This piece contains open discussion of suicide loss and may be activating for some readers. Please care for your heart and nervous system as needed.
In acknowledgement of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, this post is offered as a space for truth-telling and grief-honoring.
Dear One,
They didn’t die because you didn’t love them enough.
They didn’t leave because you weren’t good enough, attentive enough, intuitive enough, strong enough.
They left because they were in pain.
And sometimes, pain becomes louder than anything else.
Louder than logic. Louder than presence. Louder than the warmth of a familiar voice at the end of the line.
And yes, even louder than love.
We like to believe that love saves people. That if we just love hard enough, stay close enough, pray loud enough, check in often enough, we can outrun the edge.
But love isn’t a cure for despair.
It is not a miracle drug. It doesn’t rewire a brain hijacked by depression. It doesn’t intercept a dissociative spiral. It doesn’t undo a lifetime of trauma, or systemic failure, or that moment, often just one moment, when the world stops making sense.
Sometimes, love just isn’t enough to keep someone here.
That truth can break your heart.
But it can also unhook your shame.
Because if you are someone grieving a suicide loss, you may be carrying a thousand sharp-edged questions no one else can see.
You might be replaying the last conversation.
Re-analyzing the texts.
Wondering what you missed.
What you should’ve known.
What you should’ve said.
So let me say this clearly:
You did not fail them.
Even if you were the one who loved them best.
Even if you were the last one they called.
Even if you were the one they didn’t call.
We are a culture that wants a reason. A clean one.
When someone dies by suicide, the first question people ask is “Why?”
And when they don’t get an answer, they assign one:
They were selfish.
They were weak.
They didn’t think of the people they’d leave behind.
They chose this.
They didn’t care enough.
It was a sin.
But none of those myths are true.
Suicide is not selfish.
It is not a moral failing.
It is not a punishment.
And it is not your fault.
It’s easier to blame the person, or the people around them, than to face the truth that life, in all its brutal beauty, sometimes becomes unbearable.
Most suicide deaths are not well-thought-out “choices” at all.
They are the final symptom of a mind in distress.
They are made from collapsed nervous systems, cognitive distortions, relentless inner pain, and a desperate need for the hurting to stop.
Suicide is a death by illness.
By exhaustion.
By despair.
Not by you.
If this post speaks to something you’ve carried silently, I invite you to subscribe.
This space was built for the sacred, strange, and deeply human, including the grief no one else knows how to talk about.
If someone you love has died by suicide, this is the part where I hold your hand.
Where I remind you that your grief counts even if no one said the word out loud.
Even if the obituary used different language.
Even if the funeral skipped the truth.
Even if their name hasn’t been spoken in months.
Where I tell you:
You don’t need to forgive them.
You don’t need to be okay yet.
You don’t need to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.
You get to rage.
You get to miss them.
You get to wish they’d stayed.
You get to love them still.
And you get to stop blaming yourself.
Because you are not the reason they died.
And you were not the antidote they didn’t take.
We need to do better, all of us.
We need to stop moralizing suffering.
We need to stop saying “committed suicide” like it’s a crime.
We need to stop assuming there’s always a fix, or a warning sign, or a person to blame.
We need to hold suicide loss with the same compassion we offer every other kind of grief.
This grief is different.
It’s the kind that isolates you.
That makes people disappear.
That wraps itself in shame and silence.
So if you know someone who’s grieving a suicide loss: show up.
Even if you don’t know what to say.
Even if the family isn’t talking about it.
Even if you’re scared of saying the wrong thing.
Say their name.
Tell a story.
Make space for the love, the ache, the complexity.
That’s what this grief needs.
Not answers.
Not judgment.
Just truth.
And company.
Maybe you never got to say goodbye.
Maybe there wasn’t a note.
Maybe the questions still wake you up at night.
Or maybe you stopped asking them a long time ago because the silence hurt less than the answers that never came.
But you’re still here.
Breathing. Remembering.
Trying to live a life that doesn’t make sense without them in it.
You’re allowed to grieve in ways no one understands.
You’re allowed to rage.
To cry.
To be numb.
To feel nothing for weeks and then suddenly feel everything at once.
You’re allowed to still love them, even now.
And you don’t need a reason, or permission, or closure to light a candle.
You can light one anyway.
Just to say:
You mattered.
Even though you couldn’t stay.
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.
There are people who want to listen, and there is support available right now.
In the U.S., you can call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988—24 hours a day, every day.
Visit 988lifeline.org for more resources or to chat online.
Your pain matters. And so do you.