When Your Loved One Chooses Death with Alexandra Wyman

Hey everybody, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Grief to Growth podcast. I want to extend a warm welcome to all of our new listeners who are joining us for the first time. This podcast as a safe space where we explore many of the facets of grief, personal growth and belief in the afterlife. We share stories, insights and techniques to help you navigate life's most challenging moments. Today's episode is particularly special as we have the privilege of hosting Alexandra Wyman.

Alexandra is not only an advocate and a public speaker, but she's also very courageous as an individual. She's experienced the profound impact of loss in her own life. She tragically lost her husband to suicide in August of 2020. And after that, she felt compelled to change the conversation around suicide. Her memoir is entitled the Suicide Club what to Do when Someone you Love Chooses Death and it's touched the heart of many as becoming an Amazon bestseller. She's taken her advocacy to various conferences, including the Bridging to Divide Suicide Prevention and Awareness Summit in 2022, the 2023 Northwest Conference on Childhood Grief and the 2023 Military Social Work and Behavioral Health Conference. She's also been selected to present at the International Association of Suicide Prevention Conference in 2023 in Slovenia.

Not only should inspiring speaker and author, but she's also shared her insights on numerous podcasts, such as the Unlocked Moment, she Persistent and my Wake Up Call. Additionally, she hosts her own podcast, which is called the Widows Club. Her dedication to raising awareness about suicide and offering support that those are affected aligns perfectly with what we do here at Grief to Growth, and together, alexandra and I will delve into her journey, into the challenges she's faced and the strengths she's found through her experiences. So, whether you personally experienced loss, if you're passionate about mental health advocacy or you just want to sink inspiration for your personal growth journey, this episode is for you. And before we can start, I just want to tell Alexandra I really admire your, your courage and your dedication to helping other people to be doing this so soon after the passing of your husband, and I want to give you my condolences.

Oh well, thank you so much, brian, and thank you for having me on your show and giving me the opportunity to speak a little bit more about my experience.

Well, I'm really excited about this interview today and the way this is a subject that people struggle to even speak about and it's hard to find people to talk and help other people feel, you know, comfort and company as they go through the journey. So we were talking earlier. I know your husband's name is Sean, so tell me about Sean first of all.

Oh my gosh. So Sean was the classic life of the party. Such a big joke, sir. He was a very, very bright storyteller. He was a mechanic and I never really understood the logistics or I don't have that kind of mindset, my brain doesn't work that way. So he was just very mechanically minded and he would tell these really long stories about stuff happening at work and I would just be enraptured. I'd have no idea really what he was talking about, but I just had to hear the whole story.

He was a great dad, just a lot of him. Very musically inclined. He could hear, you know, even if a car was backing up and beeping. He could turn that into a song and love to create new songs for our son and just really handy, very creative. So I mean, I have, I have got this idea for a painting and go into her basement and then come back out with a painting like two months later. So just like just someone who had a lot of talent. He never really felt that he was talented or really saw his own talent, but definitely with someone that people looked up to and he was very loyal and such a good friend and, yeah, just a very fun person to be around.

And how long were you guys together?

So we were married just under two years and then together for about three years.

Okay, and I in terms of his passing as suicide. Did you have any indication that this was coming, or how was that like for you?

Yeah, no indication at all. It was. It was a complete shock and through the whole process and looking, you know, in hindsight, we kind of go back, look for signs, look for something that would have given us a clue that something like this was coming down. And the truth is I didn't have any of that. I did know, you know, sean did experience childhood trauma and I will say that I was privileged enough that he felt that he could share that with me. I found out posthumously that he was not as open about a lot of his experiences with other people who are close in his life, but he was open with me about those things and I didn't really understand the level of impact and I think that is something I've learned since he's passed and really there's no, no prediction, which is really hard. Right, someone could have the same experience as Sean had had and still be alive today. So it was definitely very much a shock and I knew that there are a lot of stressors.

We had, you know, family stressors going on. It was in the midst of COVID still trying to figure that out. Our son had just turned one. That in and of itself can be a challenge, and then being married and trying to navigate a relationship and a house and manage all of these things definitely created some additional stress, and I think that's essentially where things came down to is just not knowing how to manage or handle all of the stress that was kind of compounding on him. And just you know, just a couple of days before he passed, we had been talking about vacations we wanted to take after COVID and lifted. We talked about expanding our family. You know there were all sorts of things that were kind of future plans that we were discussing and doing. So it's there wasn't anything. You know the classic idea of giving things away or expressing that you want to end your life. These were not things that even were a part of what was happening before he died.

Yeah, I think when it comes to suicide, we often want to try to understand it, but when to be able to say that we could have predicted it or we can predict it? And from my understanding and I'm sure you know a lot better than I do that there's no one classical way that people present before they make that decision.

That has been my experience. I'm very early on, after Sean died, I joined a suicide specific support group and I've met lots of people who've come through that group and I still participate in it to this day and I found that seems to be thing there's, there's nothing. There could be certain characteristics that might be similar, but there's nothing to be effective. You could say here's the magic, here's the magic thing that we're finding is in every person who dies this way. One of the things I will say, because I'm often asked like is there something you wish you'd known? Is there something you know honestly after, right before Sean died.

