Healing from Suicide Loss: Understanding Suicide Bereavement
Ashley Mielke (B.A., M.Sc., MFT) shares a deeply personal perspective on Healing from Suicide Loss, reflecting on her father’s death by suicide in 2010 and why suicide bereavement often feels uniquely complex. In this piece, she explores the layers that can surround suicide loss, including guilt, shame, stigma, intrusive thoughts, anger, and isolation, and offers hope that healing is possible with compassionate, informed support.
Suicide bereavement is different.
I don’t say that lightly. I say it because I’ve lived it.
In 2010, my dad died by suicide. I remember tunnel vision. Absolute shock. It felt like my entire world collapsed in an instant. One moment I had a father. The next moment, I had a before and an after.
There are moments in life that divide everything. This was one of them.
And almost immediately, I knew this grief felt different.
What Makes Suicide Bereavement So Complex?
Of course there is overwhelming sadness. But with suicide loss, grief is rarely just grief.
It can be intense guilt or self-blame that becomes all-consuming.
Shame that settles into your body before you even have words for it.
Fear of judgment — what will people think? What will they assume?
Anger — at the person who died, at yourself, at the system.
Intrusive thoughts about the death that replay when you least expect them.
A relentless search for answers.
You replay conversations.
You question decisions.
You revisit moments, looking for something you missed.
I remember feeling shame almost instantly. Not because of my dad — but because I could feel the stigma surrounding suicide. I was afraid to say how he died. Afraid of how people would look at me. Afraid of how they might quietly judge him.
For a few years, I didn’t tell the truth about his death.
Not because I was ashamed of him — but because I was trying to protect him. And honestly, I was trying to protect myself.
That’s the part we don’t talk about enough. Suicide loss can isolate you in ways other losses don’t. It can make you feel alone even when you’re surrounded by people.
The Loneliness and the Silence
After suicide, people often don’t know what to say.
Some disappear.
Some change the subject.
Some avoid it entirely.
And sometimes, you withdraw too — because explaining feels exhausting. Because managing other people’s discomfort feels heavier than staying quiet.
There were moments I felt deeply misunderstood. I remember wishing someone would just sit beside me and say, gently, “What you’re feeling makes sense.”
No one explained the guilt.
No one explained the shame.
No one explained how stigma can wrap itself around grief and make it heavier.
So I carried it quietly.
If you have done that too, please know you are not strange for it. You were surviving.
When Grief Feels “Stuck”
Suicide bereavement can interrupt the natural way we process loss. When there are unanswered questions, the mind keeps searching. When there is stigma, the heart keeps guarding.
You may feel frozen in time.
Unable to move forward.
Consumed by “what ifs” and “whys.”
Disconnected from who you were before.
This doesn’t mean you’re grieving wrong.
It means something traumatic happened, and your system is trying to make sense of it.
Healing from suicide loss is not about forgetting your person. It’s not about approving of what happened. It’s not about forcing closure.
It’s about gently processing what feels unfinished.
It’s about loosening the grip of guilt and shame.
It’s about integrating the loss so it doesn’t define every part of your present.
And it’s about learning how to carry your person forward in love, not in pain.
What Helped Me Heal
The Grief Recovery Method changed my life.
It gave me a structured way to process the guilt, regret, and unfinished pieces in my relationship with my dad. It helped me untangle what was mine to carry and what wasn’t.
It didn’t erase my grief. It didn’t make me miss my dad any less.
But it softened the suffering that had wrapped itself around the grief.
And perhaps most importantly, it helped me understand that I wasn’t broken — and that my dad’s life, and even his death, could hold meaning beyond the stigma and shame.
If You Are Grieving a Suicide Loss
If you recognize yourself in this — the guilt, the shame, the intrusive thoughts, the fear of judgment, the loneliness — please pause here and hear this:
You are not alone.
What you are feeling is deeply human.
It is a response to devastating loss.
It is a response to love.
You are not weak for struggling.
You are not dramatic for still hurting.
You are not broken because this feels heavy.
And it is okay to ask for help.
It is never too soon.
It is never too late.
Healing from suicide loss is possible, by compassionately working through the layers that surround it.
You deserve support that understands suicide bereavement for what it truly is: complex, layered, and profoundly human.
If you are seeking suicide bereavement support, our team at The Grief and Trauma Healing Centre would be honored to support you. Book online here or contact us at info@healmyheart.ca or 780-288-8001.