AUGUST 7, 2008 - Finding Meaning After the Loss of a Twin Child

AUGUST 7, 2008 - Finding Meaning After the Loss of a Twin Child: Jenny Hander. Jenny Hander is a bereaved mother and author of A Place of Peace. After the loss of her infant twin daughter Alysa in 2005 Jenny turned back to her Christian faith. Jenny’s mission is now to share her journey and uplift others through writing and public speaking. Read more

July 31, 2008 - Suicide and Bereavement: Jack Jordan and Bob Baugher

HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
Suicide and Bereavement
Hosts: Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley
With guests: Jack Jordan and Bob Baugher
July 31, 2008
Gloria: Hello, I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley with my co-host
Heidi: Dr. Heidi Horsley.
Gloria: Each week Heidi and I welcome you to Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and conversation with those who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one and for healthcare professionals who work in this most difficult field. And always the message is others have been there before you and made it. You can too. You need not walk alone. If you’re listening to our Thursday live Internet show, please join Heidi and me on the show by calling our toll-free number, 1-866-472-5792, with questions or comments regarding the losses in your life. These shows are archived on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com, as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.org websites, and they are brought to you by the Open to Hope Foundation. All shows can be downloaded on iTunes and transcripts can be accessed on www.thegriefblog.com. Well, good morning, Heidi.
Heidi: Good morning, mom.
Gloria: We’ve got a great show today. I’m really excited about having Jack Jordan on and then later on we’ll be joined by our friend Bob Baugher.
Heidi: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, too.
Gloria: The blog. We hope that everybody’s gotten to the grief blog. We’ve had a wonderful new face lift and we’re excited about that. And also the Open to Hope Foundation. We’ve got some wonderful new articles. People are writing for us and we have some wonderful original material on that site so we hope you’ll all go to www.opentohope.com. And also, Heidi, we’ve got “Ask the Authors,” where people have asked us questions over time and we’ve been answering them on the foundation. So if you have questions that you want to have answered, please log in to the grief blog. It’s probably one of the ways to go in and ask us questions about concerns you might have. We’ve had some interesting information on the blog. We had an article called “We lost our son to an overdose,” and it was written by Terry Friend and he has had a huge number of comments on it and it’s really very gratifying to see other people come in and help him out, isn’t it?
Heidi: Absolutely, especially if someone has gone through something similar.
Gloria: And I will be talking about that on the show today, how it helps to be connected with people who have had similar issues that you had. So one of the things that I just wanted to comment on that Terry Friend said about his son’s accidental overdose, he himself, Terry, it’s been two-and-a-half years and he’s concerned about his own physical health. He doesn’t know if he can get through it. One of the things I want to say to you out there is really that is a good point. You need to pay some attention to your physical health. You really do. You need to drink water. You need to concentrate on your breathing. We tend to breathe way up in the chest after we’ve had this kind of a loss. We need to get oxygen. If you can just take a walk around the block or any kind of movement is good. Even raising your arms up and down in windmill fashion. If you do these things a few minutes a day, it can be pretty amazing.
Heidi: Absolutely. Exercise is important and at The Compassionate Friends Conference, there was a speaker, Dr. Ken Doka, who has been on our show. And I loved it because he said there are three types of friends and one of those types of friends is someone that provides respite for you. So if you can find a friend that you can get out with and have fun and take a break from your grief, that’s really important.
Gloria: Absolutely. So, Heidi, we’ve got as I said a great show today and would you like to introduce our guest?
Heidi: I’d be honored to. Our guest today, as you said, mom, is Dr. Jack Jordan, and our topic is “Suicide and Bereavement.” Dr. Jack Jordan is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he specializes in working with loss and bereavement. He is also the founder and Director until 2007 of the Family Loss Project, a research and clinical practice providing services for bereaved families. He has specialized in work with survivors of suicide and other losses for more than 30 years, and is the co-author with Dr. Bob Baugher of After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief. Welcome to the show, Jack.
Jack: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
Gloria: Hi Jack. It’s great to have you on. I was reading over your material. Jack sent me some wonderful research he’s done and articles and I was amazed because I had to ask him before the show came on, are you connected with a university and he said, no. You’re really remarkable, Jack. I really give you credit for doing research and being in private practice. It’s really wonderful. Wonderful to see this happen.
Jack: Thank you.
Gloria: I wanted to ask you today, what’s the difference in suicide bereavement? How is that different from other deaths?
Jack: Ah. You start with the biggest question first. I’ll give you an academic answer and then I’ll give you a clinical answer apropos of the discussion. There’s actually been some discussion and even debate in the literature among professionals about is suicide bereavement different and in what ways, and most of that debate has been based on research that says that if you give suicide survivors, by which I mean someone who’s grieving after a suicide, if you give them a depression measure three years after the death, they may or may not look different than someone who’s lost a loved one through a natural death or even other sudden unexpected deaths. If you ask most survivors, they’ll say, yeah, this is different. It feels profoundly different. I think the things that seem to be most different for most survivors, and throughout the conversation today, I want to emphasize that survivors are not a uniform group of people. That all survivors don’t have the same experience. We know that grieving is very unique and idiosyncratic for each person so when I talk about suicide survivors, this is the way it is for most survivors most of the time but not for everybody. A couple of things seem to stand out for survivors. One is because suicide is a confusing and mysterious form of death, particularly if people don’t understand the linkage between suicide and psychiatric disorder, it can often feel like it simply comes out of the blue and is simply an irrational or selfish act that a person has engaged in and so survivors typically have an intense need to struggle with why did this happen? to make sense of this. What contributed to this? And closely related to that is the question about what role if any did I play in this? Did I contribute somehow to this death or even if I didn’t contribute to it, should I have seen it coming?