And then I continued, after I started trying to do my own reading about understanding trauma, how it impacts the brain. I've always been fascinated with the brain. That was something that was already an interest prior to Sean's death and looking at like, okay, how does trauma actually impact the brain? What lights up differently for individuals who've had this kind of, you know, sustained trauma and childhood. And again, there's no predictability to it, but that is something I wish I had understood a little bit more about what happens between survival brain and then coming out of that, you know, in order to find, like, better coping skills to help individuals who've experienced trauma, but there really, you know, there aren't any two people I know that have the exact same story for how their people die or what was happening before their loved ones died.

Yeah, that's been my, my limited experience as well. And I think that question, you know, is there anything you wish you'd known differently? It comes from the sense that we want to have a sense of control of her lives and we wouldn't be able to say I can look at this and I can predict this, but that also can lead to guilt. I know there's a lot of emotions around suicide, so what were some of the emotions that you went through after Sean's passing?

Guilt. Guilt was very big and I still have my moments with guilt shame. Definitely there was a lot of self blame. What did I do? And in my situation was a little complicated.

I did have other individuals who actually did openly blame me for Sean's death and so I had to work, work through that.

They're so much sorrow I mean that's gonna. I think sometimes we'd say like maybe that's a given, I don't know. Initially my anger was less towards him because there was almost an understanding of you have to be in a lot of pain to get to a point where you're going to end your life, because that's not an easy act to go through, and so I had this understanding about that, even though I wish the outcome had been different. But definitely the three that were the most, the largest and were the guilt, shame and that self blame, and it took a while for me to actually start to unravel those and be able to come to a place of I wouldn't say that they're gone. Like I said, I still have my moments of maybe I could have done this differently or I do feel guilty about how I handled this situation or or that one. I think that's just part of my healing process, but those were definitely the ones that were the largest initially.

I would imagine that one that you might have would be a sense of, maybe, abandonment. That maybe wasn't I, I hate to even say this, but good enough to keep him here or make them want to stay, and this is not just for a wife. This would be for if you lost a child or anybody else. I've heard people say like if I could have been better, that they would have chosen to stay.

You know, what's interesting is I actually haven't gone that route of. You know why wasn't I enough for you to stay? I have gone the route of though this was not part of our deal, like that's one that they're best here is quite a bit. This was not our agreement. This is not how we plan things to go. And and you're right with that idea of sense of control, as you mentioned earlier is, you know, control and predictability create a feeling of safety and and that's just how we want to. You know, I think, as human beings, we're constantly looking for that feeling of safety and security. And but I definitely was like this this was not part of this, not part of our plan. You know, we were expanding, like I said, we were planning, we were expanding, and then what like? For me, there's like what just happened and there's no way of knowing. I'm like what happened between this time and this time. It was clearly something shifted and changed, and then this is the end result.

Yeah, and I think that again, that that feeling of wanting to have control, but then that can also lead, I think, to the feelings of guilt that we have, because if it's true that I should have been able to see this coming well, then somehow at least a little bit of it is my fault. So what do you say to people that are that have had someone who's taken their life and they're like they're turning the blame to themselves?

Yeah, it's so complicated and those feelings are just so common, real and huge. We, I'll say, culturally, we have this idea almost, and I think, with the way that suicide prevention and I'm all for suicide prevention, I'm for the hope and help and getting to people and getting that message across and having that connection. I think, though, it also creates this sense of we're superheroes and can save people, and if someone ends up dying my suicide, that somehow we have failed because we weren't able to save them, and that, to me, is just very slippery slope, and that can definitely have a snowball effect to continue that idea of self blame. And then what it does is it takes kind of the responsibility off of the individual, and it took, again took me a while to get to a point of saying, ultimately, this was Sean's choice. That's painful. It's painful to say that. It's painful to go, oh my gosh, out of everything that was available, that we talked about or could have talked about this.

This is what ended up happening, and I do think that for someone to get to a point that they want to end their life, the pain is just that severe and we don't see it right. We don't see it like we do something like cancer. We don't see it like we do other forms of death. We're like, well, obviously you would want your pain to end, because we can see how much pain you're in, but often with emotional pain, we don't see it. And so I think that there's that piece of it is really coming to terms with the fact that someone made a choice that they would have rather died than lived. But also we tend to project our ideas of the state we're in in making that decision. If I'm healthy and I'm feeling great, then of course it wouldn't cross my mind to end my life, but we project that onto someone who's in that much pain and I think that makes it more difficult.

And I think when we can shift our mindset from we it was like for me, it was my job to save him to this was his ultimate choice to end his pain I think it creates an opportunity to have a little bit more compassion, because instead of focusing on the death, let's focus on how much someone was hurting and I feel like that gives us a little bit more space to have that compassion and then relieve us of the responsibility.

And again there are things within my own situation that I wonder could I have done this differently? Could I have done that differently? And the truth is I could have and the outcome could have still been the same in having to kind of separate myself from that and it's hard, it's painful because I still wonder and have a little bit of that, if he had just picked up the phone, if he had just texted me back those things that we say and I can spend so much time and energy focusing on that. Or I can make a decision and say I need to start focusing on how I start putting one foot in front of the other and start my healing journey.

Yeah Well, those are what ifs I want to say to someone who lost a child, but not by suicide, and who has talked to hundreds of thousands of parents who've lost children. At this point, we all go through those what ifs. What if I had taken her to a different doctor? What if I called her that morning? What if we all go through all those what ifs? I think with suicide it's particularly. Maybe we go through a particular so much because it is a choice, at least ostensibly it's a choice. I know that these people are in such pain that they feel that they have to end it, but we see from the outside it's a choice. They chose to do this. Then it becomes down to that human question okay, whose fault is it? Because it's got to be somebody's fault. We have to either blame them or blame ourselves, or blame both of us. I love what you said about just accepting the fact that this was their choice is, I think, a long way to go to relieving your own guilt. That's not going to do you any good anyway.

