On April 5, 2024, I learned my brilliant, impossibly sweet, and overall amazing son had died by suicide. That day, my prior life ended, and a new, unwanted life began. Like other suicide survivors, I was faced with a world that no longer made any sense to me. I felt like I had just landed on an alien planet. Nothing looked familiar anymore. As the initial weeks passed, I realized that I was actually the alien, and the world was being revealed as a place that I simply had never understood. The patterns of the world I thought I knew were just projections I had placed on it. My own privileges and incredible luck of having an easy and carefree life were just a veneer that was stripped away—the real world was a cruel and hard place, full of pain and death.
I looked up how many people in America died by suicide every year, and I stared at the number: 50,000. In a country of over 300 million people, that seemed like such a small number. I looked up how many people died by suicide every year in Georgia: 1,624. Of the millions of people who lived in Georgia, my son was one of only 1,624 who died by suicide that year.
Despite a very close friend group and our very tight-knit family (my son has five siblings who were all extremely close), it was the loneliest experience of my life. Grief is isolating, even among a very close family that were all facing the same loss – the experience of grief was so different for each of us, we were traveling different paths in a vast, dark forest.
Within two days of the news, I searched for a grief counselor who could help our family process this loss. I am forever grateful we found Helena, who had recently established her practice in our hometown, and had just been approved to accept our insurance the same month (even the newly bereaved are not immune to the cruelties of the American healthcare system). Helena immediately suggested I look into Alliance of Hope (AOH).
I joined the Alliance of Hope Forum on April 15, 2024, only 10 days after we learned of my son’s death. Over the months to come, I became a regular. Initially, I spent much of my time just reading about others’ experiences. It was strangely cathartic for the very simple reason that I didn’t feel so incredibly alone in my tragedy and grief.
When I saw the strength and care of people who were years ahead of me on their grief journey, at first, I was in awe that they could survive at all. Then I came to understand that they not only survived, but they also had the strength to give back to the world. They lived in the same world I now saw as cruel and hopeless, but they were bringing love and care to that world. I began to see the miracle of what the Alliance of Hope (AOH) truly is – an island of pure loving community in a world shattered by division, cynicism, tribalism, and relentless focus on the isolation of only caring about ourselves.
I witnessed a woman who lost three of her four sons to suicide over a six-year period turn back to the world by reaching out to comfort others with multiple losses.
I witnessed a man who lost his wife to cancer, then his 13-year-old son to suicide after they argued, turn back to the world after 20 years of processing his grief—crafting the most gentle and caring words imaginable to comfort the newly bereaved.
I witnessed a man whose wife died by suicide describe his transformation from someone who cared little for the plights of others, to a person filled with empathy that brought him to a community where he gently welcomed the newly widowed.
I witnessed the creation of private grief groups that supported my wife and I in quite different ways—hers was a women’s group focused on writing as a mechanism for processing grief, and mine was a men’s group, where I found instant and surprisingly deep connection with other dads facing similar struggles to mine.
And I didn’t just witness these things once; I witnessed them over and over, as a daily practice of community building. One caring word at a time, one gentle (virtual) hug at a time, one welcoming message at a time, that had been painstakingly built and maintained for over 17 years since the community was created out of Ronnie Walker’s own suicide loss.
Over time, I began to welcome others as they arrived with their eerily similar introduction messages—“I’m here, and I’m lost. The most important person in my life is gone, and I can’t understand. How could I possibly be here?”
I realized that by connecting with these people who were often closer to their loss, I could share the assurance that they, too, would survive. And in the pain and struggle of that survival journey, there was the possibility of becoming what I witnessed through the AOH community—a person who once again cared about others and found their own strength to look for ways to thrive even in the sorrow that was now woven into their life.
My son’s loss to suicide taught me the fragility of life and opened my eyes to the many privileges I had taken for granted. AOH taught me that suicide loss is survivable, and the transformation born from a grief journey has the power to change us into better people. I also saw what people who had come back to the world after loss could do—deliver their unique and powerful message of the sacredness of life and our connections to each other. They used their wisdom learned from indescribable pain to build something so rare and magical in this modern world—a true community of mutual care, built on respect and recognition of the sacredness of the grief journey.
I am forever indebted to the Alliance of Hope community for becoming a huge part of my healing journey. This community has taught me that I can continue to mourn my incredible son, while I also find new meaning in my life as the voice of one of thousands of suicide survivors who can contribute to a better, more loving world.