Gloria: So we’re looking at kind of a guilt factor.
Jack: Enormous for most survivors. Survivors usually start with the question, what did I do wrong?
Heidi: And what could I have done to prevent it?
Jack: Exactly. I had a father who was a physician actually who was a survivor who lost his young adult son to suicide and he used the phrase that has always stuck in my head which is he said – he talked about the tyranny of hindsight. That people judge their behavior before an event based on what they know after the event and they can now connect dots that they didn’t or couldn’t connect beforehand and suicide survivors seem to struggle enormously with that, probably more than almost any other kind of bereavement after any other kind of death. The two other big issues—one would be stigma that’s associated with suicide and psychiatric disorder in general and although that is changing slowly in our society, families can still feel an enormous amount of
Gloria: And I feel that being in the mental health business for years that early on particularly in family therapy there was some blame going around for families. Who told them to do it? There was even the idea that if someone killed themselves somebody in the family was telling them to.
Jack: Right or communicating that they wanted them dead.
Gloria: Yeah, that they weren’t valuable or something. There was also of course all the mother blaming stuff going on with any kind of psychiatric problems.
Jack: So there’s a legacy of fear and stigma associated with psychiatric disorder and suicide that goes way back literally centuries and we’re on the road to changing that or overcoming it but have a long way to go and families carry that extra burden.
Gloria: And how about rejection?
Jack: Yeah, that’s the third one I was going to mention is that frankly collectively as a society we are confused about and understandably so, but understanding is suicide something that people choose to do out of their own free will? or is it something that people are more or less driven to out of mental disorder or life stressors? and because we don’t know who to hold accountable for suicide, it is very confusing, but to the extent that survivors feel like emotionally and in their thinking say this person had a choice and they still did it anyhow, survivors can be left feeling profoundly rejected or abandoned or just deserted, betrayed if you will, and that then leads to either feeling furious with the person who took their life or feeling really unworthy yourself. What kind of person am I that this person didn’t care enough to want to stay with me or stay in the relationship?
Heidi: When in the reality as you know, so many people that take their life feel like the world would be so much better off without them and their family would be so much better off without them that they look at it as almost a selfless act.
Jack: Exactly, so one of the central tasks for survivors is to educate themselves about suicide in general as well as trying to figure out why did my loved one take their life but it really helps to educate yourself and understand better about what are the things that contribute to suicide and we know that when the vast majority of people who take their life at the time they die, most are suffering from a psychiatric disorder most often depression or bipolar disorder and at the time that they die they’re really in a kind of altered state of consciousness. They are not able to think or problem solve or see any hope of getting out of the situation they’re in or the emotional pain they’re in and so for them it feels like suicide is the only escape, the only road out, and they often feel like, in a way that’s usually quite distorted, other people would be better off without them. I’m burdening other people.
Gloria: It’s time for us to go to break now, and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and we’re talking to our guest, Jack Jordan, about “Suicide and Bereavement.” Please stay tuned for more. You can reach us on our blog, www.thegriefblog.com and also go to our Open to Hope Foundation site to get information and remember that you can also download these shows on iTunes. Please stay tuned for more.
Well, when we went to break we were talking about what makes suicide different from other bereavements. We were talking about the guilt and blame and responsibility and rejection and the abandonment, the anger. Those kind of things that can come up. Well, when we started the show I was talking about the fact that Jack Jordan is a very unusual person because he is in private practice and still is doing research which is a wonderful thing to do the same thing Heidi and I have been trying to do which is segue way, give information to survivors from professionals, that wonderful information from research. Well, I was really interested, Jack. I was reading some of your articles you sent me the links for and one that I was really interested in was what do suicide survivors tell us they need and it’s a result of a pilot study. And while I want to say the limitations of the study right away for people so they know. There were 63 adult survivors that were asked these questions who were 18 and older, and there were 45 females and 18 males so it was heavy on the women, and it was mainly people who were educated, Caucasian, so that was the sample, but some of the things that I found in there that were really interesting was when people were asked what was helpful, they found that only after suicide, right, Jack?
Jack: Yes.
Gloria: That only 49 percent of the police were helpful. I’m thinking 49 percent of police were helpful. 36 percent of hospital emergency room staff. And only 20 percent of teachers. Now while these people are 18 and older so maybe they’re not in school, especially in the lower grades. I think it’s appalling. There needs to be more education out there.
Heidi: Well, mom, what about the ER? You would think that people that are in an emergency room situation would be very schooled and very comfortable with the topic of suicide and how to assist people.
Gloria: Yeah, what do you make of that, Jack?
Jack: Well, essentially, the conclusion you’re coming to which is that there needs to be enormous training and education of essentially of first responders. People who have early contact with not just suicide survivors but this is across the board about people who are grieving particularly sudden unexpected traumatic death because people that lose someone to a car crash or homicide survivors I’m sure would report similar experiences. I don’t think this particular aspect of it is unique to suicide survivors but there needs to be a routine part of the training of people who are going to have contact with traumatically bereaved individuals.
