The Unseen Journey Through Grief and the Quest for Joy - Alexandra Wyman : 134

She's the best-selling author of the Suicide Club what to Do when Someone you Love Chooses Death . She wrote the book after her husband died by suicide in 2020 . She's a public speaker who helps people rebuild after major life events , aiming to help others find joy and appreciate life again . All this while working on her own as well .

It was lovely meeting Alexandra . She shares the harrowing tales of her husband's suicide and the complex aftermath . Her vulnerability sheds light on mourning , self-blame and stigmatization . Her story is one of resilience and solace found in community and openness .

By sharing her resources and fostering important dialogues on loss , love and the quest for joy , Alexandra shows how turning pain into purpose can help others heal . Let's enjoy her story . Welcome , Alexandra , to the show .

I don't know if there's ever anything that's super easy or easier , but just another way to be able to get through something like a big loss or grief . And even prior to the beginning of my story , which we'll get into I just always felt like if I could share what I've learned with someone else , that would be really helpful .

I definitely try and warn people if someone's trying to claim they have all the answers , they don't , and just to be able to find some community in that too , that there might be something that works for me that might not work for someone else or vice versa , and being able to come together .

So I was a little older when I met my husband and we just had this whirlwind romance and just knew we had a very deep soul connection . We got married , got our house and finally I was thinking , yes , we've got it , I'm on the road to the successful life .

And we found out we were going to have a son and then , just a few days before our second wedding anniversary , my husband ended up dying by suicide .

And that was not part of the plan , that was not what I considered to be part of a successful life , and I just felt that everything , any footing , any trust , any sort of comfort , security , was just completely annihilated on the day that he passed .

And so from that point on , I , as I mentioned , just thought I am trying to forge a path through this insanity and through this trauma and tragedy . So how can I again find ways to do this , to navigate this that might help someone else , because it's just unspeakable and it's so hard , no matter who is dealing with it .

And that brought me to being able to chat with you and being able to hopefully be a spokesperson and bring some light to the complexity of not only death and loss , but also of loss by suicide .

We want to know what to look for in order to keep ourselves safe from such a tragedy . And I'll say that even just two days before Sean passed , we were planning vacations and talking about what we were going to do . He died during COVID , so we were planning . What were we going to do ? First thing that we could , when we could get on a plane .

It was definitely difficult , and the initial part of that aftermath is a lot of blame . Why couldn't it be stopped ? Why didn't we get to him in time , come to us and say that he was hurting that much ?

I mean , there are so many things and I'll say also just complicated by other family members and friends that our marriage was kind of put under the microscope . So what was it about our marriage that drove him ? It must have been something about me that would have caused him to end his life .

And so you're right there is so much that goes through , there's so much thinking you can't even start . I mean , it took me almost a year before I could really start to look at everything and to be able to start pulling those layers apart , to even start healing , because there is a lot of that and you just get stuck in your head and how do we separate ?

I had to get to a point where I could separate and say this was a choice not my favorite choice for him to make and I don't agree with that choice , but I do honor that . That was his choice . And the truth is I could have tried all different scenarios .

I could have seen how it could play out all different ways and it could still have ended with him dying .

So I was reading books , I was listening to podcasts , I was doing two different types of therapy . I joined a support group .

I was doing everything I could to try and , just as what I'm trying to do is be a resource for other people , I was trying to attach to as many resources as I could to see if somehow that would lessen a little bit of the agony that I was feeling . Would you know , lessen a little bit of the agony that I was feeling ?

And truly , just , I tend to intellectualize and overanalyze everything anyway and had to sit there and finally get to a point and it just hit me one day like I could have , I could have done anything differently , and that I will still have regrets and I still have shame and guilt that I have to work through over .

Could I have been a different wife , Could I ? You know there are marriages that could mirror ours and it wouldn't end this way . You know that's what's so hard is there's no predictability . And I think overall what's helped the most is working on being able to trust myself and know I was of the belief at the time when Sean passed of life is predictable .

Right Again , go to college , find a partner , get a house . These are the things and through this experience I learned no , no , no , Life's not the predictable part at all . Life is the ocean . You just never know what kind of wave you're going to get .

