How to Rebuild Your Life After Losing Someone to Suicide

Grief is never linear. But grief after suicide? It’s something else entirely. It’s like someone handed you a puzzle with no edge pieces, and said, “Now try and make sense of this.”

I know this kind of loss intimately. When my brother Jack died by suicide after years of battling opioid addiction, my whole world collapsed. Not in one neat explosion — but in slow motion. Like the scaffolding of everything I believed in began to quietly dismantle itself, plank by plank.

There was no clear path forward. No manual. No tidy stages of grief that actually made sense. Just a body full of terror, a mind filled with questions, and a soul cracked wide open.

But this is not just a story of loss. It’s a story of rebuilding. Of finding my way back to life — and creating a healing centre in Bali that now supports others who are walking their own path through the unthinkable.

This blog isn’t going to give you clichés or polished answers. It’s not going to say “everything happens for a reason” — because when you lose someone to suicide, that phrase can feel like a punch in the gut.

What this blog will offer is a trauma-informed exploration of how to slowly and safely rebuild your life after suicide loss. One breath, one moment, one small act of meaning at a time.

What Happens to Your Body and Mind After Suicide Loss

When Jack died, it wasn’t just my heart that broke. My nervous system went into a full collapse.

I remember lying in bed at night, too afraid to close my eyes. The dark felt like a threat. My own body felt like a dangerous place to be in. I’d wake with my chest tight, breath shallow, like my whole system was bracing for more bad news.

This kind of loss doesn’t just hurt. It alters you. Neurologically, emotionally, energetically. There’s often:

• Survivor’s guilt: Why them, not me?

• Fear of more loss: Will someone else I love die too?

• Terror of the present moment: If this could happen, what else can?

• Disconnection from meaning: What’s the point of anything anymore?

And for many of us, there’s this secret, shame-filled thought: I wish I could go with them. Not because we want to die — but because living in this world without them feels unbearable.

This is the raw terrain of suicide loss. It’s not clean or polite. It’s a primal grief that strips you back to the bones.

And in many ways, you become a baby again. Learning how to feel safe in your skin. Learning how to breathe again. Learning how to trust life, even when it feels like life betrayed you.

The Sacred Act of Not Letting It End With Them

There came a point, somewhere in the darkest months after Jack’s death, where I had to decide what I wanted to do with the pain.

Let it eat me alive… or let it carve something out of me.

Not overnight. Not in a rush. But slowly, I began to ask myself: What if my pain could become a path? What if Jack’s story didn’t end with tragedy — but rippled into something that helped others live?

This is where meaning-making begins. Not as a fix, not as a spiritual bypass. But as an offering. A way to say: “You mattered. And I’ll carry you forward.”

Creating JAX Healing Retreat wasn’t just a business move. It was my way of transmuting pain into purpose. A way to alchemise what broke me into something that now helps others come back to themselves.

Meaning-making might look different for you. Maybe it’s a conversation you have with someone who needs it. Maybe it’s a piece of art. Maybe it’s simply surviving another day — and calling that a victory.

But meaning matters. Not because it erases the pain — but because it gives the pain somewhere to go.

The Nervous System After Suicide Loss: A State of Constant Alarm

Let’s talk about the body. Because after suicide loss, your nervous system doesn’t just grieve — it goes into hypervigilance.

I spent years after Jack’s death waiting for the next person to die. I didn’t just grieve Jack — I grieved my sense of safety. My ability to trust the world. I was flooded with anxiety, insomnia, panic, shutdown.

This is what we call a state of chronic dysregulation. Where the body stays in fight, flight, or freeze — because it doesn’t yet know that it’s safe again.

That’s why grief support can’t just be intellectual. It has to be embodied. Your system needs to feel safe again.

At JAX, we do this through:

• Somatic healing: Gently reconnecting you with your body

• Energy healing: Supporting the emotional and energetic discharge of grief

• Breathwork: Releasing stored tension and re-opening the heart

• Kundalini energy activation: Reawakening life force in a trauma-informed way

• Co-regulation in community: Because we were never meant to do this alone

You cannot logic your way out of this kind of pain. You have to feel it, move it, integrate it — slowly, safely, and with support.

Healing Is Not Moving On. It’s Moving With.

One of the most hurtful things we say to grievers is, “You need to move on.”

Let me be clear: you don’t “move on” from losing someone to suicide. You move with it. You carry them with you. You find a way to let their memory become part of your story, not something to get over.

At JAX, we work with a lot of people who’ve lost loved ones to suicide. And I always say this:

Your grief is not a problem to fix. It’s a sacred thing to honour.

We help you meet that grief with gentleness. To regulate the fear. To integrate the shame. To come back into your body after months or years of dissociation.

And more than anything — to begin trusting life again.

What Helped Me Come Back to Life

Here are a few things that helped me. None of them are quick fixes. But they were part of my path back:

• Energy work: Feeling life force move through my body reminded me I was still alive

• Therapy: For the stories, the guilt, the inner child stuff

• Bodywork and breathwork: To release what words never could

• Time in nature: To remember I belonged to something bigger than my pain

• Ritual: Creating ceremony for Jack, lighting candles, speaking to him

• Honesty: Naming the dark thoughts out loud so they didn’t eat me alive

• Community: Letting others see me in my mess

To Those Who Are Still in the Depths

If you’re reading this and still feel like a shell of yourself, please know — it’s not permanent.

You are not broken. You are grieving.

And grieving someone lost to suicide is its own kind of initiation. You didn’t ask for it. But now that you’re here, you deserve to be met with compassion, safety, and care.

Let this be your reminder that:

• You are allowed to still be angry

• You are allowed to still be scared

• You are allowed to not want to get out of bed

• You are allowed to feel everything

But also… you are allowed to heal. You are allowed to laugh again. You are allowed to find joy. You are allowed to rebuild your life in a way that honours both you and them.

Rebuilding Looks Like This

Rebuilding your life after suicide loss isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about slowly rebuilding:

• Safety in your body

• Trust in your nervous system

• Meaning in your day-to-day

• A sense of self beyond the grief

You don’t need to become a guru. You don’t need to “love and light” your way through it. You just need to keep showing up — gently, honestly, messily.

And if you ever forget that it’s possible — come find us at JAX.

We’ll remind you that healing after loss can happen.

Ready to begin?

✨ Apply for one of our deeply held, trauma-informed healing retreats in Bali
✨ Join our Virtual Healing to begin your emotional growth journey — no passport required
✨ Come to a JAX Day Retreat for a powerful immersion into trauma-informed healing
✨ Join us for a two-hour in-person JAX class and experience the method firsthand