Jennifer Levin
Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the Pain from a Sudden Death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin, and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death.
This month we continue to focus on mental health awareness and suicide in today’s podcast with Susan Auerbach who shares with us the struggles her son Noah encountered before his suicide in 2013. We explore the impact of Noah’s death on the different relationships in her life and how Susan coped with traumatic grief early after his death and instrumental role writing played in her healing process. Susan also reflects back on the 11 years since his death and describes the different milestones that have occurred in her grieving process and how her grief and her identity in grief has evolved over time.
Susan, I am so pleased to have you with us here today. And why don't we start off by having you introduce yourself?
Susan Auerbach
Sure. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I think this podcast is really providing a service. Glad to be part of it. Yeah, let's see, I live in Altadena, California near the San Gabriel Mountains. I'm a retired professor, I used to teach sociology of education. And I see I have a son, who is 35, lives in Reno. My husband is also a retired professor, and I very much enjoy getting back to my lifelong love of creative writing. I've been doing a lot of poetry classes and poetry writing and involved in Jewish spirituality, I enjoy hiking and going to concerts and book groups and all kinds of things. Life is very busy in retirement.
Jennifer Levin
Yeah. And we used to live in the same geographic area, years ago, and I don't even remember how we how we met.
Susan Auerbach
I don't remember either. Was it through
Jennifer Levin
mutual friends or through
Susan Auerbach
Friends or through the beyond loss group? Yeah.
Jennifer Levin
Don't know. Well, it's nice to reconnect with you, although I wish it was under different circumstances, but glad to have you here. So I'm grateful that you're sharing your story with us today. And as you know that May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the podcasts this month are talking about suicide. So before we get into your story, tell us about your son Noah.
Susan Auerbach
Right. Yeah, so Noah was a guy with a lot of interests and passions and friends, he was interested in photography, all through his youth. He, earlier in his childhood adolescence, got into juggling, model rocketry with my husband. He learned to sail, he loved surfing, he really loved anything with or on the water. And he very much loved his college, he went to Wesleyan in Connecticut. And he, as I said, had a lot of friends, he was not a loner. He did not, as far as we knew have mental health issues until he began struggling during his college years after the suicide of a close friend. And that friend had taken her life on campus in a particularly gruesome way, and it was very traumatic for her friend group and many other people. And I think that it began to unsettle Noah, in ways that led to as far as we could tell, pretty severe depression. And he was struggling with depression. And we later learned with anxiety, possibly PTSD as a result of his friend's death. And he started going to some therapy when he was back home for the summer and ended up having to, he went back to back to school, and you know, right around the time, that would have been the anniversary of his friend's death, and I think that was very traumatic for him to be there at that time. And he ended up taking the year off and had a very tough year. We could see him really declining, His appearance was changing. His way of talking was changing, he was irritable, it was very hard to get him to talk about anything. And we kept asking him to be sure to, you know, use the mental health services at his college, which he did up to a point and he tried some medications up to a point but he was very resistant to that and didn't like the idea of that. I don't think he really tried any of these drugs, you know, to a point where they could have really helped him and eventually he said he needed to come home and I had wanted him to be home for a while because it was he had told us he couldn't concentrate and he couldn't read. And so it didn't make sense to me that he would be dealing with a challenging college experience. So I went back east to help him pack up to bring him home on a medical leave from college. And he had burned bridges with a lot of his friends at college by being I don't know, by sexually harassing somebody, being sort of aggressive and his character was changing, you know, his, his appearance was changing all sorts of things. And people didn't know how to deal with him and what to make of him. And he, you know, in those days, it was being defriended on Facebook, and so on. And he just had a few friends left by the time he left campus and came home and said he was going to be running the LA Marathon. And that was his goal. And yet he didn't train or do anything of that nature. He basically just ate, slept and watched TV for three weeks, very depressed, refused to go for any help. And hadn't been seeing a therapist or taking any medication at that point for several months. And he did run the LA Marathon. And two days later, is when he took his life. I came home from work later than expected, and found him in the garage. And was totally shocked. And yet, of course, not shocked, because I had been asking him, probably not often enough, but a few times if he had been thinking of taking his life. And I knew it was a possibility. But he had assured me that he would never do such a thing. And we were not, he was not on suicide watch or anything of that sort. So it was just a horrible nightmare of a time finding him in the garage, you know, sort of losing my mind not being able to know what to do and yelling and screaming til a neighbor came over. And I had dropped my phone, my phone had stopped working and my husband wasn't home yet. And the neighbor fortunately was there to be with me and call the he called the police. And so then it was the usual, you know, death scene of police, coroner's EMTs my husband coming home and having to run to the car before anyone else could get to him and tell him what had happened. And just the beginning of a nightmare, really.
