Losing a loved one to suicide is an experience almost nobody around you can understand, and that is the first thing that makes it so hard. The people in your life care. They want to help. And they cannot possibly fathom what you are feeling, because it is a pain like no other. So you end up surrounded by love, and entirely on your own with it.
If you have landed here searching for help with suicide loss, this post is written for you. It is about what the grief does, why it isolates you, and what I have watched change in people when they find another way through.
You live in terror
The worst thing has happened once, and now you know it can happen again. You lose your grip on how this is even possible. The world that looked one way last month now looks like the most unsafe place there is, and your own body feels no safer.
Nothing makes the pain go away. Sleep, medication, alcohol, numbing, none of it reaches it. You run on high alert, then crash, then high alert again, until that cycle quietly becomes your new baseline. Anxiety is crippling. Guilt is all consuming. You replay every single detail over and over until you drive yourself mad. You do not recognise yourself. You feel awful for living and breathing, and you cannot imagine life ever being worth living again.
That is rock bottom, and it is where most people arrive at our door.
The cycle of high alert and crash
One thing I see in nearly everyone bereaved by suicide is a pattern they have never had named. Weeks of running on adrenaline, functioning, organising, holding everyone else together, and then a crash where they cannot get out of bed. Then the alert comes back and the cycle repeats. Over time the body stops knowing any other rhythm, and people mistake that exhaustion for who they now are. It is not who you are. It is a nervous system that has been on duty for too long without being told it can stand down, and it can be taught to stand down.
Simple things that help before you get here
Healing after suicide loss does not start on a retreat, it starts wherever you are. A few things I ask people to try. Put a hand on your chest and one on your belly and breathe into your hands for two minutes, as many times a day as you remember. Walk barefoot on grass or sand. Cold water on the face when the panic rises. Say your person's name out loud, every day, so they stay in the room with you. None of this fixes it. All of it tells the body, in a language it understands, that it is allowed to soften a little.
What I see on every retreat
I hold space for suicide bereavement on every single healing retreat we run now. I see it, feel it, and know it all too well. It echoes into every relationship, every job, every part of your wellbeing. There is no inch of your life it does not touch.
What I also see is hope, faith and light coming back into people's lives. It happens when they find another way, commit to getting better, learn to feel energy, trust in a higher intelligence and reconnect with their own true nature.
Our pain and our healing are connected
Our pain and our healing are deeply connected, and the healing process itself is the bridge and the gateway. People come to a trauma healing retreat to heal the body, but it is all one thing, mind, body and spirit, and it is the spiritual side that opens up in the most expansive way. You cannot think yourself into that state. You have to feel your way to it. This is why talking alone so rarely reaches suicide grief, and why somatic healing for grief works where years of conversation could not.
We already carry the ability
We are so quick to run off to a medium or a psychic after a loss like this, and we forget we carry the same ability in our own nature. To feel them. To receive messages, visions and signs from them. It is strongest in a deep state of peace, in an altered state, tuned to a certain frequency. Never when we are hyper vigilant and riddled with pain.
Everyone who has done this work says the same thing. If two hours on the mat releasing the pain means dropping in and feeling that big cuddle, hearing their voice, taking a trip down memory lane with them, seeing them in spirit and receiving that love, they would do it a million times over. For most of us there is nothing we would not do to see them again. While we are here in these human suits, the only way is to work with our energy, open ourselves up, and let the pain become the bridge.
Why the people who love you cannot reach it
It is worth saying clearly, because so many people blame themselves or their families for this. Your friends and family cannot reach this pain because it does not live where conversation lives. Suicide loss lands in the body as shock, and shock is stored as sensation, underneath the part of the brain that holds words. People can sit with you, feed you, hold your hand, and all of it matters, and still the thing itself stays untouched. That is why people bereaved by suicide so often say they feel more alone the more they are surrounded. The loneliness is real, and it is also a sign of where the work needs to happen.
What to expect from a suicide loss healing retreat
If you are considering a healing retreat in Bali for this kind of grief, here is what the week holds. A small group, a quiet space in Uluwatu, and days built around somatic healing sessions with breathwork, bodywork and energy work. The sauna and ice bath to bring the body back down. Long meals together where people who understand each other end up talking about things they have never said out loud. Nobody is asked to retell the story. The body is given the room to release what it has been holding, and in that release the connection to your person tends to open up on its own.
My brother
After I lost my brother I started having profound connections with him through the healing I was doing. The healing itself was brutal at times. So much pain in the body. Screaming until I lost my voice for days. Hitting the floor shouting why, why, why.
And then, at the end, I was off and away with him. The most serene and stunning places I have ever seen, with a love I had never felt before. So much so that I was running back to get on the mat again.
If this is you
You are not mad, and you are not alone. There is another way through, and it is the reason our healing retreats in Bali exist. Our JAX retreats run once a month in Uluwatu and are built for exactly this kind of loss. If you are struggling right now, please reach out to someone today.
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