Gloria: Well, I think it’s amazing that there’s no education built into the curriculum of schools for grief and loss, and how much would it take? You can have a few hours every quarter or something like that to help people so that’s pretty amazing. And I wanted to say one thing for our audience about this. I know that there are a lot of you out there who feel like wow, yeah, they didn’t help me. I wish they would have. I’d like to do something about it. And these are the areas that you could become proactive in in a supportive way of letting people know at your hospital or whatever that you’re available as a family to come and present or whatever so I know there are a lot of our audience that are looking for, I think what we call meaning making. How can they make something out of this and that’s certainly an area that can be helpful.
Jack: Yes. In fact if I’m allowed to I can suggest a couple of organizations that people could connect with if they want to get involved in some kind of – become more of an activist around this. One is the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and that website is www.afsp.org, and the other would be—there actually is a political advocacy organization called SPAN which stands for Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network, and they are focused primarily on suicide prevention but increasingly are also focused on advocating and trying to help develop services for survivors. I don’t have the website for SPAN but if you do a search under Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network you can probably find it.
Gloria: Okay, or if you want to send us those links, we’ll put them up on the grief blog. The other part of this article that I found very interesting was on what people reported was helpful was the fact that talking one to one with another suicide survivor, 100 percent of them felt that that was helpful. I thought that’s pretty amazing. Oh, and I was happy to see that 72 percent felt that Internet websites were helpful so I thought that was good and I’m hoping that more people will hear about the radio show. 85 percent said that books on suicide and grief were helpful. Now these were a pretty educated group that you were asking these questions.
Heidi: Those three things have something in common. It’s the theme of universality, I’m not alone, other people have been through this. It normalizes your own experience and you realize you’re not the only one that’s dealt with this before.
Jack: Right, which may be particularly important given the stigma issues for survivors. Being able to connect with other people where you don’t have to be worried about what are other people thinking about me because this happened to me? which is a central issue for survivors, that then becomes very helpful. We’re not the only study. A number of studies are beginning to find that contact with other survivors is very helpful for most survivors. Again, there’s not one formula that fits all but for many survivors, that was literally life saving. I’m part of what’s probably the largest consultant on what’s probably the largest study of survivors that’s ever been done including looking at people who are using the Internet support resources as opposed to face-to-face resources and it’s very interesting. We’re finding that the people who are more likely to use Internet support resources are (a) feeling like they need more. That a group that meets once every two weeks or something is just not enough and the 24/7 availability of the Internet resources is very helpful and they are also feeling more isolated and more stigmatized particularly by their families so they turn to the Internet, which is serving as a new way to connect with people. Also people often have trouble finding resources in their community.
Heidi: I would also think that there’s something about being on the Internet. Number one you’re not interrupted. Number two there’s some anonymity there so you can really let it all hang out and be honest and up front about what’s going on with you because people don’t know who you are.
Jack: That’s right. That probably helps some people also.
Gloria: I would think there might be some gender issues, too. I noticed 45 percent of these people were female and we see that, being involved with The Compassionate Friends, that it’s heavily female at conferences, in groups, whatever, and the men that we’ve talked to on the show and interviewed talk about doing. Building things, putting in driveways, building houses. It seems that they like to do, so maybe not be talking as much so I don’t know if you’ll find some gender issues there, but I wanted to go on to people. 94 percent of these people found suicide grief support groups helpful which I thought was interesting. And 80 percent individual therapy. But one of the things that concerned me was I recently heard a past surgeon general talking about how huge the suicide rate was in the Indian population in the United States, the American Indians. And you know they’re not going to do any of this. So there’s a whole group of people out there that maybe could support, be supportive, and I think you talk about it in your article that we could go on. There needs to be a lot more support and understanding. Well in just a few minutes we’re going to have Bob Baugher on, and Bob Baugher and you wrote a book which I think is very important. We’ve set the basis for it. But now I want to see the next half of the show telling our folks out there who have had suicides in the family giving them advice on what they can do and how they can be supportive and that kind of thing. Do you want to talk about your book?
Jack: Sure. It’s really more of a booklet. It’s maybe about 70 pages. Bob has written a number of excellent books on grief and bereavement that I think are distinguished because they’re easy to read and short and this book we organized chronologically. It’s organized around advice and suggestions for the first few days and weeks, the first few months, the first year and beyond. We also had about ten survivors who we’ve worked with, either Bob or myself in our practices, answer the question, what would you say to a new survivor? What words of comfort would you offer to new survivors? So their comments are in the book, and then there’s an appendix on when to seek professional help. Also some resources that people can access on line and suggested readings.
Gloria: That’s great and it’s called After Suicide Loss: Coping With Your Grief. And you can go to www.thegriefblog.com and you can go on there if you want to order it. Is it on amazon?
Jack: No. We self publish it so you basically get it through Bob although there are a couple of – I believe that Centering Corp. – you could ask Bob. I believe Centering Corp. has it.
Heidi: And we’ll have it on our grief blog in the bookstore.
Jack: Okay. Great.
Gloria: Okay. Very interesting. How do you find suicidal in the families? Do you find them willing to talk about it? How does that go?
Jack: You can’t generalize it. There are families who are quite open from the get go with each other and with the larger community that this was a suicide and they actually want people to know that and want to talk about it with people, and then there are people who try very hard to hide it to keep it a secret either internally within the family; for example, they may not want to tell younger children in the family that it was a suicide, or they may try to hide it from people in the community.

