My Mother’s Suicide Changed Me Forever

Thank you for sharing your story and it really hit close to home for me because my mom shot herself 4 years ago. Even though it’s been 4 years sometimes I feels like it was yesterday and other times 10 years ago, and I still feel like I’m living on a emotional roller coaster somedays. It has changed me too forever and my family as well, but we have realized that life must go on .

It’s been even harder for me to cope because I was living with my mom at the time and she and I were best friends, so it felt like I lost an arm or something. The most difficult thing for me is that i got in a huge fight with my mom the day before she died and we never talked again. I believe that she isn’t mad at me anymore but it’s hard for me to get over the guilt especially since I can replay that day in my head over and over again. Even though this whole situation has been horrific I’ve been able to find some healing through a great therapist, supportive dad and brother, friends, and being in college , but I still have those days. I pray for everyone who can relate to losing a loved one to suicide and that they are eventually able to move on.

I lost my mom when I was 15 and she did the same thing. I’m sorry for the reasons you know all to well. A mom is the greatest thing in the whole wide world and I miss her more and more everyday. I lost my best friend in the whole wide world 4 short months right after this happened in what was the few short months that shaped me into a man by the age of 15. 3 years ago and I still remember it so vividly and accurately. The rage I felt inside when she did it and hurt is completely in its own category. It’s something you just never forget.

My mother committed suicide march of 2014…a little over a week after her birthday. She was a diabetic. She filled up a syringe with insulin and turned the thermostat up to 100 degrees……I’m still in shock. I’m starting a charity for survivors…..Susan D. Lyons Foundation for hope……I don’t know what else to do. My thought is helping others will help me.

My mom committed suicide by hanging her self in her bathroom on April 29, 2017. The one thing I keep telling God is that I never want to stop crying for her. I never want to forget her. I’m the out of sight, out of mind type. I just pray her soul is at peace and she is finally happy. That’s all I ever wanted for her. My last interaction with her was me picking a fight and having it blow out of proportions and now all I can ever think about it is how she would still be here if I didn’t act like such a B. Reading the comments section has made me cry and made feel better because I know these feelings I have are normal. I think life will be really tough going forward without her in my life. She’ll be missing out on my brothers college graduation in December, my wedding (if I’m even going to go through with it now) in 2018 and my future children. She already missed out wedding dress shopping this past Saturday. I really wish she was there. I’m just thankful I have really good friends who care about me and are forcing me to do things (like wedding dress shopping) that honestly, I don’t think I would’ve wanted to do. It’s been two weeks since my sweet mothers death and it somehow feels like it happened yesterday and years ago at the same time. I’m sending prayers to everyone going through the same thing as me.

Thank you for sharing your story. My mom shot herself 8 years ago. The first 2 years were the worst. I was so angry and hurt, I couldn’t function. I almost lost everything. I still cycle through the emotions of grief. I think of her daily, and miss her so much that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. Coping has gotten easier, and I am able to talk about it and her now. I am a teacher, and have been able to share my story with 3 students over the last few years to help them cope with their own tragedies. I pray that God lays his healing hands on everyone who has to go through this in their life.

I lost my father to suicide over 17 years ago, when I was 12. It was and still is the hardest thing I have ever endured. My heart still hearts everyday when I look into my daughters eyes and know they will never get to know what an amazing man he was. I just wish I could tell him I love him 1 more time!

It’s been 4 months now. I am still haunted by the nightmares and I feel like I will never be the same person again. My mom never drank, but committed suicide by alcohol poisoning and prescription drug overdose. I walked into her apartment and found her face down, dead. Her face was bruised and swollen beyond recognition. Her hands were blue. I’ll never stop seeing it. The day before, she had overheard her husband and I discussing some concerns about her behaviors and later I went to talk to her about our concerns that her meds were off. She didn’t want to hear it. I walked away saying I refused to listen to her self-pity today. Insisting she needed to see a doctor. I found a letter for her husband and a partial letter written to me. Both quite angry. She killed herself that night. I knew I should have checked back on her but I was just exhausted by her behavior and years of dealing with her mental health issues and suicide threats. Now I live with the guilt of getting tired and letting her down.