Jennifer Levin
And what year did that all happen?
Susan Auerbach
2013. So he was almost 22.
Jennifer Levin
Wow. Thank you, first of all for sharing such a difficult time all the events that led up to that and then actually finding him. How did you even cope with the initial pain of his death?
Susan Auerbach
Yeah, I mean, I sort of went into, like, things need to be done mode. Initially, you know, beyond just crying and screaming and disbelieving and
you know, I saw my husband in a state I had never never seen him cry like that and be so bereft and I had been through a lot more grief in my life than he had and I knew that I would survive it. I'm not sure that he knew at the beginning that he would survive it, it was such a blow. And so I just, you know, started you know, writing to his college and doing things like that that needed to be done and also reaching out to close friends and family, it seems like I needed to tell my story over and over, you know, the story of of what he'd been going through what I had done or not done, you know, my you know, needing to piece together a story that would make sense and it took, of course, a long time to feel like I had any grasp on really understanding what had happened. But, you know, it was, I started, I wanted to try going to some therapy, but talk therapy just didn't work for me in those initial months. It was. It was too analytical. It was too wordy. But what did help me was some EMDR therapy with Mind Body practices. That really were cathartic to me. I didn't understand how EMDR works. I still don't.
Jennifer Levin
Can you explain that to us?
Susan Auerbach
The technology that the first therapist I used was, it stands for eye movement desensitization response, something like that?
Jennifer Levin
Now you're gonna put me on the spot E M. Eye Movement. Yeah. I think there's a rapid yeah. EM eye movement. Desensitization response, I'll look it up. I'll have a link to it and information in our Facebook group.
Susan Auerbach
I really recommend it to folks, because trauma sits in the body, as we know. And I really felt it in my body, I was more sick than I, you know, like, it took me much longer to get over a simple cold, or to heal from a simple cut. I felt like my body was going haywire. Fortunately, I had a doctor who was very empathetic. And she wrote the reason for my visit on my medical forms was grief reaction, she really got it, she got it turned out that she had lost her mother to suicide. So we ended up talking quite a bit about this and with my husband as well. Yeah, so with EMDR, there's a stimulation with little electrical, handheld things that you either hold in the palms of your hands, or some people are using a tapping motion, it's alternating from one side to the other, that seems to be important. And while you have this going on, either in your hands or in your upper body, you are responding to prompts from the therapist or telling your story. In my case, I just had so much to pour out and so many tears, I think I went through literally two tissue boxes in that first long appointment with EMDR. And it felt so cathartic. And I continued to go for several sessions, and then went back to a different EMDR person about a year or two later. And that was also really, really helpful in a way that talk therapy just wasn't working for me at that time. What was working was a support group, I wasn't able to get into one until I was about maybe four months, three or four months after the death. So in the interim, I was just leaning on an old friend who is very dear to me and really knew how to listen and how to accept what I had to say. And one or two other friends and a cousin. You know, my cousin really, you know, missed him almost like a mother and yeah, and in those early months, what else was I doing? I was journaling in a very raw way, like really big letters and big exclamation points. And nothing made very much sense and, but I had to get it out there. And really, just a few months after he died, I somehow got it in my head that I had to get my words out to the public. Like I had to have a blog even though I had never done anything like that before. And it was a steep learning curve for me. But the the opportunity to try to refine these very raw scribblings from my journal into something that would make sense out there in the world, to I just needed to have a voice I felt so devastated and shattered and I