Absolutely. The thing with suicide is you're always going to be left with that question of why. I can say here and say, I speculate that the compounding stress continued to impact and with that, with the history of trauma and not great coping skills, this all compounded on Sean and this is what led to the decision. I can hypothesize that, but I have no idea. That's what's so hard about this type of death is you don't get the answer. In fact, my sister, when time we had been talking about it and I was like you know, when I see him again, I'm going to ask him. I'm going to be like dude, why did you do this? She was like, and by the time it's your time, you might not even care anymore. I was like, oh, that's a good point, but it's true, you just started left with this.

And again we as the survivors get to have that choice. Are we going to sit here and run through beyond that hamster wheel of trying to answer a question we don't get that answer to you while we're here on earth or are we going to say and what I like to say is find an anchor, find that thing that you can attach to that's still here on this earth and living. That's going to be the thing that when you're getting on that hamster wheel, when you're having a harder day, it's going to help you just to even put one foot in front of the other by a half inch, because that's where the movement is, and then it'll lead you to more growth.

I love that. So what's the anchor point for you?

Oh, totally my son. I say if I didn't have my son very early on, I knew I had said I know that the situation is going to impact both of us and I'll be honest, I still have tantrums, that's right. I have parties and I still say I have tantrums over my grief process and how much it still impacts me. But what I didn't want was this to dictate our lives to a point that it would just be and he was just over one and so that's been. My thing is how can I heal to teach my son lessons of how to have healthier coping skills, excuse me, how to be able to embrace the emotions and the feelings that he has and to be allowed to feel those and to work through them in a healthy manner? And I knew that I couldn't do that unless I started putting one. It took me a while to be honest with me.

Yeah.

But to put one foot in front of the other.

Well, I want to say this again because I know having lost someone and knowing what the process is like for you. It's just over three years for you and I want people to understand that this is still very, very raw. Three years is very early in this process. So again, my hats off to you for doing these interviews and doing the podcast and writing the book and being so open, helping people step through these early days of this, because they're very difficult and we can sit here and talk and rationalize about like I shouldn't have anger, I shouldn't have guilt, but we're human and you're left in a very difficult situation having to deal with all these emotions and all the things. I know you talk about, even just the little not the little things, but the things we have to go through, like planning funerals and all that kind of stuff. I would imagine you weren't even thinking about that at your age and with your husband.

Oh, not at all, not at all. And he didn't have a will. He was not complicated, he was even more. No, this was absolutely not a situation I would ever, ever thought that I would find myself. I was someone who bought into the conditioning of what a successful life looked like you go to school, you meet someone, you buy your house, you have your kids, your white picket fence, your animals and you retire. And I was little bit. I was in my 30s when I met Sean and I was so excited once I was like check, check, check. I'm not successful, I'm legit, I've made it.

Right.

And then, just short of two years of our second wedding anniversary, was just like oh okay, that is not. And that's been my biggest lesson, I would say, is that so often we're looking for life to be predictable. What's predictable externally? What is it that externally is going to help us feel better, rather than turning inward and figuring out? No, what's predictable is how we respond to things. What's predictable is me trusting myself that I can handle whatever life throws me, and this is all growth that I've done since Sean died I did not feel this way at all before he died and being able to understand, and I've even said multiple times like, haven't I, isn't this loss enough for life?

Like, have I not just checked off now the list of like I've had enough happen? Like, can I just coast? And the rest of the way? And the truth is no, no, I don't get to coast and things are still going to happen, but it's through this healing process I can again I said, learn to trust myself so that I know that, even if I don't have the answers for how to handle something, I can learn to and I'm able to look to people like you to be able to get tips and tricks on how to handle things.

Yeah, what you just said is so. So I understand, because you feel like when you go through something like this, losing someone so close to you, it's like okay, that's, that's enough. That's enough for a lifetime. But life continues to throw challenges at us and that's you know, it's part of the process. But what did you learn about yourself after, after Sean's passing? What, what, what did you find in yourself?

Oh well, the trust was a big one. I wasn't necessarily raised to actually trust myself or know that I could make solid decisions and follow through with them and know that it's okay to make mistakes and fail and it's all learning. It's all learning and growing. So that was a big one, cause initially, I mean, a big thing for me was how am I gonna do this? Am I gonna keep my house? How am I supposed to raise a child on my own? You know, there I still work through this. So, oh my goodness, am I gonna end up destitute on the street with my child, which now I have enough support and family that I know that that wouldn't happen, but these are all those things that come running through your head. Am I gonna be able to financially take care of us? You know there's so many different aspects of that and I'll say that even now I'm still learning that I can do it. I mean I often my therapist is amazing and he's specifically a grief therapist, which I do recommend for people, if they're gonna find one, to find someone who actually is trained either in trauma or in grief, and he'll reflect back to me and be like but look what you've already done, look how you've been able to handle these situations already, cause when you're tunnel vision in the moment and you're just surviving, you're just trying to get through day by day and minute by minute, you don't always have that opportunity to take a step back and look at it. So trusting myself is definitely a big one and another.