I still remember waking up to my sisters screams on September 29th 1996 when they found my mom in her bed, and I didn’t cry about it the first time until 15 years later. I was 15 then, and 36 now. Ever since I started crying over it I haven’t been able to stop. Everything I have accumulated in my life now equates to four large duffle bags worth of space. My career in nuclear engineering is useless to me because I can’t stop putting needles in my veins. I wish I could go back to where I was the person everyone wanted to be around because they could lean on me and nothing ever bothered me. The only thing keeping me alive is the hatred for what she did to me and my sisters and the refusal to become her. But God I wait for the day when I can identify strength in her actions and follow suit because everyday I wake up is the new worst day of my life

I Googled my mother committed suicide because I am a mother who has to fight daily not to commit suicide. I stumbled on this page. I don’t know that this will be helpful and I want you all to know that your posts have really helped me. When you are young, life offers so much and the strain of life is easier to handle. The years add on such heavy weights Over time things can break the brain down, much like a kidney or the heart. I was on top of the world when I was 19 years old. I couldn’t wait to meet a man and have children. I had the most wonderful childhood. So when I met my husband, I was so excited. I was very naive to the world and my husband was a seriously damaged person. He was molested as a child and his family was pretty broken. I thought I could help him by giving him a safe place with me. It doesn’t work that way. The man mentally and physically abused me through passive aggressive behavior and finally physical abuse. I didn’t know what passive aggressiveness disorder was until recently. I felt absolutely crazy every day. Always walking on eggshells never knowing if he’d snap. I mean off the charts someone please help me I’m drowning crazy. Years ago I almost drove my car into a wall to make it stop but I managed to stop myself. At some point I just turned the emotions off completely Apparently there is a mechanism that lets you do that. Don’t ever do it. Let the pain happen, the other side is worse. So now I don’t have the chemicals for my brain to function because I am in flight mode and stuck there. It’s a living hell. PTSD, depression, anxiety, insomnia. Through all of this I am expected to work and put on a show for the world that all is fine. I want you all to know that what happened with your parents did not have anything to do with you. Someone somewhere hurt them so badly that they couldn’t get out of the hell in their brain. Much like what you are experiencing now in your grief, you can’t understand it until you’ve lived it. It’s a pain you don’t know exists until it happens to you I wake up feeling so hollow and so exhausted and I desperately want to feel better and I can’t. I went to therapy, I took medication, the medication pushed me even closer to suicide. My brain started to feel like it was being attacked by everything people said. If my boss said you did a nice job I thought she was just saying that and that she was lying because she was out to get me to fire me. I have stopped taking the medication but am still trapped in this brain. Parents are just people. They are born with mental illness, abused as children, raped by parents, beaten by boyfriends, abused by spouses, consumed by alcohol, and some tried drugs just once and got hooked, for some that’s all it takes. None of that and I mean none of that is your fault. After reading your posts I am reminded that at 230 AM even though I can’t sleep and feel crazy and am expected to go to work tomorrow, I have to continue to fight my brain and what it tells me to do all the time. It’s weird when your brain stops working as a part of your body and takes on its own power but it does. I am living it. I miss the life I once had. Sadly there seems to be no way to fix a brain once it’s been damaged by years of abuse. Fighting depression and suicide is my daily struggle I will continue to fight thanks to these posts and I think continue to read your posts daily as a reminder. Pick your spouse carefully, walk away from abuse and don’t let what your parents felt they had to do to escape the agony become your guilt. That path will lead you to where they ended up mentally. You don’t want to be there. Keep feeling, cry out the hurt, don’t ever shut down. Your parents experienced a trauma at some point that was so damaging, they were literally driven to craziness. Blame the person who damaged them, not yourself.