really felt like a little bug on the floor kind of thing. And I needed to keep trying to raise my voice to be heard after this devastating loss. And I figured that the blog was a way to help people who loved me know what I was going through, it was also a way to reach out to other survivors, which it did. And it just became an incredible outlet for me. I blogged pretty frequently in those first six months especially, and then into the and I still have my blog, but I don't blog nearly as often. So that was a really important outlet. And yeah, just when I was able to get into the support group, it was an eight week group with other suicide loss survivors. So just knowing that once a week, there was this place where I could say anything that I was feeling, and people would nod their heads, they wouldn't think I was crazy, they wouldn't try to convince me not to do that or think that or say that they would just accept what I was going through and provide perspective, because there was a psychologist that was one of the co- leaders, and she and the other co leader were both suicide loss survivors. So everybody there understood and learning from other people's experience it was just invaluable. And my husband went to a different support group. We each really leaned on that experience.
Jennifer Levin
You really had a nice set of diverse coping skills or mechanisms available to you.
Susan Auerbach
Yes, I felt fortunate about that. Yeah.
Jennifer Levin
Yeah. How did Noah's suicide impact your relationship with your other son, Ben?
Susan Auerbach
Yeah, so Ben was the older brother and he was very taken aback. He was very busy with his life with a great job and a great girlfriend and great apartment and he didn't want anything to sort of slow him down. So he wasn't really willing to like talk about stuff, or he didn't want to go to therapy or a support group of his own. He was worried about my husband and I, and he would come and visit us much more often than before. And when he was here, he would go to the cemetery with us and so on. I think he had a kind of a delayed reaction to it. And not just that I should backtrack on that. It's the old thing of everyone grieves in different ways. And he was 24 at the time. And as I said, you know, really building his life that was on the up and up at the time, and he, but I think he became involved in things that he might not have had he not had this kind of grievous loss and was drawn to friendships and relationships, again, that he might not have had, without this that eventually allowed him to become over the past 11 years, way more emotionally expressive. He became an artist, he told me that, you know, he believed you could express grief through creativity. And that was his way of doing it. He was doing a lot of traveling. And when he came back from one of his trips, he had a slideshow for us of, you know, these incredible, gorgeous places that he had been all over the world. And in front of each panorama that he had photographed, was his hand holding up Noah's driver's license, which he had taken with him on this trip. And so essentially bringing his brother to all these places that Noah would have loved because something I forgot to mention about Noah was that he loved languages and traveling and had friends in France and Europe and all over the place. And so yeah, so Ben had his own way of doing that. And yeah, he, over time has become much more open to talking about both Noah and grief and just feelings generally. And I made a decision at some point that I really wanted to be present for him and have an open communication with him no matter what he was doing, even if I didn't understand a phase he was going through or something he was enthusiastic about that felt very strange to me, I needed to accept it. I needed to be open to talking with him. And so I feel like we have a really close relationship now. And it's so precious to me. I was very, very close to Noah and Noah's growing up years more than I was to Ben. And so of course, that was part of what I missed in losing Noah. That was part of why I wasn't as close to my older son, because I think he was jealous of the closeness I had with my younger son. So I hope that we're making up for that, as the years go on.
What's the age difference between the two?
Jennifer Levin
They were just two and a half years.
What about the impact on your marriage between you and your husband.