Gloria: I think that’s going to come into play with an email we received. I was just looking at an email coming in so we’re going to go to break now. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host Dr. Heidi Horsley. We’re talking to Jack Jordan about “Suicide and Bereavement.” On this next segment, we’ll have Dr. Bob Baugher join on the show. You can reach us through www.thegriefblog.com. Remember these shows are – you can listen to them 24/7. They can be downloaded on mp3 files and you can access it all through the grief blog. Please stay tuned for more.
Heidi: Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. We are here today with Dr. Jack Jordan talking about “Suicide and Bereavement.” On this segment, we will also be joined by Dr. Bob Baugher who co-authored a book with Jack called After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief. Welcome, Bob, Jack, and Gloria.
Gloria: Hi Bob. Are you there? Bob, tell us you’re professor faculty at Highline?
Bob: Yeah, Highline Community College near Seattle.
Gloria: Near Seattle. Okay. Congratulations on your new book.
Bob: Thanks.
Gloria: That’s great. Well, you’ve been listening in, right, so you know where we are.
Bob: Yes, I have. Yes, I do.
Gloria: Oh, good. Well, I wanted to do this last segment of the show more on intervention than anything else and Jack, what was the question you said you ask everybody?
Heidi: What words of comfort, right? would you offer the survivors. Is that it, mom? I’d love to hear the answer. That’s why I piped in.
Jack: We asked survivors what would you offer to the new survivors? Well, people had different things to say but I think the core theme of it was you can survive this because in the beginning people truly don’t know can I survive this psychologically. Sometimes even physically. It’s not uncommon for new survivors early on in their grief to feel some suicidality or to feel some understanding of I could understand pain so great that my loved one did this now and I couldn’t before. I’ve heard that many times. So I think the core of what they had to say was this is survivable. And also the goal is not that you get over this and put it all behind you. You will walk with this the rest of your life but you can learn to carry it. I heard someone use a beautiful metaphor in my own survivor support group the other day in which they said grief is like having a huge boulder put on your back and you don’t throw the boulder off when you’re done and then walk away. You just get stronger. Your back gets stronger and you learn to carry it better. And I think particularly with this kind of catastrophic loss, that’s more what happens for people.
Bob: I agree and I think you talked earlier about support groups and the power of that both on the Internet and in person and I’ve worked a lot with The Compassionate Friends group as you know. There’s something very powerful about walking into a meeting and sitting down and hearing other people tell some of your story and also see people further along than you who are able to walk and talk and do things again and yet at the same time they still carry their grief and of course the memory of their loved one in their heart and I think if anything, for the listeners out there, especially for those who know someone, a family member, friend, and so on who’s lost a loved one to suicide to nudge them into getting a support group. Of course, like Jack said earlier, one size doesn’t fit all but it’s important that you can look across the room and hear someone tell some of your story.
Gloria: Well, we’ve got a couple of emails here and I wanted to run this past you two. One is from Brenda and she says that on July 6, there was an article in the New York Times talking about the fact that if there was not the means to kill themselves, suicide would decrease. My son shot himself in our back yard with my husband’s shotgun. I have wonderful memories of cooking dinner over the campfire while the guys went hunting. This article really breaks my heart. It makes me feel like we were responsible. Do you have any thoughts on how to deal with guilt connected to suicide?
Bob: Well, guilt is a huge issue. It’s everywhere. I think again having someone to bounce this off of and saying to yourself what’s going on inside of me that I see out there that it’s bringing up some guilt issues with me. Also, I’m hearing anger in that as well because I wrote an article in the media a few years ago about how the media really don’t get it when they put out information that they think is helpful on one hand and on the other hand people are seeing that this is not how I feel and this is not my experience. And the question becomes if there weren’t one means, would another means result in someone’s death? Certainly people are comfortable with only certain kinds of methods. For example, firearms as we know are much more likely to result in people’s death. So these are tough issues that are going to continue to be a problem. Every year there’s around 30-32,000 suicides in the United States alone.
Gloria: Well, Brenda, thank you very much for your email.
Jack: Can I add something to that? I agree with everything that Bob said but this is so central an issue for survivors that I want to just add a little bit to it. First of all, I think survivors need to recognize the normality of it. It’s universal for survivors. They either need to blame someone else or blame themselves. Most people tend more to blame themselves.
Gloria: Let me say one quick thing. When my son was killed in an automobile accident, I blamed myself because I didn’t let him take my car.
Jack: Right. This is not just something that suicide survivors have. What also happens, it’s what I was saying earlier, because people don’t know who to hold accountable for suicide, there’s a lot of ambiguity about that. It’s sort of a vacuum that then people fill with well then this must have been my fault. And I will say to people, to new survivors, look, you’re probably going to have to put yourself on trial. I understand that and that’s actually a part of the healing process is to sort of try to work yourself through this. What I ask is that you try your best to have a fair trial and that you try to keep perspective about all the many things that contribute to suicide and something you did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say is not the only reason why this suicide happened. Suicide is the perfect storm. It’s the coming together of multiple factors from the person’s biology to their life circumstances to yes, immediate stressors, to yes, access to means to suicide. All of those things come together and survivors, even if they had perfect foresight, only have control over typically a little bit of that that they can influence. So the goal is to try to put the guilt in perspective in how much you could or could not have been able to do.