I mean there's been a lot that I've had to heal over the type of person I was before Sean died and now who I am after. I do miss my sense of humor. I'm hoping one day it'll come back a little bit more. That kind of is gone for a little bit. But even things of just recognizing how insecure I was and how that impacted the relationship Sean and I had and we had, I mean, he was one of the first people I ever felt like I could 100% be myself All the good, bad, ugly, everything about it. We could talk about anything and everything. And I still recognize the insecurities. I still recognized how much I was trying to control certain situations in order to feel that predictability and safety. And so letting go of some of that and surrendering I guess surrender would be another big lesson of not only trusting myself and surrendering. I have to almost let things play out in front of me first.

Yeah, yeah, you talked about your sense of humor and hopefully that'll come back one day, and it will. Again, I wanna say to you that this is still very early in the process, but when people go through this and we're so profoundly changed and we lose some of those aspects of ourself that we feel like it's gonna be this way forever. So I know it's only been a short time for you three years but what changes. And I ask you, what you've seen as far as growth? But have you seen yourself heal? Do you find those moments of joy? Now, I know maybe not all the time, but what was that like when you first caught yourself having a moment of joy?

Yeah, such a good question. And I'll say I absolutely have those moments of joy and I love that we're having this conversation now, with it being just over three years, because I actually recently just had a whole another layer of grief become more apparent to me and I don't know if you've ever, if you've had that in your own process or journey and it kind of hit me a little bit because I was like I'm doing well, I'm doing really well, I've got my career, I'm handling stuff, figuring stuff out and parenting, and then this whole other layer of grief just hit me and I went oh nope, okay, got a little bit more to do, which, of course, is where my frustration may come up, because I'm like great, this is something that I have that's going to be with me for the rest of my life and it will morph and change and shift, but I was a little frustrated on that one. But my point in that was that I started to notice that there was a little decrease and I was having a few more harder days and then trying to find those moments of joy and I'll say, in the immediacy, after Sean died, one of the first things that came through to me, where it took me a moment was I realized my son's been in swim lessons since he was about seven months old and I realized I was looking forward to taking him to swimming. And it was the first time I was looking forward to something. Because, you're right, it feels impossible. It feels like this grief is just impossible. There's no way to move through it. There's that it is permanent, that I won't get any of myself back.

And that first moment of going wait a second I'm actually feeling a little excited about doing something, and that was, and to me it was. After that moment, I think there were moments of joy that were happening all around me the whole time, but I just wasn't able to see them because of how heavy that grief was. And once I saw that one moment, I started to see more and more and then I started to feel a shift of my harder days were becoming less, my good days were becoming more and, like I said, it's still very much a roller coaster and up and down, and those moments of joy still exist now, even just hearing my son giggle like the really heavy belly giggles are good too.

Yeah, well, you just described it very well. I think grief is a roller coaster and I've heard described as like it's like being in the ocean and waves are coming. And the thing about the waves at first they're totally unpredictable. They're huge, they just totally wipe you out. Then they become more predictable and they get farther apart. But there's also, as you said, we work at it at different layers and different levels, and a lot of times anniversaries will trigger us to reflect on where we are. So we'll be going along, we think we're okay, and then a birthday will come up or an anniversary will come up and it's like boom, you feel like you're right back where you were, where you started. You're not, but it kind of feels that way.

Oh, yes, and I've been. So Mother's Day and Father's Day I didn't think those would be the days, but Mother's Day and Father's Day are the ones I'm like I just don't wanna celebrate these at all. And it is interesting how, in that moment, I can feel like I am at day zero and it's almost like just a flood of those emotions are right there with me and I'm just experiencing everything all over again. And I have had times where I've been frustrated with myself of shouldn't I be farther than this? Shouldn't I have healed more than this? Why am I reliving this so closely again? But the truth is that's just kind of how it works. After it, after this kind of trauma and I completely agree with you about the oceans I'm like sometimes it's a squall, sometimes you're in a nice reef.

I never know. But I do like the sense of and with that analogy, I had someone recently say the more we heal and start trusting ourselves, the more we're prepared and have an understanding of how to handle when those waves come. And I thought that was really good too, because, again, I forget sometimes how far I have come and then I go oh, that's right, I can handle it. Oh, that's right, I can take a step back. If I need to let my boss know I need to take a day or go do some self-care, then I might need a little bit more to work through this.

Yeah well, there's always this. To me, it's like figure out which is true. Does the grief get easier or do we get stronger? And maybe it's both, but I think we get stronger, so-.

Oh, I like that. I haven't thought of it that way, but I like it yeah.

I think we do. I think we get stronger, because there are those times when it's just like I'm done I don't wanna go through this again or you feel like you're right back to where you were before, but you bounce out of it more quickly, is what I've noticed.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. I've had that experience to work could be instead of weeks and weeks and months of reliving everything. So maybe it's just a couple of days and then I'm right back and I could notice that that's a really good point, though, of getting stronger, because I haven't really thought of it. I just was like, wow, with time maybe grief just dissipates a little bit. But I do like that idea of as we're healing and I did have actually someone else ask me one time very point blank are you healing or are you just coping? Well, that's a fair point too.

Sometimes I might feel like I'm healing and I'm actually just coping, and no matter which one it is, it's what I need in the moment. And then, as long as I continue to work through and that's a big one for me is you have to work through it, and it's awful. But to ignore the feelings is worse, and that's where I feel like people get stuck is when you ignore the feelings or ignore what's happening, versus I call it sludge work through the sludge, because those moments of joy are there, just have to be able to see them.

