Dear Reader,

After my father’s suicide, I searched for books to help me through my grief process, but there weren’t many available, especially not one page meditations. The nature of recovery from a loved one’s suicide, for me, was silent. The people that knew about my loss did not know how to console, and I rarely spoke about my father’s suicide. I was afraid of what others may think of my father or me. Unearned shame kept me quiet. I needed words and feelings from someone who had walked down the same path. I did not need graphic descriptions of a person’s suicide. I couldn’t deal with words that brought home the horrible scene of finding my father. But still, I needed to know that the churning feelings inside me were normal. With the thought that possibly another person could relate to my feelings, writing them has been a catharsis.

For me writing has always been a release. There was an old game I used to play as a child called pick-up-sticks. The object was to remove one stick at a time without moving the others. That’s what writing these meditations has been like for me; I picked up one thread of a thought at a time to look at and express. Singling out just one thought and developing it into concise words was difficult and frustrating. Yet, it left me with a clear heart and the ability to get on with my life. Writing these one-page thoughts were both my own cathartic attempt to make some sense of what happened to me after my father’s death, and my attempt to help others cope with their sorrow.

Writing was just one tool in my efforts to heal from the grief of losing my father. Professional direction from a psychologist helped me to understand, also, that once I was able to see my father as no longer in pain then I could begin my own healing. Joining a support group gave me confidence to stop isolating and helped me to talk about my father’s suicide.

Efforts at good writing ask the writer to always speak their truth. It was the truth that I adhered to in these reflections. I did not whitewash the pain. If you have lost someone to suicide, I hope my truth will not cut sharply into your agony. And painful though they are, I believe these reflections have a healing grace. I hope that you will find something in them that will help.

Sincerely,

Karen Phillips





Friday, May 27, 2011

Family Relationships—Overprotectiveness

           The emotional bonds to my family had always been convoluted.  Strands of affection, anger, joy, love, rebellion, untold concern, and knots of pure, seething frustration had piled up over the years like heaps of tangled rope from an unfinished project—in such a mess that I had stopped trying to sort them out. 
            The night after Daddy shot himself, I had a dream that all my family were cave-explorers.  We were linked together with nylon ropes and walked cautiously into a cavern that went deep within the earth.  On a plateau which only feet away dropped-off into a dark abyss, we pitched our camp for the night.  In my dream, I awoke to see Daddy standing close to the plateau’s edge.  He turned to look at me for a moment and smiled sadly.  Then he jumped.  His still-attached ropes nearly pulled us down with him.  I dreamt that I frantically secured my sister and mother to a rock so that we wouldn’t be carried over the edge, too.  I awoke wadded-up in bedding, struggling, screaming out instructions, trying desperately to get him back—trying urgently to secure everyone else.
            The rest of the year after my father’s death, I lived that dream.  When my mind wasn’t muddling over Daddy’s suicide, I worried over family members.  I was afraid of my mother and sister’s grief and tried to ignore my own.  I called, daily; giving out advice to adults capable of living their own lives, and never believed them when they assured me that they were ok.

“…overprotectiveness in relationships is one of the possible consequences of trauma-related guilt.”
                                                            Trust After Trauma,
                                                                        Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D
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