Heidi: And I want to add to that. Everyone in the world has means in their house to commit suicide. They have knives. They have razors. They have guns. They have cars. And most people do not commit suicide. So we all have means in our homes.
Bob: Right. Back to what Jack was saying. Again, I do a lot on guilt. A couple weeks ago I gave a workshop at The Compassionate Friends Conference on guilt and there were more than a hundred parents there and siblings, but one of the types of guilt that I talk about is unmentionable guilt. And I think it’s important that any of the listeners consider that if they have something that they feel guilty about to consider talking to someone in their life who they consider would be a good listener and is not going to judge them and say you know, as crazy as this may sound or as much as I wanted to keep this inside, I just need to say this. To get that out rather than swallowing it and walking around with this, like Jack talked about, this incredible burden. So it’s finding a way to get it out there and then saying to yourself, what can I do to begin to forgive myself?
Gloria: So looking to a safe friend. Well, I’ve got a couple of more emails so we’re going to have to move on. Thank you, Brenda, for that email, and I hope this has been helpful. Alicia wrote: my sister jumped in front of a train last year. I was away at college and she was in her junior year of high school. I feel sad but I also feel angry. I had to call her friends and cancel appointments. I’m really confused and would like some advice. What do I do with these crazy feelings?
Bob: Wow, that’s huge. Well, first to understand that it’s normal as Jack’s point earlier about the normalization of guilt. Grief is crazy and so you feel crazy. You feel angry. You feel angry at everybody. And part of that is sometimes people feel, well, usually people feel angry at the person who died and yet that’s hard to admit and to say I’m so angry at you for doing this. So it’s finding a book, an article, something that can resonate with that, and then there are, as Jack mentioned, some suicide support groups out there.
Gloria: What about siblings and grief? This is a sibling. Is there any difference?
Bob: Well, of course there is. I think it’s easy for most siblings, and I’m sure Heidi can agree with this, to look back on your life and think of some of the things you did or said to your sibling and now they’re gone and you feel like how much did that contribute to my sibling wanting to take their life?
Heidi: Absolutely, and siblings know things about their siblings that maybe their parents didn’t know so they might say, I should have stopped it. All the guilt stuff that parents have. I always say we fight with our siblings because they’re worth it. We invest negative and positive energy into them because we love them so much.
Jack: I can suggest a book also. There’s a woman friend and colleague of mine whose name is Michelle Linn-Gust
Gloria: And we’ve had her on the show.
Jack: She wrote a book called Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven which is specifically about being a sibling, losing a sibling to suicide and that’s a good place to start.
Gloria: Yeah, that would be a great book to read. Well, thank you, Alicia, and good luck on your journey, and I think it’s good that you can express those angry feelings and reaching out as you have with this. It’s a great thing. We’ve got another email from Ron. He says my business partner jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge this year. He left a wife and two young children. I’m not sure how I can best help them. How do I talk about the loss? I had no idea he was in such bad shape. He had plenty of money. Why, why, why? I don’t get it.
Bob: Number one is I think it’s important for him to ask questions because that’s what our brain wants to do. Our brain tries to make sense out of the senseless but, of course, we’re never going to have ultimate answers why someone takes their life. The other thing is, I think as time goes by, one of the comfort areas that Jack and I found and is mentioned in our book and that is to talk about that person’s life. Certainly their death looms so large for a long time after they die, but to bring up that man’s name and to say, you know, I remember the time this person did such and such, and then also to remember that—I don’t like this word—but the anniversary date and to jot it down because to call then certainly a few months later or however often that man is interacting with this family but to call on the anniversary date and say, you know what, I was just thinking of you and your family and him and just want you to know that my heart is still with you.
Gloria: I was thinking a business partner, too, and men. The whole stigma of your firm or whatever. One of your partners jumped off the bridge. Having it in the newspaper.
Bob: Yeah, it goes back to the whole stigma issue that Jack talked about.
Gloria: Jack, did you want to comment on that one?
Jack: I think outreach. One of the things that survivors need because they often are so traumatized and/or feeling stigmatized and ashamed is for people to come to them so really just echoing what Bob said is that contact with them. They’ll communicate to you if they want to be left alone and you can ask them directly, is it better if I back off? but usually nine times out of ten, it’s the reverse. People want and need contact and need reassurance from other people. Yeah, I don’t understand this either, and just share the sense of confusion and anger and helplessness and guilt and share it with the family and they will feel not so alone and know that you really cared about this person, and not just contact at the funeral or in the first few days or weeks but over the first few years and really as long as you can.
Gloria: With business partners, too, I’ve seen it where not just suicide but where people die and then the family is cut off from that whole community, and I always think that it’s nice to invite them to a Christmas party or things like that, too, as well as getting in touch with them all the time because you really cut that whole family off because they’re not part of your business community.
Jack: I like that, yeah. We tend to think of survivors of suicide as being immediate family but there probably are lots of other people who are survivors who are disenfranchised because they aren’t who society thinks should be most impacted by this but we can’t assume that. We can’t assume who is deeply impacted and who is not simply by their kinship relationship.
Gloria: Right, and people ask a lot of questions of people in those firms. Why did they do it? What was going on in your firm? But there are a whole bunch of issues.
Jack: Right, people seem to assign blame.
Heidi: And you spend a great deal of time with people at work. I remember when I had a co-worker that I was supposed to have lunch with and he shot himself. I remember at the funeral not knowing if I should tell the family that I was supposed to have lunch with him the day he shot himself, and I told them and for some reason they were very comforted by that story.
