There was a time I believed everything society thought of me.

As a suicide survivor, I wasn’t merely suffering from grief after my husband’s suicide, I was also internalizing the stigma that surrounded me.

I felt guilty; surely I didn’t get my husband the help he needed. I felt shame; my husband preferred death over his life with me. And I felt hopeless; this is the kind of event that you never get over.
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In my grief, I subscribed to the attitudes and assumptions I’d heard expressed countless times throughout my life. As friends and family, the media, and even I made seemingly meaningless remarks about mental illness, depression, and suicide, it shaped the way I would react when these completely shattered my world. I was a living, breathing self-stigma, and that made life unbearable.

Grief is often described as a journey – one that does not present a clear or efficient route from Point A to Point B.

In fact, in my own experience, Point B may not even exist on the map. For me, the grief process is one I navigate every day, with most of those days (but certainly not all) a little happier and healthier than the last.

Unfortunately, along that journey there are often outsiders telling you which turn to take, when it’s “okay” to stop and rest or maybe even trying to convince you that you’re already at Point B and it’s time to end this journey and move on to the next. The thing is, grieving is a complicated, personal process, and society’s opinions, requirements and stigmas only serve to make the terrain rougher – and the griever weaker.