Susan Auerbach
Yeah, I was worried about that, you know, so many marriages are traumatized by the death of any child, much less suicide death. I think we each gave each other a lot of space to grieve differently, you know, we each went to different close friends to pour out our hearts or just have some companionship. As I said, we went to different support groups, but we each kind of brought back to the other what we had learned from our group or a story that someone had told that shed light on something for us. You know, he was reading my blog posts, and, you know, telling me when he could, you know, relate to them and things like that, but we were, you know, we were each walking a very, very painful separate path for a while, but on the other hand, we were sharing of a very similar loss that nobody in the world could understand that the way that the other one could, and so, you know, eventually, you know, we were able to come together more like I really wanted to travel. And, for example, I went to France to go visit, Noah's host family that he had lived with for a year when he was an exchange student, and my husband didn't want to come, and I just did that trip myself. And it was very difficult to get him to travel, that was one of his reactions to the loss was to want to be home to want to be in the place where Noah had died to want to have a routine and know what to expect, and not all the unexpectedness of the, you know, unknown places that we might be traveling to. And it was just a different way of coping and different. So I just had to accept that. And it's taken a long time for us to find, you know, ways to travel together that we can each do. But in the first few years, it was, it was very hard. But I feel like, in many ways, it made our marriage stronger. He, his whole life trajectory changed as a result of Noah's death, he had been very, very devoted to his research work. And he took a disability leave of absence after the death and never really went back to full time work. He felt like his heart wasn't in it, he felt like his brain couldn't be in it anymore, that he couldn't focus in the way he previously had. And that was a real surprise to me that he didn't eventually go back because his career had been so important to him. So he retired much more early than expected. And I ended up similarly retiring a few years later, also earlier than expected, in part because he was off, he retired and that was sort of a pull. But also because my heart was not in the work that I was doing anymore. I felt such a need to have more time for the grieving that I was still engaged in a few years later, for the writing that I wanted to do about that and for the advocacy I was getting increasingly involved in and I just, you know, we could swing it, so I just did it. At 62.
Yeah it really changed the life course for both of you. During our previous conversation, you also mentioned that your father had experienced suicide, or you had experienced the suicide of your father, so two in the same family and such different experiences. And what was I mean, I'm just trying to wrap my head around that but that was like for you, both your father and your son. So talk about those differences and what that was like?
Yeah I mean, that struck me from the get go. You know, really from the first hours after Noah was gone, you know, it was like, Wow, here I am again, you know, I'm being abandoned again, you know, someone who was struggling is not letting me help them, you know, and rejecting me. And, you know, I was just, you know, the sense of betrayal, the sense of abandonment, I felt sort of doubly handicapped by that, if you will. And so my father had experienced a lot of depression throughout his life. I don't know the details, because I wasn't privy to it as a child, I found out later that he had been, you know, going to a psychiatrist for many years. And then, when he was in his 50s, and I was 26, he started having more severe depression, and was starting to take some medication. And apparently, his doctor wanted him to go into the hospitals voluntarily, to see if that would help him. And he was very, very threatened by that I found out from one of his friends, and in any case, he called me to come home from overseas where I was at the time and when I came home, my uncle met me at the airport I was surprised it wasn't my father. And it was because my father had taken his life the night before. And my uncle told me this in the car on the way home. And so, I was 26. My father was 54. So there, it seemed like there was really some awful parallels. You know, my son, Noah, when he died was 21. And I was 57, you know, but in so many ways, things were different because I feel like I went through the suicide of my father very much alone. I wasn't, I didn't have a family at the time, I wasn't part of a community. I was a young person kind of exploring the world. And I went to some therapy, I went to a grief retreat, I distinctly remember, this would have been in 1982. Yeah, it was a grief retreat. Nobody else there was grieving after suicide. I felt constrained talking about it, because it felt so different from the grief that the other people were dealing with. I didn't feel understood in that setting. I'm sure that the therapy helped me better than no therapy at the time. But you know, there were no suicide loss support groups at the time, there was no literature out there on coping with a suicide, there was no internet to readily find out more about suicide or suicide loss. And, you know, those those kinds of support groups, we're just getting started in the mid 80s. So I was really on my own and like my son, Ben, my older son, I was busy building my young person's life, but I was really in a funk for, I would say about a year. And unfortunately, it was a time when I was also isolated, because I was writing a thesis and on and on, and, and so it was a terrible time, it was just a terrible year, and I just kind of muscled through it, you know? So I felt like, this time, first of all, with the loss of my son, it felt even worse, you know, it felt worse as a parent to lose a child. And yet, I felt like some of what was ahead of me on this grief journey I was familiar with. And I knew I would get through it. And I knew that I would have more support now, in 2013, that is, that I did in 1982. So in many ways, very different experiences. But going through this loss of Noah has allowed me to re-grieve my father in different ways and to reprocess that grief, including anger at him, anger at him for like, you know, why did he do this the night before I was scheduled to arrive, you know, and I've come to create more of a narrative about his death over time. I think through all the incredible detective work I tried to do about understanding my son's death has helped me better understand my father's death.
