yet.
You don’t have to find meaning in what happened.
Some grief is simply lived with, raw and unfinished.

Especially this one.

So if you’re still here, aching, still wondering what to do with the love that wasn’t enough to keep them; I hope you give yourself room to carry it in whatever shape it comes.

Grief, in your own language.
Ritual, in your own rhythm.
Love, in the way only you remember them.

Love today,

Heather 🌸

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, please don’t try to carry it alone.
You are not a burden. You are not beyond help.
Call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.
There are people who want to help.
Your pain matters. And so do you.