Jack: Right. Take a risk and share with the family and the worst that will happen is that they’ll communicate I don’t want to know that or I don’t want to hear that, but I’d rather people err on the side of reaching out than not to survivors.
Gloria: And what I want to say to our audience out there is take a risk and tell people to take a risk and share with you because remember, we have to teach people how to treat us many times. Well, we’re coming up on break, and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host, Dr. Heidi Horsley. Please stay tuned to hear more from Jack Jordan and Bob Baugher on suicide and bereavement. You can reach us through our blog, www.thegriefblog.com. These shows are archived 24/7 on our site and on www.compassionatefriends.org website and they are brought to you by the Open to Hope Foundation. Please stay tuned for more.
Well, I think we have a caller, Eric, from the University of Michigan. Hi, Eric, how are you?
Eric: Very good, thank you.
Gloria: So Eric, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and then have you a comment about our show?
Eric: Yeah, actually I do. I’ve got a question as well. I work for the University of Michigan as the outreach representative and I’ve worked with Heidi and Gloria on a project that actually is just being released pretty soon which is a book and it actually started from our conversation that we had on the radio nonetheless. But my question for all of you and actually Heidi did a very good job when she was over with my girls. They were 15 and 13 at the time but now they’re 17 and 15, but it was the first time that my daughter ever spoke and came out and showed her emotion. That was the very first time that she really dealt with her emotions about my son. My son died of suicide at age 15 in the year 2000. And so that was the first time she showed some emotion, but what I find myself now as they’re getting to that age. She’s 17 now and the youngest one is 15 and they’re at that age where they’re unpredictable. They’re teenagers. And I find myself, there’s a fear there from not so much the guilt. We’ve gotten past all that and everything else and learned actually to go along and incorporate his life into ours, but now there’s a fear, almost an anxiety to where when something comes up, a decision has to be made and they ask well, how come? They want to know reasons for everything that I’m saying no to. If they want to go out at night, if they want to do this. They want to stay over at a friend’s house. Whatever it might be, I find myself getting very apprehensive about saying no and tell them why and part of that is because the fear is still in the back of my head that something could go sideways. I could lose them. How do you deal with that anxiety?
Heidi: And is it that you’re fearful that possibly they would try to commit suicide?
Eric: I don’t know if it’s so much that. They both are pretty well on track. One gets a little bit sideways every once in a while but she sees treatment. So it’s not so much that. I think that’s not the question as it is something’s going to happen to them, or how do I explain to them no, I don’t want them to do something or I want to keep them on the right path because I don’t want them to get sideways. I don’t want them self-medicating. I don’t want them going to the path that even I took in the past. I want to keep them straight from that and so trying to say no and give them an explanation becomes a very apprehensive thing to me.
Gloria: Jack, do you want to take that question?
Jack: Sure. First of all what you’re feeling is quite normal and universal. I particularly see this in parents who have lost a child suddenly and unexpectedly, not just to suicide, but the fear that my God, what else could happen, and I need to hold my kids close and protect them. I think what would be good is to try to talk about the impact that losing your son has had on you so that they have a way or context to understand where you’re coming from and why you do what you do and to say to them, sometimes I’m going to be out of balance about this. I’m going to go too far because this is something that happens to parents when they lose a child, and you can let me know if you think I’m out of bounds about it, but I want you to understand it, and it’s also just part of the parental role. Part of my job is to make sure you’re safe. If you’ll work with me, if you’ll help me make sure that you’re safe and okay, I’ll do my best to make sure that I give you as much room as you need to go off and start to lead your own life. And it’s sort of lots of ongoing communication and discussion about the impact of this on everybody in the family. It’s hard to do.
Eric: And a little more depth into that with my youngest is the fact that she still has a little bit of anger. Why did he do this to me? And I explain to her, he didn’t to it to you.
Gloria: How old was she when it happened?
Eric: She was 7.
Gloria: Developmentally, isn’t that right, that they’re going to carry it through. As they age, they’re going to ask different questions about loss. Bob, do you have any comment about that?
Bob: Well, obviously, what you have in many ways a different person at 15 than she was at 7 and so the questions that she asks are going to be different than when she’s 18 and when she’s 21 and so on. This is one of those where with anger, you need to ask why me? and ultimately there is no answer to that. I think the best answer you give is I don’t know and that’s hard because people want answers. I teach a class in Human Relations and one of the lessons I try to give my students is a simplistic view of the brain which is our brain has two basic requirements. One to reduce pain. Our brain doesn’t like pain unless we can come up with good reasons for it. And second, our brain tries to make sense out of the world around us, and when senseless things happen, our brain works overtime to try to figure it out. Back to Eric’s point about his kids and that is one homework assignment that I might give you is for you to write down right now where they are in your life. What are you willing to let them do and what are you willing not to let them do? And actually have that on paper not so much for them but for you and then I think back to Jack’s point, come up with what else does that have to do with your son’s suicide that is influencing your decision. So you can see it on paper.
Gloria: Thank you. It sounds like from the music we’re going to have to close the show now and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, with my co-host, Dr. Heidi Horsley. Thanks for tuning in. Heidi, do you have something?
Heidi: Thank you, Jack and Bob, for all the work you do to help people cope with their grief after loss.