I mean, it's very evident that you have done a lot lot of work and creating new narratives. And yeah, trying to understand that. In 2018, you talked about reading and creating stories. But in 2018, you published an amazing book called, I Will Write Your Name on Every Beach, A Mother's Quest for Comfort, Courage and Clarity After Suicide Loss. And I often recommend this book to anyone that I'm working with who's experienced the suicide death of a child, especially an adult child. And you've already started to talk about writing, and what a huge part of your healing process this has been. Can you talk more about this and what writing has done for you?
Yeah, I mean, I've, I've always been drawn to writing ever since I was a teenager, and I had always dreamed about being able to write a book that really spoke from my heart, because most of the writing I had done up until recent years had been journalism, or academic writing, or, you know, nonfiction. And I never would have dreamed that it would be a book like this, you know, I mean, I, I feel very privileged to have been able to put out a book like this that was so personal and meaningful to me. And that, hopefully, has been helpful and meaningful to others. But of course, I never would have, you know, wanted this to the book that I wrote, but I had been writing the blog and really feeling like, there were a lot of books out there that I had read by other survivors that kind of told the story from A to Z. And I hadn't really been able to enter into those books, when I needed support the most. Because everybody's whole arc of a narrative is so different, of what went on, you know, a lot of people go way back in time to mental health issues of whoever they lost, and on and on. And I really felt like my fellow survivors needed a more thematic approach to the various issues that come up, you know, whether it be with the body, whether it be with guilt, whether it be with other family members, or losing friends, or holidays, or religion and faith, all these things. And, and I wanted to write something that would be both a memoir, but also a service to others. And so I wanted to include some of the Mind Body practices that I had been learning or trying and using to try to calm my nerves to try to center my myself. And I just started realizing that I could use the blog as a jumping off point and build on that and expand on that beyond the, when I first got involved with planning the book, it had been 2016. So three years of writing the blog. And so I just started fleshing that out and found a publisher that did a lot of grief books. And they encouraged me to go with that format that I had been devising. And I really wanted to speak directly to my fellow survivors. So that's a part of the book to where I'm kind of reaching out to them, you know, with these sorts of questions and suggestions, and, and these Mind Body practices, in addition to telling my story of how these various things affected me, and I wanted to incorporate, you know, all kinds of quotes I'd come upon from experts and from writers and poets and other things that have helped me on my way. So the book is an amalgam of all that, and it came out in 2018, I guess. And yeah, it was just a way of, you know, continuing to try to make meaning of what had happened just like the blog was a way to try to focus the, you know, what am I what am I really going through in real time, from my journal to the blogs to then from the blog to the book was, you know, another remove and another opportunity to have perspective and to also show the reader when I was going through some of these things, so I would mark each section, you know, at six months at 18 months, you know, after the suicide, etc. So people could sort of see how, for example, my need to understand what had happened, my need to be a detective, which so many of us go through, you know, needing to piece together what had happened for a loved one, you know how that changed from the initial months to, you know, a few years later. And, yeah, I just really wanted to capture the immediacy of those most intense years of grief, which years, the first three years were the most intense for me. And so that was really meaningful for me not just to get the book out, but then to go all over, giving talks about the book and meeting other survivors and meeting educators as well as mental health professionals who are interested in the book. And, you know, that was also really, that was sort of a big focus of my life in, in those years, maybe, I don't know, five, through seven or eight, after the death, focused on those book talks. And eventually, you know, because I kind of got used to public speaking about these things. I got involved in the speaker's bureau at the Suicide Prevention Center here in Los Angeles, and we'd go out to nonprofits and schools and community groups and give talks on suicide prevention and just bring in a little bit about Noah and show a picture of Noah, and you know, kind of make it more personal, and kind of try to convey the notion that suicide is everyone's business. And that had it had I been more educated about it as a parent. Had my child been more educated about mental health, and suicide prevention as a young person, possibly this wouldn't have happened.