Yeah, healing is one of those words when it comes to grief that I'm still undecided on, because I use the word sometimes, but it implies that grief is a disease and the grief is something to be gotten over. It's a very medical type of model and I think grief is a challenge. I think it's something that and I have a client I love what she said about. She said my grief is a companion. I'm gonna carry it with me for the rest of my life and my grief has taught me a lot. It's caused me a lot of pain, but it's also taught me a lot and it's caused her to grow, and this is a person who lost her fiance.

So it's grief is a very interesting thing that we go through. But that because then when we get into healing, then people are like, well, shouldn't I be over it by now? And we get into like, shouldn't I be further? You know, shouldn't I be further along? And sometimes people get really upset if you said, well, you're gonna have the grief with you for the, you know, for the rest of your life, because then it sounds like it's a almost a terminal thing or a permanent thing, but it's not. We just. It changes us in various ways and just having this conversation with you, I can see how it's changed you and it helped us. We look at the world differently, so it's a mixed bag, I think.

Oh yes, and I think it's so unpredictable and I think that's what's so hard is we like things to fit into boxes and be linear. If I just do this business is how I'm gonna feel. If I just you know it doesn't work that way. I like the idea of the companion. Recently I was telling someone that I want to. I'm horrible with social media, like being able to put anything together, but I wanted. I wanna make my own little poster meme that's, you know, has a budding rose or really nice flower. So this is how I wish my grief looked. And then next to it would be Gollum from Lord of the Rings and be like but this is actually what it's like, because it is so hard. I mean, it's a companion thing. I think it's just about learning. It's almost like a dance in a way.

I think of it, you're just learning how to find rhythm with this thing that you have and being able to understand that it is with you and it is. Some days it's going to make you a better person and some days you might feel like you've gone backwards, and all of that is part of the process. And now you do have a relationship, especially, I think, with such a close loss or such a big loss, but you just have a different relationship with the grief. And I do agree that you are changed and it does change how you look at life and how you approach life.

And that's something that's been really hard for me, for my acceptance piece is that I am around people where I can tell they're still trying to connect with me, they're still trying to relate with me in ways that works before and it just doesn't work now. And I can see the kind of reaction they want, I can see what they're trying to do, and yet I feel so stuck because I can't give them that, because that's just not who I am anymore and so trying to kind of figure out, well, who am I and how can I relate differently. And that is still very much a process that I'm in now of how do I connect with people now, especially people who knew me before.

Yeah, that's a really good point, because one thing that people a lot of times we go through a profound loss. It's surprising people. We will lose friends, sometimes even family members. We'll lose people because we're different. They feel uncomfortable around us for whatever reason. But then, the other hand, I always find we always pick people up too, People that we might not have expected. So you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier. You don't have to go into detail if you don't want to. But you said I know you said you felt some guilt after Sean's passing, but you said other people were putting guilt on you also, which is just unbelievable that someone would do that.

Well, I agree, I mean a big part of this and what I'm doing now is how could we shift from that blame and judgment and anger and turn to compassion? And I like to say, like, how do we link arms and come together as a community to mourn the loss of a loved one and say you know Sean's way more than his death, and I so appreciate. At the beginning of this conversation you wanted to know about him rather than just his death, right, but it was definitely shocking because I was so I naively, apparently, was ready to link arms and really come together with some of the people who are in our lives and then to quickly find out that that was not the case. Sean had been married before their speculation that if he had stayed with his ex-wife he never would have died this way, that it must have been something in our marriage, I must have said something, I must have pushed him over the edge. You know all of these things and I think you know from from my experience and again, this is just off of my own experience I feel like, for whatever reason, death by suicide, it almost like cracks open your life, to be under a microscope, and that's what happened.

Everything about me was was open season, my personality, my parenting, my marriage. I mean I had people. I had someone come to me and say I know all about your marriage, I know all about how you were with Sean, like really, because we saw you maybe once every three months. But if you, if you can tell me you know the ins and outs of my marriage that way, okay. But these types of things were people and and now I can recognize it doesn't change the hurt. Let me say this it doesn't change the heart. I can recognize that these things that are being said or speculated were out of the grief that these individuals were feeling doesn't take away my hurt, but I can intellectualize it a little bit more and then I can work on the forgiveness out there yet, but the forgiveness and working through the hurt that I feel.

Yeah, that's. I think this is a really, really important point. If you don't mind like to stay on it for a little bit, because you know, I wrote a book about grief and one of the things about it is people will say the most inappropriate things to you, and it's it's not with the intention of hurting you. But again, and I think in the case of suicide, actually I have to find somebody to blame, right? And I'm not going to blame Sean because he's my buddy or my son or my whatever. So I'm going to I'm going to blame Matt Xandrum and I'm going to find a way to put this on her and as the grieving person.

It's unfair, but a lot of times we have to learn how to whether you want to call it give them grace or forgiveness or just whatever. We've got to find a way not to not to accept that. And then, if we get angry with them now, we have another emotion that we have to deal with, right. So now I have to deal with my grief and being angry at this other person, but it comes from that human again, that human thing of wanting to control and wanting to be able to say well, this has been different than we wouldn't have had this outcome.

Right and I had to get to a point where and I love that you do a lot of the you know post death exploring and curiosity, because I, I definitely believe that Sean is in a better place I don't like to say necessarily a better place, a healed place. Healed place because I would say, you know, I think where his soul is is definitely he's not feeling what he was feeling here, and so I do think we will be reconnected. But one of the things that I there was one day, and I call them pings, where you get those little messages and and I like to say that you know, get these little messages. Or it says you know, maybe this friendship isn't really good for you or maybe you need to move on.