But how we respond to that is what can be predictable , Trusting in ourselves that we can handle whatever comes our way . That's the predictability . And that's been a shift , just again , through doing a lot of healing and working on myself , to kind of release a lot of that responsibility over how things ended .

I'm doing the best that I can as a single parent , but to really embrace and really get to a point of self-love I guess that would be kind of where I look at that success . There are still external things I'm looking for . Do I have a good career ? Can I , you know , adult and take care of my bills , and those sorts of things .

But those are still external and I really feel that being in my being , my authentic self , being in my self worth , finding my self worth , being able to really start to find ways to increase my self love , that to me is a success . Responding to situations that life gives me from a place of trust , that to me would be success .

So I'm still working towards it and it's a shift , like I said , it's a complete shift from something that's external , with a checklist , to more of a feeling . I think that's what I'm working towards . Is that feeling of saying , okay , I've got this , which , of course , anytime I feel like anytime .

At some point you say I've got this , then life hands you something else and it challenges how much do you really have it ?

I knew that this would impact us , but I didn't want this to dictate our lives and I knew that we would carry our grief with us and it's something we deal with but I didn't want it to be driving our choices , driving how we decide we want to live our life from this point on .

Something I have had to work through for sure is that concept of life happening for you , not to you , and I definitely especially after Sean's death , of really being like , especially after Sean's death , of really being like why did this happen to me ? What did I do ?

How did I deserve this Versus just being able now to look at it and say , okay , this in a weird way , did happen , for I'm a completely different person than I was before he died , and the growth that I've done I wouldn't be able to do , I just wouldn't have , I wouldn't have done unless I had this sort of tragedy . Don't get me wrong .

This doesn't mean that I'm like I would always take him being back here over any of this , but I just recognize that , yeah , I'm a different person because of it .

I mean , it'll be four years this year since he passed , year since he passed , and so I still have days that are great and days that aren't , but I can start to see the little pieces along the way that were showing me exactly what you're talking about of those changes , or what I needed out of the situation in order to make changes and become more of my

authentic self .

We didn't really thought much about it , not even a thought . I was like maybe you should go and talk to someone you know , because he wouldn't have done that either . It's quite interesting when that happens , for sure .

I'm like I'm just sorry because it is hard . You're right . I mean , sean and I had an argument before he ended up dying . Absolutely Not only me but also friends and family were saying well , what did you say to him ? What did you do to him ? The answer is I don't know , and I think that's what's so hard .

Is that because it's an in the moment kind of decision and thing that happens ? We can't see all the time of other things that build up ? And one of the things that I've really recognized and I knew , but kind of understand a little bit more now , is that it's so easy for us to have compassion for people when we can see what's going on .

If we see someone in a wheelchair , we can have more compassion because we can see that something physically happened to them . But if someone is emotionally in pain , we don't always see it , we're not always going to know it , and so I struggle sometimes with having compassion for people and I'm working on that , you know , always a work in progress .

But that was one of the things that struck me , and especially when it came to my son .

There was an interaction with an adult who was kind of harping on him a little bit and I was like he's he's going through a rough time right now , but this adult has no idea because he looks like he's just a healthy kid who's fighting back and I'm like actually he's grieving the loss of his dad and we tend to not have as much compassion , we don't see that

someone is going through something , and my whole point of this is it's just a reminder to me and to everybody of why can't we just have more compassion , cause you just never know . You never know what someone is going through .

Stop asking me how I'm feeling , because that's been a big thing for me is to ensure that he feels that he can not only feel whatever emotions he's feeling , that he understands that he's not going to be shamed for that , and then I can help guide him even though I'm learning to do this as well is how do we work through it and not get stuck ?

That's the main thing , and especially with grief , it's so easy to get stuck and you can get stuck multiple times and not even realize you're getting stuck until something happens and you realize , oh , maybe I should kind of work through whatever those feelings are .

I've even wondered there are some resources that are great for kids who are dealing with loss , but often there are age limits to that , and so then I'm like okay , like there are all these resources that we can get to in a couple years , but those aren't necessarily helping me right now , as my son is expressing a lot of his grief kind of thing and being able

to figure that out .

