Losing a Parent to Suicide

What Grief Taught Me About Being Witnessed

[A gentle note: This article reflects on suicide loss and grief]

When I was seventeen years old, my father took his own life. That moment altered the trajectory of my life and became a catalyst for how I would respond to future experiences of loss and uncertainty.

This is not uncommon. When young children and teenagers experience loss without adequate support – while adults around them are facing their own demons too – grief often remains frozen in time and self-blame cycles can linger for the rest of their lives. We see that pattern not only in suicide loss, but also in such experiences as childhood sexual abuse, extreme bullying, domestic violence, divorce, and so much more.

Much of my difficulty integrating my father’s suicide was due to several factors: a complex and emotionally distant relationship with him, my young age, the trauma experienced by the surviving members of my family, and the collective inability to sit with the pain that we were all experiencing. His death felt like a schism, as though the natural fabric of my universe had ruptured. Since then, I have spent much of my life trying to understand my response to his suicide.

Searching for Healing

In the decades that followed, I explored many paths in search of healing: traditional psychotherapy, plant medicine journeys, and even some groups that, in retrospect, felt more “cultish” than therapeutic. Each was entered with a similar hope: If I do this one more thing, I’ll finally make sense of it. I’ll finally heal that wounded seventeen-year-old part of me.

While some of these experiences were helpful, many of them outsourced my healing to others. The implicit message—one I didn’t consciously recognize at the time—was that someone else held the answer to my grief.

What I didn’t expect was how profoundly healing it would be to have my grief witnessed by peers.

The Power of Being Witnessed

Today, as a grief educator, I facilitate and support grief groups where individuals are witnessed in their grief by others walking a similar path. Grief can feel deeply isolating, as though no one could possibly understand the shape or weight of our pain.

Being part of a peer grief support group and being witnessed – is not passive. It requires others to listen with their heart and to the facilitator to create a safe enough container. To be patient with our grief, and each other.

In my experience, this kind of witnessing is one of the most validating and integrative supports available. It allows grief to move, rather than remain frozen.

Grief Doesn’t End With Death

Here is something I’ve learned over time: our relationships do not end when someone dies. They continue—sometimes unconsciously, sometimes with great intentionality.

Although my father died in 1981, I have remained in relationship with him. In recent years, that relationship has become more conscious. This has not been about making his suicide easier to “digest,” but about learning to see him through a different lens.

For some people, this reframing might involve writing from the perspective of a different family member, a caregiver, or a different age version of themselves—rather than the self who first experienced the trauma.

For me, it has meant writing into the gaps of my father’s life, particularly his wartime experiences during World War II. I have written from his perspective about surviving a Nazi labor camp, being captured and imprisoned by the Russian army, becoming gravely ill with typhus, and eventually escaping. These acts of imagination and empathy have allowed me to see him with a different lens, to humanize him beyond his illness and his death.

Writing as a Bridge

In my work as a Certified Grief Educator, I often use writing prompts to support integration. One powerful exercise is to write a letter to the person who died—saying what was never said, recalling a shared memory, or expressing how you feel now.

At a later session, participants are invited to write a response letter from the person who died. I often suggest using the non-dominant hand for this part, as it can help bypass the intellectual mind and access something more intuitive and emotional.

This kind of work does not erase grief. But it can soften its edges, create meaning, and foster a sense of ongoing connection rather than rupture.

If you are living with grief—whether from suicide loss, anticipatory grief, the death of someone close or a challenging medical diagnosis—and find yourself longing for a space where your experience can be met with care, patience, and understanding, you are not alone.

I offer peer and family-based grief groups and one-on-one grief support for those seeking a safe, nonjudgmental space to be witnessed in their grief. These groups are not about fixing or rushing the process, but about allowing grief to be expressed, shared, and gently integrated—together.

If this resonates, I invite you to reach out to see if a group or individual support feels right for you at this time.

With care, Gabriela