I too went on Google and typed in “My Mother committed suicide” because I want to know what will become of my precious 8 year old Son. I read that he is 3x more likely to commit suicide. The data is not good. For 3 days I have been writing my suicide note that he can only read or rather it can only be given to him upon graduating from college and after he’s traveled around the world for a year and of course no one is allowed to tell him that his mother committed suicide until he reads this letter.

I have a college degree and I live in Santa Monica and I have no desire to live. I honestly can say that I believe my Son is better off with a dead mother than a mother who is a basket case living in a mediocre place, who will have her beauty fade, doesn’t quite fit into a particular community, doesn’t have a significant other even though from the outside everyone thinks I would, was laid off a year ago and there’s not a job that interests me, my family is scattered across the US, my mother has the money to fund me getting my masters, but flat out said she has no interest in helping me.

So I simply don’t see how as my Son gets older how he’s not going to find me to be an embarassment, a failure and one will inevitably get by on some form of dismal financial means and quite frankly I would rather not.

I give, at best, myself about 6-9 months if that then I truly think I’m done. I know this sounds irrational, but I’m so tired of thinking and talking to myself. The anxiety, the tears, the amount of time I spend alone and it’s such a contradiction because I’m always hearing how nice or pretty I am. If they only knew how sad I am. How angry I am. How I just want someone to love me. I’m so tired of being alone.

But then there’s my beautiful Son. His eyes so full of hope. They really are and I have already hurt him so much. I’ve disappointed him before the holidays hen he saw me crying and I had to pretend it was about a friend being sick. I haven’t seen him in a while and it’s because he thinks I have the flu. I just have to get through this week and then I’ll be ok. My mother tells me to quit being dramatic. Find a church she says.

If I didn’t have a Son I would already be asleep. I don’t even think about how really. I imagine more falling victim to a disease or being in a car accident, so I can’t be blamed.

I’m sorry to all of those in pain, but I’m in pain too. It’s so hard to feel sad all the time.

My mother was a bipolar alcoholic who hung herself in my basemant on feburary 24, 2018. I am away at college when I got the call that she was gone. She did not leave a note and I am not sure if that makes it better or worse in terms of trying to undertsand. On one side of it , I believe that her suicide may be due to the combination of heavy perscriptions and alcohol. On the other, maybe she just could not hadle battling not only bipolar, but also alcoholism. I find myself angry, heartbroken, shattered, and unsure of how to continue on the rest of my life as if my heart hasnt been ripped out of my chest. I think about it constantly. I know she was a sick lady, i know she loved me, and I know she is at peace now. But somehow this knowledge doesnt quite the unbareable grief I feel. Sleeping has become hard. My father, sister, and I are just shells, trying to somehow move on from something that seems like will forever be on our minds. This page has made me feel like I am not alone. But my chest still hurts.

Thank you for sharing your story. I lost my father and uncle to suicide back in 2014 – my uncle decided to take his life a mere ten days after my father did. My father was my best friend, and someone whom I consider to be a soulmate, in a father/daughter sense of course, and the grief I have experienced over his loss is something that no words can properly do justice to. In August, it will be four years since he skydived off the mortal coil, and, while things have gotten easier, and I’ve eased back into a stable and strong way of life, the aching I feel in my soul for him is as palpable and painful – like an exposed nerve ending – as it was the first time I heard the words, “I’m sorry, but your father has passed”. I look back on the woman I was before he died, and I’m amazed by the immense strides I’ve made since his death, as well as the strength I invoked from within myself to come this far, to this very moment where I’m typing this comment. It is a truly awesome thing to see who I was then, to look back on everything I’ve been through since and because of his death, and to know that I made it – I did it, I survived, thrived and eventually prevailed. I came from a place where each night saw me cradling my head in my hands as I cried out in the dark, to anyone who may be listening, and sobbing so hard that I would shake uncontrollably as the tears and mucus ran down my face, to this day, where, while I still find myself overcome by grief at random moments, I now enjoy a gentle peace, created from a calm acceptance of what happened and a fierce, eternal love for my father that was once an overwhelming rage at his voluntary excising from this world. Having been in the same place as he was on that terrible morning many times, I fully accept that he wanted his misery to end, and, while I wish he had stuck it out, I understand why he did it. However, ironically enough, I haven’t once thought of hurting myself since he died, because now I know what special brand of misery that behavior puts my loved ones through. So, in the end, there’s that at least. =)