And then if you're not paying attention, then you kind of get bigger nudges and I got a ping at one point that said that. For me that was like if Sean's not feeling that way anymore towards towards the people, why am I still holding on to the anger? Why am I still holding on to the frustration? Because it's eating me alive. He is not here to do anything about it, he's good where he is, and that really helped me start to release some of the anger and the frustration and, like I said, still working on that forgiveness piece but, at least it allowed me to start setting boundaries, to say I don't have to adhere to this, I don't.

you can feel that way, put it all over social media, do what you need to. I just don't have to be a part of your process. I don't have to acknowledge your valid. I think that was a big thing for me, as it felt like all of these individuals were trying to get me to admit to something like I did do it in order to validate their feelings. I was like you can feel that way, I just don't need to be a part of it. Like, stop trying to get me to to acknowledge or validate it. I'm not going to.

Right, yeah, they, they want you to engage in their drama and that's yeah, and sometimes we just have to. You know, let that go. And you know you said something about better place and I think that's I hate and I love that, because it's not. We are here where we're, where we're supposed to be for right now, you know and, and we are here, I say I say we're here on a mission, so, but our loved ones are in a place of where they're, where they're healed, where there's no judgment, where they don't we don't have the, the burdens that we have here. So you you talked about Sean being in a better place. So what are you, what were your beliefs before his passing on the afterlife, and what are your thoughts now?

Yeah, and I agree with the better place, like as soon as I saw that it's not really because one of those things that people says, oh, they must be, they must be in a better like. No, no, I don't want speculation about that, although at the same time I'm, like I agree with you on the heel. You know being healed, like how do you describe?

Yeah.

So I was raised in a Christian household and my spirituality was definitely pushed, because there are just these ideas oh, when someone dies, go to heaven. And we want to be mindful of our sins and we confess our sins. And I wasn't Catholic, I was raised Eastern Orthodox. So you know, be mindful of your sins and try and be the best version of yourself. In all of this, and the theology really is based in finding what you know. How can you find purity of love, which, of course, in practice is always different Because, as you've been saying, you add this human component and it's really easy to take something and make it into something that's not necessarily looking for that purity of love, because that sometimes what religion does. And so I'm still on a spiritual journey of trying to figure out what I truly believe. But honestly, I believe in something that Sean is in some place that maybe could be like heaven. I mean, we talk about heaven and so that's a word I can use to describe where I believe he is.

Because I honestly feel that it is really difficult for our earthly minds to really understand and conceptualize where our sins are. There, you, go.

And so, to put words to it, I just don't feel like we do it justice. But what I found is I do feel Sean is around us. I've had some interesting things happen around the house, or I joke that right, it's been more than three years. I've had lots of pictures taken on my phone and there are two pictures of Sean and me that pop up on my phone the most often, and so I usually think that there's some. He was just trying to send me a message, but I definitely feel that there's connection between the afterlife and those of us who are still here on earth. And I mean I could go down the rabbit hole of how and looking at physics and all of that. I won't go into all of that in the exchange of energy, but I definitely have felt that. You know, I believe in God's source universe. I will change that.

And one of the things I'll say that I was met with that challenged me probably the most in my spirituality is this idea and I still, to this day, have people say this to me about oh, if you die by suicide, you go directly to hell. And that one is a big struggle for me. Because, number one, who are we to judge. And number two, it creates the sense of oh awesome, well, god's source universe is with you. Until you do something like this, and I just don't I don't believe that. I believe that God's source universe is with us always, and I don't think Sean was any less worthy of being able to go to a place where his soul can learn the lessons it needs to learn and be able to continue on that learning path. I know that's not very direct.

No, that's, that's that's not an easy, it's not an easy question or an easy answer.

My feelings and thoughts are still all over the place as well, but I think it's really important, this idea that you know the ultimate sin is to take your own life and to me, that's the ultimate level of control that the church people want to have over you. Right, if you, if you do this one thing, then God will never forgive you. Well, once you start to understand what God is, who God is and I mean you have a child. I remember when I, when I had my first daughter, that's when I first, that's when I've got a glimpse of what God's love might be like. And would you torment your child because they couldn't handle the, the torment that they were going through?

And I think people that take their own lives, if anything, if anything's different about the afterlife, is they get more love, they get more treatment, they get more healing, because maybe they need it more because this life was was so rough. But I find it to be one of the most important teachings that people try to put on you, and for someone to say that to someone who's lost someone to suicide is it's to spit a bomb. Sorry, I can't think of a better word.

It's, it's definite. I've had to learn again how to respond, cause I do wear my facial expressions. It can be very active and so sometimes it definitely shows when I'm shocked or I'm like what are you, what are you saying? And I couldn't agree more. I think that's one of the things and I don't know if this type of loss is what has has guided me to getting to there.

But I think that the purity of God's love is more than any of us can actually conceptualize, and to feel that, to experience it, it makes it really hard for me to believe that that many souls could say no to that. So I've had to kind of work through and still do work through some of the conditioning of how I was raised in that organized religion and looking at those types of things and really almost like taking my spirituality I call it like up leveling, almost like up leveling that spirituality to try and define more of that connection, cause I think religion sometimes can be dividing, divisive, versus really you know it's a constant I learned recently the term is othering so constantly trying to find that space of why something is going to happen to someone else but won't happen to me because I'm I'm okay, like.