July 31, 2008 - Suicide and Bereavement: Jack Jordan and Bob Baugher

ULY 31, 2008 - SUICIDE AND BEREAVEMENT:  JACK JORDAN, PH.D.  Dr. Jack Jordan is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he specializes in working with loss and bereavement.  He is also the founder and the Director until 2007 of the Family Loss Project, a research and clinical practice providing services for bereaved families.  He has specialized in work with survivors of suicide and other losses for more than 30 years, and is the co-author with Dr. Bob Baugher of After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief.  We will be joined on this show by Dr. Baugher. Read more

Defining Grief

The notion of grief management lies in the ability to cope with a loss which is significant enough to elicit the emotion of grief itself. Grief is often erroneously thought of as synonymous with sadness, but grief is a much broader, multifaceted emotional reaction. Read more

We Lost Our Oldest Son to an Accidental Overdose

I am sorry to hear of others who have lost their precious children to drug overdose. We lost our oldest son, Dylan to an accidental overdose of pain meds and valium. He was handsome, sweet, and extremely intelligent. He was going to be a literature professor and critic. We blame ourself everyday for not being more aware of his pain. I do not know if he was bi-polar or not, but he had a job and a 3.6 average in college. He was barely 21. He left behind 2 younger brothers and sisters. He was my husband’s world. We will never know why this happened. He loved all of us and so badly wanted to live and be with us. It has been over 2.5 years ,since he left us, but seems like yesterday. We are in need of help if anyone has any words of comfort. thanks! Kent, Terri, Blayze, Carly, Konner, and Gunnar Viator.

Drs. Gloria and Heidi Respond

Dear Terry,

We are so sorry for your loss. Nothing prepares you to lose a son and there is nothing as painful for a parent as losing a child. It is easy to blame yourselves and wonder what you should have or could have done and this is a normal part of the grieving process. And even thought it has been 2.5 years, know that there is no time table for grief – it takes what it takes and each of you will need your own amount of time. Each of you will grieve in your own way. Read more

Bereaved Family’s Grief Gets Complicated

The Tragedy of Suicide

Having someone that you love commit suicide is one of the most painful human experiences imaginable. It is a sort of grief that is hard to imagine unless you are aware of the victim’s circumstances or know them personally. Even if you have experienced the loss of many other loved ones, even through tragic circumstances, dealing with the grief of someone who is gone because they took their own life is so much different. Regardless of your age or your gender, or that of the person who has passed away, dealing with suicide is never easy. It is a grief that seems more personal than any other kind, and leaves us wondering, sometimes for the rest of our lives, the true cause of their final act of desperation. Read more

Compassionate Friends is for Grandparents, too!

Dear Dr. Gloria,

You continually recommend Compassionate Friends as a place for parents and grandparents to receive support. However after my grandsons died this past January I was told by our local group that Compassionate Friends is a group for parents not grandparents. They suggested that I look elsewhere for support because I was a grandparent not a parent.

Dr. Gloria Responds:

I am sorry to hear of the loss of your grandchildren and that your were told that the Compassionate Friends is not for grandparents. Years ago the organization was strickly for parents but this was changed. If you will go to www.thecompassionatefriends.com you will see that the organization gives support to grandparents, siblings, and parents. I’m not sure where you live and if the group you contacted was truly part of The Compassionate Friends. There are many fine support groups who do not include grandparents Compassionate Friends is not one. I hope that you will continue to listen to the radio show and find support. I will mention your e-mail on the radio show. Also feel free to contact Compassionate Friends to let them know about this issue. Don’t give up on getting the support you deserve. Gloria

My Friend Was Murdered

I lost a friend, he was murdered. I know that there are foundations that compensate families of murders.
His family needs to raise money for his headstone. Is there any organazations that you could refer me to for more info?
Thank You for your time,
Edie

A Response From Drs. Gloria and Heidi

Dear Edie,

We are so sorry to hear that your friends son was murdered. It is hard to lose a child regardless of the circumstances, but murder makes it so much harder. She is fortunate to have a caring friend like you.

