Fourteen Years Later: A Letter to A Grieving Past Me

Content Warning: suicide loss

Fourteen years ago, my world cracked open when my father died by suicide. I had just turned 27, and I didn't think I knew everything but I thought I had a pretty good idea of how life worked. I thought I knew who I was.

Looking at my shattered worldview in front of me, I humbly realized I didn't know shit.

To the Me Who Was Drowning

Marshall. I see you there in your grief fog, barely able to string sentences together. The anxiety only made worse by the chain-smoking. At least it's something to hold onto, literally. You think you've inherited a whole new level of shame. You think you're beyond repair. You think this pain might swallow you whole.

You're not broken, sweetheart. You're breaking open.

I know you can't see it yet—how this mess will eventually let the light in. How this forced reckoning with mortality will teach you to live more fiercely, love more tenderly, show up more authentically.

You think you're failing because you can't "get over it" fast enough for everyone else's comfort. Sweet one, you're not supposed to get over it. You'll get through it. That's what grieving is. And it will take as long as it takes.

What's Different Now

That terrified me who couldn't say the word "suicide" out loud? I now facilitate healing circles for other survivors. That person who felt so alone in their grief? I've built a whole practice around community care and collective healing.

And I've sure become fluent in letter writing! To myself, to my father, to others, to those to whom I am making amends. Looking back through even those early letters I wrote to Pop after his death, I see ways that I was bypassing my true feelings but also wisdom that came through my wide open heart:

"Dear Pop,

Today marks the one month anniversary of your death. It may be a hard day, but it's one month closer for all of us to be feeling okay. Please don't misunderstand, though. You are very much missed, but I know that you wouldn't want us to be mourning all the time and feeling sad. I have so many good memories of you, recent and way past...

Yesterday became a difficult day in the evening, and at one point, I became upset but knew that I needed to get through. I completed one full work week I've been back. I met a couple from Norway, and I thought that might have been a little gift from you. If so, thank you...

I'm sad that you went away; we all are. I wish you could have let us help you get better. But, I know that you felt it was the best choice for you, and I know you probably felt it was the best choice even for us. (I hurt for you thinking that, but I realize you must have.) You really outsmarted us this time, Pop. It is not surprising; you always could outsmart us. :) I'm just so thankful for the Sunday before, that you could see all the love pouring out for you, [even if it wasn't enough to make the difference].

I hope your one month anniversary of freedom is a good one. That is what I'll be focused on today.” (end of excerpt from letter 9/19/2011)

You used to think positive thinking could cure everything? Now you know that justice work is spiritual work. Grief work is justice work. And that staying soft doesn't mean staying silent. That love without boundaries isn't really love—it's enabling.

People around you who hadn't had a loss like this- well-intentioned as they were- were often looking for signs that you were beyond the grief or that you were like you were before. Perhaps they were looking for you to help them feel okay. And you, too, thought healing meant going back to who you were before. But the person you're becoming is so much more whole, tender, and sincere.

The Gifts Hidden in the Rubble

This loss taught me that grief isn't the opposite of love—it's more like love with nowhere to go. (Thus the letters to Pop were somewhere to put it.) It taught me that some questions don't have answers, and that's not a glitch, as much as I would have liked it to be. A feature rather than an exception, I must say. It cracked me open to a tenderness I never knew I could carry.

It also taught me that the people who tell you to "move on" are the ones who haven't learned to sit with their own discomfort yet. That's their work, not yours.

You're going to learn the difference between healing and fixing. Between processing and performing. Between vulnerability and martyrdom.

What I Want You to Know

Your grief is not a problem to be solved. It's sacred information about the depth of your love.

You will find your people—the ones who get it without explanation. The ones who sit in the dark with you instead of trying to turn on all the lights. (You'll find out that some of them have four legs instead of two. 😉)

You will become someone who can hold space for others' pain without trying to fix it. You will learn that sometimes the most healing thing you can say is, "That fucking sucks, and I'm right here."

The Holy Mess of Grieving

Fourteen years later, of course I still miss him. The grief isn't "healed"—it's integrated. It lives in me differently now, like a scar that tells a story instead of an open wound that won't stop bleeding.

I've learned to parent that 27-year-old version of myself with the tenderness they deserved then. To say the things I needed to hear: Your grief matters. Your questions are valid. You are not too much.

I don't get it right all the time but it's way more than I used to.

The person I've become—this queer, ordained, justice-oriented, soft-when-the-world-is-hard human—exists because of what that loss taught me, not in spite of it.

Choosing a Different Path

Let me be clear: I've done a lot of work to make sure my story doesn't end the way his did. Therapy, community, spiritual practice, medication when needed—whatever it takes. I refuse to let his legacy be a family pattern of unfinished stories. I choose to carry forth all the things we had in common, which are many, and hold them proudly and carefully, without diminishing his pain or my own.

I didn't have to figure it all out before I started. I truly didn't know what the hell I was doing! Some days, I just tried to take one step. Brush my teeth. Take a shower. Consider it a success when I could do those things, and a bonus when I could do more. Until gradually, I could.

My gifts revealed themselves as I went along my way: the ability to sit with others in their darkest moments, to translate pain into purpose, to build bridges between spiritual practice and social justice. The way forward made itself known through moving, not through planning. Kinetic, not potential energy.

For Anyone On This Path

If you're in the thick of coping after suicide loss, please know: you're not doing it wrong. There's no timeline, no right way, no graduation ceremony where someone hands you a certificate that says you've officially "moved on."

Your grief is as unique as your love was. Honor it. Loss changes us. And would we want it not to? Let it change you. Let it crack you open to a level of tenderness that this world desperately needs.

And be gentle with the person you were before you knew this kind of loss was possible. They were doing their best with what they knew then.

We all were.

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If you're struggling with thoughts of suicide, please reach out: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you're a survivor of suicide loss looking for community support, afsp.org is a great place to start, and the Befriend Your Grief program offers companioning through this unique journey. New dates to be announced soon. More info at reikifortoday.com/grief

In solidarity and tenderness,

Marshall