Jennifer Levin
Yes. You know, I've had parents ask me about what they can do, and how can they get involved. And, you know, I think everybody wants, like you said, it's everybody's business. And no one, no one wants to see anyone else go through this.
Susan Auerbach
But nobody wants, not nobody, most people don't want to think about it until it's in their face. And they have to think about it, and by then it can be too late. Like, for example, I had not spent the intervening years since my father's death, reading up on suicide or suicide loss, you know?
Jennifer Levin
It's been, I think, almost 11 years now, when you reflect back and think about that period of time, you know, you said, the first three years were the most intense of your grieving experience, how would you kind of characterize some of the other years?
Susan Auerbach
Yeah, I feel like certainly, that first year the trauma aspect is really, really prominent along with the grief. So the shock, the impact on the body, and so on. And then maybe that begins to subside, and then you're sort of seeing things a little more clearly. And maybe you get very invested in trying to piece together the puzzle of the story of what happened, I spoke a lot to Noah's friends, I spoke to his various psychiatrists, and therapists. And then I think, you know, gradually, there's this kind of, sort of middle ground maybe for me, it was maybe around years, four and five or so when I was getting more involved in groups, like Survivors After Suicide and trying to reach out to newer survivors and be supportive, and suicide prevention, and so on and so forth. Where I'm still in that kind of loss orientation, but I'm beginning to reach out to the broader world and find other ways of, you know, and have it not be quite as prominent in my awareness in my consciousness every minute. So that's sort of what they call restoration oriented. And you know it's kind of kicking in and combining with that loss orientation, and they're both very much present for me in those maybe middle years. And then by the time the book came out, in a way, I was reliving it a lot because I was talking about it a lot with these public, in public. But I had more perspective on it. And already, I was beginning to feel the possibility. Or maybe sooner I was beginning to feel the possibility of a kind of post traumatic growth, you know, where you've spent a lot of time allowing your grief to be expressed and telling your story and exploring your grief and ruminating over it. And begin to see ways that that are shifting, you know, for life, whether it's your relationships, whether it's your sense of purpose, or meaning in your life or something with your spirituality, and I was feeling all of that. And through writing, I was kind of tracking some of those shifts, you know, compared to say, two or three years after the death. So I really feel like by the 10 year mark, which for me was last year, there was just much more of a kind of an arrival at realizing that, you know, this grief is always going to be with me, it's a part of me now, but it's much more fully integrated. And I'm, I'm quite able to experience joy, I have, you know, new directions in my life I got involved in learning about and writing poetry, of course, I wrote a lot of grief poetry, some of that's going to come out in the next year and a little poetry chapbook. And that was very satisfying to me to know that, that was going to be kind of something else that I had been working on that would be there to kind of honor Noah. And so I wouldn't call it really rising above the grief, that wouldn't be the right expression. I don't know why that just flooded into my mind, but more just that it's taking up less mental and psychic and emotional space. And that when I do get hit by a wave of grief, which still happens, sometimes predictably, you know, like on an anniversary or something, sometimes completely unpredictably, the wave of grief is much less intense, and lasts a lot less time. And so it doesn't knock me over like it used to it doesn't, you know, take up my entire day like it used to, it's a whole different experience. And I'm more engaged in, you know, wanting to reach out to others. So