I still find that most people are uncomfortable with the topic of suicide, let alone knowing that my dad died by his own hand. I have no problem speaking the truth of what happened, because it’s stigmas against mental illness and taboos about topics like suicide, that resulted in my dad suffering in silence, and ultimately taking his life. We need to discuss these things. We need to let it be known that it’s okay to have open conversations about mental illness and suicide, because this is the first step in helping people to understand that they don’t have to hide, and that there’s help out there. We need to speak our truths. We need to be open about what’s happened to us, if only to let others know that they can come to us – I’ve found that people who need help seek me out precisely because I am so open, and there’s nothing better than knowing that speaking my truth encouraged someone to seek help. So, in conclusion, let’s make our voices heard in the hopes that we can help save a life.

I’m a mom. I know I never knew what love felt like until I had my daughter. I thought I would never be depressed again after she was born. 5 years later and I’m back to thinking about killing myself everyday. I’ve had 4 attempts in this year alone. I’ve been depressed my whole life with small periods of happiness here and there. I love her so much. I don’t want to be a burden to her. I don’t want her growing up seeing me constantly crying or sad or angry or anxious or any of the ways my depression manifests itself. I don’t want her memories to be of a melancholic mother who couldn’t get it together. I don’t want her to ever think she wasn’t enough or that her love wasn’t enough for me to overcome this. I don’t want my misery to be a memory for her. I want her life to be filled with happiness and fulfillment, not my selfish mental health issues. I feel like she would be better off without me.
My earliest memory for myself is sadness and depression. People have always said it will get better. I have a hard time believing this deep despair will ever leave. I believed it when I was 14 and 18. But 36 is a little old to keep believing in fairytales…
I just don’t know if I can leave her. She’s the only thing that keeps me hanging on but that’s not fair to her. I know she can’t save me. No one can. Someone said that they doubt they were their parent’s last thought before suicide. She’s always mine. On every attempt. I’m so sorry, I love you so much, you’ll be better off without me, she’ll understand typically go through my head and nothing and no one else. Just her.

I’m here crying my eyes out going through my own battles as a mom and decided to look up and see how my kids would feel if I decided to take my own life…. and after reading all of these I realize it would not be fair for them.. and I have to fight.. fight these demons for my kids, you guys saved my boys… It has been so hard as a single mom to a 7 year old and 5 month old idk if this is postpartum or what.. but I’m so depressed…

My mother committed suicide two days ago. She hung herself and I discovered the body at her house. There seemed now indication this would happen but now it has I can see there may have been warning signs that I overlooked. She had suffered from shingles for years and attended the pain clinic once a month. I did what I could for her but she was very independent and manage most things herself. Recently she fell and cut her hand. After a series of bandage changes there was an element of infection present so she was put on a ten day course of antibiotics. They made her stomach ache and she couldn’t keep food down. I visited her the day before and made her a hot honey drink and suggested she try some slices of banana and some a very small portion of porridge. When I phoned later she told me she had eaten a whole banana and finished off some tinned fish. I was very surprised at this as she only ate half a banana at a time normally. It later transpired that she hadn’t eaten any banana that day.
On the morning she took her life she had another hospital appointment to attend. I rang her to get her up and asked if she was ok getting to the hospital to which she replied yes as she liked to walk the short distance. She also thanked me for looking after her which did seem a bit odd at the time.
Those were her last words and she was probably preparing to die soon after. I am broken at the thought of her suffering and my knowledge that I could have done a lot more to help her.
I am still deeply affected by shock and reading all the letters on this site has realised the raw emotions involved. I am an only child and live alone. I am still affected by my dads sudden death nearly twelve years ago. The letters on here have helped my understanding of it all and I am hoping time will do it’s best to help me get over it. Thank you all.