So I so agree , it's so true , and then not everyone can say this is where my anxiety is coming from , or this is why , and you may not know , there might not be anything to it could just be something like a smell even sometimes can trigger someone and you wouldn't know , and they might not even know , and that's what makes it so hard , and I love that we're

having these conversations more and people are , for the most part , starting to come around and have them . I still do hear a little bit of the like oh , that's , you know a little bit of weakness or we don't need to talk about our emotions or just deal with it , kind of thing .

But I think more and more people are starting to open up and say we all have stuff . Instead of fighting each other , why don't we come together instead ?

When my stepfather passed away , I was angry and more emotion . Emotions came right away . Even myself know how I'm going to react .

are you ? And another person could say , how are you , and I'm totally fine , and then one person does and I'm just waterworks . I just start crying and tearing up and I'm like , well , apparently there was something about the way you said it that that did impact me , and I totally agree . You know finding ways to access and my shock was around for four months .

So , and I had some other complications . You know family that was really upset . They wanted , they were trying to potentially bring legal action . They didn't , but it was complicated . So it took me a good eight months before I could even start saying , oh , he's not coming back and I need to start figuring out how to work through this .

My personality is kind of like a let's take the bull by the horns and let's do this and get over it and get it done with kind of thing . And I realized pretty quickly that that's just not how grief works and healing doesn't work that way either . So I found out pretty quickly that that's just not how grief works and healing doesn't work that way either .

So I found out pretty quickly I had to kind of slow down , slow my pace and realize I had to give myself a little bit more time to start working through things .

He just looked at me stunned and I was like it's okay , it's okay , this happens sometimes .

This operation was going to help him to not have dialysis , to have another method that we were going to improve our family dynamics , in the sense that we were going to travel more and do more activities together . Otherwise , every two days , he had to be at home for dialysis . It didn't work . All these expectations it was grieving Like .

Now we are back to what we were going to do and we never talked about it and I have to say that it felt like somebody died for me and I was a teenager and the fact that my parents didn't speak it did affect me a lot . I felt completely worthless . We need to talk more about things that I could be feeling like a grieving .

That what you know , your expectation or the direction you're thinking you're going , the reality shifts and changes and it's that change that causes that grief , because it's what you thought was going to happen doesn't happen . And , just to your point , you know an unsuccessful surgery . It makes sense you could have a shift in a relationship .

So let's say , you find out something about someone and then you realize that the friendship you thought you had was different . You know that can create a sense of warning as well , and I agree that it's helpful to start having more of these conversations , because I don't .

I don't think I've met anyone and I just don't think that there's someone who exists who hasn't had something impact them , that has not caused them to have grief . Everybody has had something . I think what ends up happening is out of fear . I can see in my own situation .

I have sensed from people who've wanted to know well , what was going on for Sean , what was going on in your lives , because they want to see that there's some sort of difference or indicator for why this happened to me and happened in my life . That will prevent it from happening to them . And we like to create that distance because then we feel safe .

Oh well , did you hear ? This is why he died , but that's not going on in my life , so it won't happen . But the truth is , as we've been talking , life is the unpredictable part and there are so many things that can happen in our lives that will cause us to feel grief .

So it's like , oh , that's horrible , sorry , so sad , and then let's move on . Did you hear ? You know about this thing ? Right , you know . It's just people don't .

And I'll say I think sometimes even me , as I talk about it , I , because I'm open , because I've learned and said we need to bring more light to this , we need to be having these conversations , not normalize this as a way of dying , not to say I condone it , but normalizing it , and that more people are impacted than we really know .

People are impacted than we really know . And I think sometimes that throws people off a little bit because they're like , oh , you talk about suicide ? Well , not just , but yes , and that's okay , and let's normalize it a little bit more .

You just can talk about how it feels and perhaps for people who are thinking about it and I know that when they're ill that you can't think about anybody else but you at that time , but you can only help those people that you would call survivors Does that make any sense ?