I'm part of this thing called Healing Conversations with AFSP, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which is to reach out to the newly bereaved, I continue to help out sometimes with survivors after suicide events with international suicide loss survivor day helping to facilitate breakout groups for parents who have lost a child. So I'm in contact with other survivors at different stages of their journey. And that was really important in the COVID years, you know, when people were so isolated, isolated, and I was really worried about new survivors, and had they even had a chance to have a funeral or a memorial, you know, much less the support they needed, and so on, and so on. Yeah, I mean, I'll always identify as a survivor of suicide loss, but it was my primary identity for so many years there, it seems, you know, and maybe the first seven or eight years, and then I'd say, the past few years, it's part of my identity. But it's not my primary identity anymore. I don't lead with that. In fact, one interesting change is it used to be so important to me, that if I, if it came up with somebody who didn't know me, that I let people know that I lost a child to suicide, not just that I lost a child, but that I lost a child to suicide. Because I felt like that was such a different kind of grief that if I just said I lost a child, people wouldn't know how much it impacted me. And also, because I just wanted to encourage more open talk about suicide, as we all know, you know, trying to fight the stigma. And these days, I don't need to say that as much. Maybe because it's not as primary a part of my identity. I mean, if I see an opening in talking with the person if they seem interested, or I want to maybe feel closer to them, maybe I'll begin to go into it, but I'm much more comfortable now just saying that I lost a child or, you know, I had two children, now I have one, you know, that, you know, I couldn't bear to say that kind of thing back then.
Jennifer Levin
Thank you so much for kind of giving that overview like you did, I work with so many people who just don't have a lot of hope that the grief will ever lessen. And so just saying that, you know, for the first seven, eight years, that was my primary identity. But that's no longer that, I think, is just just a ray of hope that yes, the grief is always going to be there. But it's not always going to be the primary. And even talking about all the different things that you do, in terms of the advocacy and ways to get involved and help others, it's just so wonderful to hear you share.
Susan Auerbach
And can I just add something about the feeling of not believing that it's going to get better? I felt the same way. In the in the first year or two or three. You know, I would hear like, they would say something to me like, Oh, do you want to write something for the newsletter? So it's a bit for other survivors or something, but make sure it's hopeful. And I'd be like, what, you know, I don't feel hopeful right now, that's my experience, or, you know, like, yeah, it's better the notion it gets better. And I was just so dubious about that, you know, because you're just so you're so deep into it, that you can't see beyond it, right? And so. So it took a few years for me to be able to see, yes, time has helped a lot of people, maybe it's not going to help every single person in the same way. But you have to kind of let it do its work. And along with that, I feel like you can't rush grief, you can rush healing is more what I mean,
Jennifer Levin
Agreed, and you've, and you've done a lot of your work, it's very obvious on top of that, I mean, it isn't just the time, you've done your work with the writing, and the EMDR. And using your social support and all of that. And that's really been so beneficial and paid off for you as well. I want to end with one final question. I love having people on the podcast with so many different experiences, and you have the gift of time with us today. It's the time since Noah's death, but what would you say to another parent, a mother in your shoes - who is in similar shoes has just experienced the death of their child by suicide and has this really long road ahead of that?