My mother chose to leave this world 18 days ago. She was the light in the center of every room. She was a warm presence. She was the funniest person I’ve ever met. And she made you laugh in her darkest hours. I feel so lost. I feel so alone despite so many people reaching out and wanting to console me. I just want to be left alone. Every hug and every conversation that ends with “I’ll be there if you need me” reminds me over and over she’s gone. I wish I could have done something or said something. The Friday before she killed herself, she called early in the morning to cancel our dinner plans. I told her no problem, I’d call her back after my coffee and I didn’t. That was the last conversation I had and I blew her off. She was dead days later. I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself. No one can understand why I feel this way after I spent so much time caring for her when she was unstable. But none of that can make up for me not returning this call and losing the chance at one more conversation. No one understands why I don’t want to talk to to then but I feel everyones pity pushing me down like a huge weight on my chest. I wish I knew what to do, how to process this pain. I’m truly sorry that any of you have had to feel what I’m feeling and I’m hoping your coping better than me. Sending love and light.

I was born 1958 im 62 at time of writing. I was just 13 when my mum took her own life with an overdose. She’d been mentally unwell at a time and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. It was 1971 and drugs seemed harsh then, she came home at weekends and didnt seem to be able to mange to engage in anything, she was too drugged up for hugs or any kind of mother daughter interaction.
At 13 you need your Mum but she couldn’t be there in an emotional way. I lost my dad at 15 but I didn’t have any emotions left to properly accept it, let alone grieve. Luckily I had a sister 16 years older who hadn’t left home to marry like my other siblings. My care fell to her. She had my dad for 2 years and her own sonti take care of also..
School was so hard for me and I came away with a poor basic education.
Suicide does effect you and its never truly gone away for me. I had two years of counselling fromn 2000 when my ex husband left.
I’d had a bad time mentally when my daughter was 13 in 1997. But didn’t put any significence on it or understand it for what it was. I was angry and unreasonable towards my ex but didnt know why. So he left me after 3 crappy years.
Ever since the divorce I’ve struggled with relationships. And only kept jobs for a few months at a time. I’ve felt like a failure most of my life. Not blaming my Mum but it can’t have helped.

I recently bought my husband a house…I wanted to do something for him to let him know I love him. We’ve been married 22 years. Both of our daughters left in October, 22 and 19. I was constantly ignored by my girls. They never respected me or gave me the time of day. They were just constantly in their phones. They loved their devices more than they’ve ever loved me. I never even got flowers or a card on Mother’s Day, not once. Apparently because I wanted them to put down their phones and pay attention to life outside the screen, get up before 1pm, do their own laundry, and start taking personal responsibility for their lives so I could handle my own responsibilities I am a toxic and emotionally abusive mother. When my husband and I hit hard times about 5 years ago all we could afford was a two bedroom apartment. We gave the master to our oldest with her own bathroom, the other room to our youngest and we slept on the floor in the living room for two years while rebuilding our lives. I wore second hand clothes and torn up shoes so they could have new phones and clothes while in school. My youngest went thru 3 iphones in one year, one mishap after another. When my mother was in the hospital with pancreatitis I flew from Cali to Texas and ran my Etsy shop out of the waiting room so I could be there for my mom but also support my family in Cali, my husband was out of work…laid off. Nothing I have ever done is good enough. Kids are conditioned thru school and social media to believe anything other being a doormat is abusive and toxic. If your children are rude or lie to you and you call it out and put your foot down and tell them its not acceptable you’re labeled as a toxic parent. They left after I caught my oldest in a lie about money and my youngest in a lie about where she was for two nights straight without coming home to take care of her 2 mos old kitten she brought home without asking first (and also for who I ended up paying unexpected vet bills for). I was called a narcissist and abnormal. I did everything I possibly could for them at my own detriment. So here I am now…I bought their father a home to fall apart in. I just can’t deal with it anymore, I wasn’t expecting to be shunned and abandoned after dedicating myself to them their whole lives. They were good girls before Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram took over their lives. Changed them fundamentally… I did what I could to keep them grounded but it didn’t matter.
Can’t be here anymore, its a terrible place.