I can give you the resources that I'm aware of , but I don't have any sort of magic because it didn't work for me and so I agree . Like there , I can speak to the aftermath and I can speak to the journey that I've had after .

I can guess and hypothesize what Sean was going through , but ultimately I have , I really have no idea , other than he was in a lot of pain .

Even relationships with family have changed , mostly with some of Sean's family , just because of a lot of the hurt that happened right after he died . And and , like I said , I'm trying to learn how to still maintain some of the old friendships .

But I think what's hard is I don't need to be fixed , and so when something like this happens , I think communities can come together and they can be there . But then , if they don't know what to do , we're doers , we want to do . How can we help you ? How can we ease this pain and agony that you're feeling ? And then , if the answer is an I don't know .

You know , for the first year I just had people bring food . I was like the only thing I can think of that you can do right now is bring food , because no one can bring my husband back and and people want to do something to kind of help . So I think in that respect it just some of that changed , because people just didn't know what to do .

They didn't know how to be around me , without wanting to kind of fix us , if that makes sense . So some of those friendships have changed . Like I said , I've seen myself .

My spiritual life has changed quite a bit because I felt challenged and said , well , what do I believe , what does happen after we die here , and where do I want to go on my spiritual journey ? So that was a huge shift for me as well . I was raised in a religious family and still participate in a Christian religion .

You know , I wanted to move . I just couldn't . It just didn't seem logistically possible at the time for me to actually move . We had to move out of our house temporarily and so to come back , it was suggested to redecorate . So that's what I did . I got rid of all of our furniture and completely redecorated . I will say holidays are different .

I keep thinking that around Christmas that I'll feel better , like , oh , if it's just one more year , maybe I'll feel better in the true it hasn't happened yet . So I do know quite a few people who just travel over the holidays .

They just kind of skip them and I don't know , because I have my son , I don't know that I necessarily skip it , but I have thought about like let's just get out of town for a few days around the holidays , just to be able to get out of the house , and I'm not a big fan of Mother's Day or Father's Day , and for everyone it's different .

There are always different things . Sometimes it's birthdays that come up , sometimes it's the anniversary of the death that still comes up for me . All different patterns for different people . I can say something I've noticed . I have two small nieces and one of them , sean , died in August . That's right when school starts here where we are .

So for one of my nieces the start of school is really hard for her and she just has to work through it and then she's good . For my son it tends to be more February , march . I've figured that out over the last couple of years . For whatever reason , his grief comes up around this time and then we'll kind of go out . So it's different for every person .

But I think that's probably one of the biggest changes is just seeing that there's this roller coaster I'm on and sometimes I feel like I'm great , and then other times I'm like , oh no , I might just need to take some extra time for myself .

The first thing about what do you do with an estate , I was like you don't have it . You know , I always think of estates as this big thing . No , you know , I say I don't know what to do about this . What's this probate ? You know ? All these things that I call the business that I had no idea anything about .

And Sean didn't have a will , which complicated things . So I do recommend that everybody have a will , and so that was also part of my goals . I had to figure out and the people I was around didn't know . They didn't know what to do , so I had people helping me with looking things up and making appointments .

So that was kind of the goal with with the book was to start there . But then also , as my process started and continued with my grief and I was able to put some ideas together to be able to share that with others .

I've had ideas for years and just never done anything with it , and , for whatever reason over the last couple years I've decided well , why not , Maybe it's just for me , maybe it's for my son , but I can do something . And so I've started writing more fiction stories and stuff , but something that I just enjoy doing .

But it was just something that automatically connected me to a whole slew of people who also had loved ones die this way , and so that's where the inspiration for the title came .

So if people are looking for some guidance through this , they can absolutely reach out and I'm available to walk them through that .

continuing to move forward . So it's the Forward to Joy podcast . Yeah .

As we've been talking about , we all have moments that cause us grief , we all have things that happen in our lives , and my goal is to be a resource for people on ways another way that people can look at healing any sort of past experiences .

When you think of that person , shoot them a text with the link of this podcast of that person . Shoot them a text with the link of this podcast . This would allow the ordinary magic to go further . Join me next time for another story conversation . Thank you for listening .