Susan Auerbach
Right. Well, first, you're not alone, there's a bunch of us out there. Connect with us when you're ready, in whatever way is comfortable to you, whether an in person support group, whether online with something like Alliance of Hope, whether in therapy, whatever way you can reach out to companions in grief, who understand this journey so that you can see folks who are further along in this journey and have some hope for how the heaviness will gradually lift even though it will always be a part of you. Of course, self care, you know, find ways to take care of yourself even in a little way every day. Because this is such such a hard thing to go through. To find some kind of outlet for your intense emotion, you know, I know a survivor who really got into running, you know, long distance running that for her was, and still is a main way to process all those intense feelings for other people. It might be, you know, just listening to music or a hot bath or, you know, for me it was writing, you know, whatever's going to allow yourself to just kind of let go or maybe give yourself a grief holiday for a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, you know, whatever, you know, so that it's not quite as pressing as hard on you. When it is kind of overcoming you eventually to figure out ways to kind of dose your grief to be able to say, Okay, I can't handle this particular thing right now. Maybe it's something that's reminding you too much of your loved one or watching another family, that's an intact family. And it's just too hard, you know, just to be able to say no to be able to leave a social gathering in the middle if if you're really triggered by something, or really sad. And the big thing of guilt that is so hard to deal with self-blame and guilt that is for many of us a part of this journey. It's there, it's part of how we feel, you know, if you're feeling it, you're feeling it. And I'm, I'm certainly not going to tell you not to feel it, but to remember to be compassionate with yourself as much as you can. And I think it's, Oh, one of these, Dr. John Jordan, who says, you know, if you're going to put yourself on trial, for what happened with your loved one, make sure it's a fair trial and that you put all the evidence on the table. And for sure, there's evidence there that you were a good mom in so many ways that you did so many great things for your child or whoever it is you lost. And to not forget all that good stuff along with whatever you're beating yourself up for and try to have faith that it gets better.
Jennifer Levin
Wonderful words. Susan, thank you so much for your time today, and for sharing your story and Noah's story and your family's story. I appreciate having you here.
Susan Auerbach
Thank you and I wish hope and healing to everyone out there.
Jennifer Levin
I am always filled with so much gratitude for the willingness of my participants to share their pain, experiences, and wisdom in the podcast – in fact, I wish there was a better word to capture the graditude I want to express. Susan and I lived in the same community for over 15 years. Our paths crossed socially and professionally. I attended her book signing and we participated in several grief related activities together. But this interview was the first time she has candidly shared her story with me.
If you are living with a loss like Susan’s you know time does not heal traumatic grief. But, as she described, time did provide clairity, perspective, and continues to move her towards healing. However – it was not time alone. Susan, like many of my guests, worked hard to process her grief experiences. And, with two suicides in the family, she had extra work to do. EMDR, writing, support groups, learning what worked for her and what did not. I loved that she acknowledged that in the first year, two, or three she held the belief that her grief would not get better. I know there are so many of you today who also share same feelings. Although, every grief experience is unique, I have interviewed many living with long term traumatic grief, who are also able to attest to the continued evolution of their grief and decreases in the intensity symptoms over time.
I hope you will visit our Facebook group, Talking about the podcast Unteathered with Dr. Levin for a wealth of resources related to today’s episode and any of our previous podcasts. For Susan’s interview, we have included an article about EMDR which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy. There is also a link to her book – I will write your name on every beach: A mother’s quest for comfort, courage, and clarity after suicide loss and a link to her blog Walking the Mourner’s Path After a Child’s Suicide. Finally there are pictures of susan and her son. Please feel free to post comments and questions for Susan and we will make sure she gets them.
In closing, after two years and 48 episodes, I am going to take a hiatius from podcast Unteathered, Healing the Pain from a Sudden Loss and re-evaluate future directions. I would love to hear from you at [email protected] about your thoughts or suggestions regarding the podcast.
Make sure you sign up for newsletter Guidance in grief at www.therapyheals.com to hear announcements about the future of the podcast and if you want to join me in person please register on my website for my upcoming grief retreat on Whidbey Island in Washington State October 18-21st.
Take care everyone and bye for now.