I'm safe, exactly, yeah, it's. It's interesting because the worst sin is always the one that you don't have, whether it's whether it's being gay, or whether it's gossiping, or whether it's drinking, or whether it's taking your life, whatever it is, that's always the worst sin it's. It's not the one that I do.

That's such a good way of putting it too. Oh, that's so fantastic, it's true, yeah, and so, and I'm one of those where I'm like, if you're spending that much time on what someone else is going through, or paying attention not much to someone else's life, you're not paying attention to what's going on for you, and really that's a good opportunity to kind of turn inward, is what I say. Turn inward and look at you and start healing your past experiences, because we all yes, I've had a major loss in my life. Every person not everyone's gonna have a major loss, but every person is going to experience something that negatively impacts them, and what that response is going to look like is gonna be a level of grief, and so I believe that we have to heal those past experiences to truly be able to stop forward with our present experiences and be able to learn how to trust ourselves and keep moving forward.

I know you work with helping people to understand suicide better. One of the misconceptions about suicide, I believe, is that people that take their lives are weak. Somehow they're, somehow they're not. They just weren't strong enough. What are your thoughts on that?

Ah, totally bogus, Because to take any life is not an easy thing to do and especially to get to a point where you've decided to take your own and if you think about what it takes and again, I'm not promoting that people actually break down the different methods to take your own life. That's just something with my own process and being in my own moments actually thought through what it would take. It's not an easy thing to do. And a common thing and this is something and I'm not a psychologist, but this is something I've been told pretty frequently is that a common theme is not being a burden to other people. I have this pain I'm carrying around and I don't wanna be a burden to anyone that I love, and to feel that so deeply and so heavily to me is anything but weak. Anything but weak. And you're right, it gives a sense of control. I get to have the final say. I mean, again, I don't agree with it. And while I understand sort of understand Sean's decision, I mean I still wish he made a different decision.

Sure, well, what you just said was really important, and that's something that I've thought about as I've learned about this. Not that I'm an expert, but some people, because everybody's different but some people, and they make that decision, they have convinced themselves or their brain has convinced them, however you wanna put it that people would be better off without them. Now we look at that from the outside and we say, well, that's crazy, that doesn't make any sense. But you get to the point where it's like I don't wanna be a burden to someone so that taking of your own life might actually be, in their mind, an act of compassion to the world around them, because the world's gonna be better off without me. Not understanding your value in the world. It's not weak. I don't see it as weak at all. It's just. To me it's tragic that people can't feel the love that we have for them and the worth that they have. I think it's maybe, if anything, it's like not understanding your own worth.

Absolutely, and I think I can say that what I again, what I speculate for Sean is that the message he got when he was younger and again, this is just Sean's situation, because people have different backgrounds in different ways but was, I think at some point throughout his childhood or maybe even in his adulthood, there was some sort of message to him that he wasn't worth it, that he was broken. And he and I had high conversations where I would say I'm not sure where your past trauma ends and then where our relationship starts. And the truth is there is no end and start. But I would say, for me, I wanna be responsible for what I'm doing in our relationship, in our marriage, and I wanna work through this. But I can't tell what might be residual and how do we work through that.

And essentially, he had tried certain things. He had tried going to therapy, tried exercise, we tried all these things, and he would say, well, what's the point? I'm broken, none of this is gonna work, and so that's an area and a theme that I'm hoping that we can start as a community that is looking at prevention or looking at the resources for the aftermath is how do we start being able to break through for people who, at a cellular level, truly feel and believe that nothing is going to help them, that they are just this, they are just a burden. They are just going to be an issue for other people, which is not as you said. It's totally not true, and I completely agree of how do you show someone that they still matter when somewhere to their core, they feel that they don't?

Yeah, and you touched on this earlier, but it was a question I wanted to ask you about and again, everything I've asked you has been really difficult, but to me it's really difficult to even bring up, and that's the idea of suicide prevention, because I see suicide prevention hotline, I see you know, as prevent suicide and I think it's a noble thing, but the flip side of that is, well then, if someone takes their own life, then I didn't do enough to prevent it. So what are your thoughts on suicide prevention?

Yeah, I think there's different stages of prevention, and so I think a lot of what is discussed now is kind of that. Someone is expressing ideation, someone has made an attempt, and then it's almost like a reaction of how do we blast you with some help and hope and know that you're worth it? And I agree with you. I think having resources for that moment is very important. I think for me, when I look at prevention, I think we could start earlier, and that is just not necessarily an identifying people who might have ideation. But how about just being kind of humans to each other, how about just connecting, how about just really caring about how people are doing? And I can say for myself I have to work on this.

It's so easy to get caught up in wash and repeat this is what I'm going to work. I'm taking care of my son. Go to bed, wake up, do the same thing and send him to. How miss those nuances of really checking in on each other and healing and helping kids learn here. It's okay to have all these emotions. They're okay, even the ones that make you feel crummy. They're still part of it and you can work through them and keep going. You don't have to be stuck with those. So I think I tend to think more of that what is commonly referred to as upstream, of how do we start creating better mental and emotional Because I don't think it's just mental health, I think emotional health is part of it, nutrition can be part of it, having physical health as well to start to create really good habits when we're feeling good so that when we're not feeling so great, we can still access hopefully still access some of those habits that can help us through those harder times.