My mother also committed suicide from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. I was 15 at the time it happened. She struggled with mental health issues and ptsd problems from her childhood. I knew she was going through a lot but I didn’t expect her to commit. What hurt the most was she also lived her life motherless and it effected her a lot. I don’t get why she would do the same to my brother and I. Its been two years since and I still cant wrap my head around the fact that she is truly gone and I will never be able to see her again. I still hear her voice sometimes or think that she is heading towards my bedroom door as I hear footsteps, but in reality its just my dad or brother. I can barley look at the golden gate bridge as it just reminds me everyday of what happened. I just never expected it.

I am a mother and I have severe mental illness. I am considering suicide because I read all about “survivors” of a mentally ill mother and how damaged they are. Which i s worse

My mother, mama, shot herself almost 4 weeks ago. She had suffered severe depression all her life and even more so in the pat few years, since the passing of my stepfather, my grandparents, my brothers step son, and several other deaths. My cousin had hung himself before I was born, and my other cousin shot his father several times then himself a few years back. So needless to say suicide runs in our family. However, I’ve never felt such a profound loss in my life than the morning I found out she has taken her life. We had been fighting for about 2 years mostly b/c my youngest brother lived with her and was abusing her by taking all her money and neglecting her. We had filed an elder abuse claim a month ago yesterday but they denied us any help. I’m torn apart with guilt. She left no note for us as her children. Not a word. She has been fixing up her new home and then she shot herself. She didn’t even know how to use a gun, she googled it. It’s been almost a month and my brother who lived with her has still never called us to tell us. We found out through a text he sent his ex wife. I’m utterly heartbroken. I cannot explain the extreme pain I feel. My heart feels like it’s missing, food has no taste, I laugh but inside I feel guilty when I do b/c she’s no longer with us. The night she supposedly passed I left work feeling sick to my stomach, I drove home thinking of her and wanting to call her. But I thought no, I’m not ready to fight, I’m not ready to feel uncomfortable…I’ll just text her.. The next night I texted her phone, I love you mama, knowing she was already gone. She arrived cremated remains yesterday to my home. A bag of ash split 3 ways between my brothers and myself is all I have left off her. I held the bag in my hands briefly then put her back in a sealed box. I had to tell my daughters she died and don’t lie to my children, so I explained she killed herself. I wish I hadn’t b/c the pain I see in my oldest seems so unfair. I don’t feel like I’ll ever be happy again. Like this will last forever. Someday I’ll be older, maybe sick and sad and need her….but now she’s forever gone. If feel selfish, guilty, exhausted all the time. I dress up for work and okie through what needs to be done, thinking about her the entire time. I need answers. Answers to questions no one needs to know. I need to know was she sitting, standing, what was left of her head, was she dressed, undressed, did she smoke her last cigarette before doing it, did we as her children pass through her mind when the light when through her head?!?!?! It’s sick, it’s maddening, it’s making me crazy. I feel extreme anxiety and a sickness in the pit of my stomach. I had just told my doctor a few days before this happens while at my physical that I was at 44, finally happier than I’d ever been in my life. And now, empty, alone, missing her, wondering if what religion says about those who take their life is real. I imagine her as a beautiful woman she was and then immediately as a monster screaming in an afterlife she cannot reach. I feel so many things, and yet nothing at all.