Our friend, Tom Baer’s son was murdered so we contacted him. He said “The place to start is “Parents of Murdered Children” www.pomc.com. They should be able to point you in the right direction.”
Our own search didn’t give us anything substantial to go on.

Your friend might find help and confort by listening a radio shows with Tom Baer and Richard Dew that aired on Healing the Grieving Heart. Both had sons who were murdered. She can find it on The Grief Blog’s Radio Show Archives.

July 14, 2005
Surviving the Death of a Child by Homicide
Guest: Dr Richard Dew

June 12, 2008
Compassionate Friends: Finding Hope Through Service
Guests: Genesse Gentry and Tom Baer

We wish you well in your search for financial assistance for your friend.

Blessings,

Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley

Ever Heard of the Death Clock?

If you’ve never heard of the death clock, it’s a website that calculates (with a little information you add in) the day you will die. Sounds morbid, right? I agree, but take this as a bit of fun and not too serious. Playing with death–trying it on for size is one way humans deal with the tragedies of life–kind of like playing dress up with your mother’s high heels and your dad’s jacket. So, I went to www.deathclock.com, (there’s also a few others) http://www.findyourfate.com/deathmeter/deathmtr.html, http://deathdate.info, http://www.death-clock.org/ I didn’t really want to know when I’d die. But I have to admit, I was curious. How can you not be curious? I was raised in a uber-religious home and this sounded like fortune telling–something stricly forbidden to dabble in–which means it’s even more tempting, dangerous, and oh so fascinating…(yeah, I’ve got a bit of a rebellious streak in me, I can’t deny it). So I typed in my info, and you know what? I feel better! It says I’m going to live until I’m 100 years old. 100. Huh. Instead of hearing the tick tiCK, TICK going off in my ear, I felt expanded. 100 feels pretty far away. I’m not quite half there. I still have a gazillion hopes and dreams. I breathed deeper, free-er. I’ve got a while. This weekend, I danced at two weddings. I danced because I could. I mean, I still can. I watched my mother-in-law sit out of a dance–the first time since I’ve known her. I’m not ready to sit on the sidelines of life. Dance while you can, her smile seemed to say to me. Now, I do take in account I could get hit by the proverbial bus at any time–that lightening could strike me for visiting that heathen site, (sorry, Mama!) or a myriad of other diseases and accidents could come barrel my way–but for now…I’ve got some living to do. I know full well what Alzheimer’s looks like, about the challenges that come with aging–so I better get a move on! But even if you do have a challenge, a disease–you still owe it to yourself, to your family to live–live any way that you can. Pass on your stories, your songs, your insights. Even if you now are teacher–the object lesson–view this as a vital and important role. It’s part of who we are–to come full circle–to give care and then to receive care. It’s how we learn and allow others to learn. Caregiving is a circle. I don’t know what your reaction will be to the death clock–if you accept my challenge:) I don’t know if you want to try it–if it all seems like a bunch of hoo-haa. But if you’re feeling brave, then take a twirl with the grim reaper and give it a try. And I’m one of those who says I don’t want to know if I’ll get Alzheimer’s–go figure! I guess my reasoning is that I’ve seen death. I lived with “it” lurking around my house waiting for my mother to pass–feeling an almost physical, and definitely psychological/emotional presence. I know the reality. I know how it plays out–with both my birth and adoptive parents, but ironically–this gave me hope. A few years ago, I wrote a “100 Things To Do in My Life” list. I wrote it while we were on vacation. I wrote it around the margins of an old Rand McNally atlas we had in the car–apprapo, I guess. I wrote things like:

1. Go back to college and get my BFA
2. Design and make a sculpture/glass blow
3. Visit the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery in Amsterdam
4. Publish books (plural)
5. Take a cooking class in Napa
6. Repaint all my favorite Van Goghs myself
7. Create cool yard art–and sell it
8. Be paid 500 bucks an hour to speak and inspire people
9. Be on the board and help with a really great charity
10. Design an Italian garden
11. Have a 30+year writing career
12. Be a GREAT grandma
13. Speak French, Italian and Spanish fluently
14. Live in the South of France for several months
15. Win a PEN award
16. Forgive and not grow bitter

These are a few items on my list. I wrote this in 1999. I was dreaming big, and I can’t believe some of the things I put on the list. I packed it away and didn’t look at it for more than five years. My heart and my words guided me intuitively. There are 126 items on my list. Of the 16 I listed here, 13 have already come to fruition. I’ll do a count and let you know how many have already come “true”–if you email and ask me. I have 53 years to achieve the rest. A friend of mine said she saw The Bucket List this week and that she loved it, but a friend of hers said they wanted a list of all the things they didn’t want to do–a “Chuck It” list. I like that idea too. I’d love to never ever have another root canal…how about you? So maybe I should rename the Death Clock to the LIVE clock. After all, I have a list that needs a whole lot more check marks. Instead of following the old cliche, “Live a little.” I think I’ll rewrite it: “Live A lot!” ~Carol D. O’Dell Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir available on Amazon www.mothering-mother.com Kunati books, www.kunati.com/motheringmother Family advisor at www.Caring.com Syndicated blog at www.OpentoHope.com

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