Yeah, beautiful. I love what you just said, because I tell my clients who have lost some of the suicide, because it's like there's nothing that you could have done. You did what you could do and I truly believe that because, as you said, a lot of this stuff is the latter stages and at that point maybe we can keep them around for a day or two longer. But how do you convince them that life, which is hard, is worth living if they don't feel like they're contributing? It's we have to help people understand that you are valued, that you do make a difference and that I don't know. I like what you said about that because I think again that suicide prevention thing well, a very great, noble thing people might say well, I should have, I should have. You know, if I just call that I could have found out what the signs were and I could have given them the thing that fixed them.

Yes, and I'll say I think we do have some work to do, because I have seen how very recognized organizations will say here are the signs, and it's, in my opinion, it's incorrectly informing people for what you're saying and it creates that, like I was saying earlier, kind of that superhero effect. Well, if I see the signs, and okay, so I'm told these are the signs to predict suicide, okay, but I had a left one who lost, who I lost by suicide, but they didn't. I don't see these signs. So where did I go wrong? You know, because it's because I'm being told that this is what exists, and and so I think, if we could, I get to a point of understanding that suicide doesn't discriminate, like if there could be that one magic thing that we could pinpoint.

And then I've heard researchers talk about well, maybe it's socioeconomic status, maybe there's something racially there, is there something you know for a level? I'm not sure. I'm guessing, because of the work you do, that you're familiar with ACEs. Well, maybe, if we look at the ACE, you know the adverse childhood events. That was the adverse child for your listeners. But anyway, my whole point is we're trying to find that magic thing that we could say well, there it is. We've cracked open suicide versus saying like it's emotional, it's feeling like you're a burden, it's feeling like you don't have self worth, and we're trying to quantify something that's not necessarily quantifiable.

Yeah, well, there's. There could be a whole lot of causes. I was listening to just someone this morning who had a near death experience as a child and she was talking about the research of PMA jetwaters done on that. And some of those children they just want to go home because they've they've had a glimpse of what it's like and they're like they don't think of it as as taking their lives, they think of it as going home. And I know we don't want to hear that because we want everybody to stay here, but I think for some people it's just like I'm ready to go home.

And again, how can we take that away from this? Because when we have an issue with it is when we're projecting our own discomfort with it, and I think that's the difference, and I definitely I mean after Shonda, I was reading books by media and I was watching all these shows on your death experience. I was fascinated. I was like this is amazing and how cool.

And again, to shift that mindset, there's so much fear around death and this idea of finality and and I think I can say in my situation, I think that's what made it the hardest for individuals who maybe weren't sure what their spirituality was or didn't have much, I'd say, as much, of a spiritual journey. You know, this was, this was finite, sean was gone, period, there is no relationship with him, there is no, there's nothing. And so I found that those individuals wanted his tangible things, they wanted things from me in order to keep him alive with them, rather than understanding that you can shift the relationship and and still chat with him or still talk to him or still have a relationship. It just looks different.

Yeah, so we're coming to the end of our time, but I did want to ask you about your son and and his relationship with Sean. I'm assuming he doesn't remember Sean from when he was alive, so when he was on the planet, I should say. Because he's still alive. But so how does how do you keep Sean alive for him?

Yeah, so he was just over one. Yeah, pictures of he's. He looks like his dad, he thinks like his dad. It's so uncanny and even extended family members from Sean's family have looked at him and they'll go oh, you have your dad's eyes, bright brown eyes. So you know it's. I'm still trying to navigate that. Recently I was able to get him some play therapy. That really helps him. Grief play therapy Because and I always think that I have a little bit longer with my son before we're coming to a certain stage. So, for instance, I had a little another six months he'd stay in his crib and then he'll start, you know little early on crawling out of his crib and I'm okay.

So I thought I had a little extra time for you to start asking questions about his dad. And then dropped that bomb one day and I went oh okay, here it is, and I thought I was, I was doing a great job, and it turns out I wasn't. I was really ambiguous and kids, you need to be really concrete.

And so curious and play therapy. It gave him an opportunity to be a little bit more expressive and to learn words for how to describe what's happened, so I'm proud of him. I'll actually say my dad died. His name is Sean. He died and even through plate therapy simple verbiage, but concrete of daddy's body doesn't work anymore and he's not breathing and that has been a huge game changer. But we talk about him and I'll tell him. If he does something that I think Sean would like, I'll tell him. Or if there's something I think reminds me of Sean, I'll say it to my son and just try and keep it alive that way. I like to go to the cemetery.

We have a military cemetery which is where some of Sean's ashes are buried and I like to go there and I call him my coffee dates and I'll tell him like I'm going to go to the cemetery. Do you want to come with me? Or you can come another time and just try and keep the communication open with him so that he can. Yeah, so that when he's ready here if he's ever ready he has that opportunity.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I know that's that was another deeply personal question. Well, alexander, I want to again. I want to express my admiration to you, first of all for what you're doing. Please remind people of the name of your book where people can read you that type of information.

Yeah, absolutely, and thank you so much for the conversation today. I really enjoyed it. So the book is a suicide club what to do when someone you love chooses death. It's mostly available on Amazon, but, honestly, there are different sites that you can find it, and then you have a website which is forward to joycom, so I'll spelled out forward to joycom, and then you can also find me on Instagram at forward to joy.

Okay, for some reason, right as you said that you're, you're out of your dropped out. So the website? No, I could hear you, but it just dropped really low, as you said, the website.

Forward to joycom. All spelled out, yeah.

Okay, forge to joy and you have a podcast.

I do the Windows club. It's a podcast, so you can find me there as well. All right.

Well, again, thank you so much for being here today. It's been a pleasure getting to know you, and have a good rest of your day.

Thank you, you too.