The emotions that follow a suicide loss are unlike anything most of us have ever experienced. In the early days after losing our son to suicide, my grief was overpowering. I oscillated between shock, guilt, anger, and disbelief on an hourly basis. I remember thinking that my entire life had been shattered beyond repair. I felt like everything I knew had been broken into a million pieces, scattered across the floor of my existence. I thought there was no way I was ever going to feel whole again. There were just so many pieces that no longer fit together. Healing was not a concept that I could not grasp.
If you’re feeling this way right now, please know that your experience is valid, it is real, and you are not alone. The shattering you feel is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is the natural response of a heart that has been broken by an unimaginable loss.
Looking at Life Through Shattered Glass
In the early days after a suicide loss, looking at your life filled with grief is like looking at the world through shattered eyeglasses. You can see small sections clearly, but the whole situation can never quite come into focus. A fragment here shows you the face of your loved one. Another fragment reveals the life you had before. Yet another reflects the terrifying uncertainty of what comes next. But when you try to see the whole picture, everything remains fractured and disjointed.
This fragmented vision affects everything: your sense of time, your relationships, your ability to make decisions, your understanding of who you are. The world that once made sense now feels like a puzzle with pieces that no longer fit. You may find yourself unable to concentrate, forgetting simple things, struggling to complete tasks that once came easily. This is not weakness. This is grief doing what grief does in the aftermath of trauma.
The Sharp Edges of Early Grief
I was down at the New Jersey shore talking with another parent who had lost a child to suicide. She described her grief much the same way I experienced mine. Then she shared an analogy that has stayed with me ever since.
She said that grief in the early days is like broken glass. You are shattered, everything is so sharp, so intense. Every time you try to touch it, you get cut by the sharp edges. It looks like you can never put it all together again. The fragments are too jagged, too dangerous. Even trying to pick up the pieces causes more pain.
This is what those early days and months feel like for so many of us. The memories cut. The silence cuts. The questions cut. Other people’s words, even when well intentioned, cut. Everything has an edge that can wound you when you least expect it. You learn to move carefully through your days, trying to avoid the sharpest fragments, knowing that some cuts are unavoidable.
From Broken Glass to Sea Glass: How Grief Transforms
But then she added something that changed how I understood my own journey. She said that grief also changes with time. With time, the sharp edges wear down. You can start to pick up the pieces and do something with them. You can start to arrange them how you want them and find a new future.
She said that her grief had become just like the beautiful sea glass that you find at the shore. What was once something shattered and dangerous had transformed into something of beauty. The tumbling of the waves, the passage of time, and the work of nature had smoothed those cutting edges into something you could hold in your hand, something you could treasure.
A beautiful mosaic can be built from broken and shattered pieces.
This image has stayed with me through all the years since our son’s death. The transformation from broken glass to sea glass doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen without the tumbling, the friction, the constant work of the waves. But it does happen. And what emerges is not what was there before, but something new, something that carries beauty alongside the evidence of what it has been through.
Why Time Alone Doesn’t Heal: The Importance of Grief Work
There’s a common saying that “time heals all wounds.” But I’ve learned that this isn’t quite true. Time alone doesn’t heal. If you simply wait for the pain to go away on its own, you may find yourself still holding those sharp, cutting fragments years later.
What transforms the broken glass into sea glass isn’t just time. It’s the work that happens during that time. Just like that glass needs the tumbling of the waves to smooth its edges, grief needs active engagement to soften and transform. This is what therapists and grief counselors call “grief work,” and it is essential to healing.
Grief work means being honest with yourself about what you’re feeling. It means allowing the emotions to surface rather than pushing them down. It means talking about your loved one, crying when you need to cry, and sitting with the discomfort rather than running from it. It means seeking support from others who understand, whether that’s a counselor, a support group, or trusted friends and family who can witness your pain without trying to fix it.
Learning to live with grief requires integrating it into your life, not hiding behind it and not avoiding it. You cannot outrun grief. You cannot wait it out. You must move through it, and that movement requires intention and effort.
Choosing Your Future: A Thousand Small Decisions
Here is a truth that took me time to understand: you have a choice to make. Either you choose your future, or it will be chosen for you. In the early days, it may feel like you have no choices at all. The loss has happened. You cannot undo it. You cannot bring your loved one back. What choice could possibly matter?
But slowly, as the shock begins to lift, you start to see that choices remain. Small choices at first. Will you get out of bed today? Will you eat something? Will you answer the phone when someone calls? Will you attend the support group meeting? Will you allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling?
Healing is not one big decision. Healing is a thousand small decisions about how to proceed. Each day presents opportunities to pick up one of those colored, tumbled pieces and place it somewhere in the mosaic of your new life. Some days you may only have strength for one small choice. Other days you may find yourself making several. And some days, you may need to rest and make no choices at all. That’s okay too.
Sometimes it’s hard to see that you’ve been making these choices all along. You may not recognize the progress because it happens so gradually. But if you look back over weeks and months, you may notice that the pile of sharp, untouched fragments has grown smaller. You may notice that more pieces have found their way into the mosaic. You may notice that the edges don’t cut quite as deeply as they once did.
Building Your Mosaic: Ways to Begin
You have many options for picking up those colored pieces and weaving them back into your life. There is no single right way to do this work. What matters is finding what feels authentic and meaningful to you. Here are some possibilities:
Seek professional support. A grief counselor or therapist who specializes in suicide loss can help you navigate the sharp edges safely. They provide tools for processing emotions that feel too big to handle alone. This isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a recognition that some journeys require a guide.
Join a support group. Being with others who have experienced similar losses can be profoundly healing. In these spaces, you don’t have to explain the depth of your pain. Others already understand. And hearing how others are transforming their own broken pieces can give you hope for your own journey.
Create rituals of remembrance. Lighting a candle, visiting a meaningful place, creating a memory box, or establishing traditions that honor your loved one can help transform grief into something you carry with intention rather than something that simply weighs you down.
Allow yourself to feel. Give yourself permission to cry, to be angry, to feel confused and lost. These emotions are not obstacles to healing; they are part of the path. Suppressing them only keeps the edges sharp longer.
Be patient with yourself. The transformation from broken glass to sea glass doesn’t happen quickly. It requires countless tumbles, constant friction, and the slow passage of time. Trust that the process is working even when you can’t see the progress.
Connect with your story. Whether through journaling, creating art, or simply talking with trusted others, finding ways to tell your story helps integrate the loss into your life rather than leaving it as a separate, untouchable wound.
The Beauty That Emerges
I won’t tell you that one day you’ll be grateful for your loss, or that everything happens for a reason, or any of the other well-meaning but hollow phrases that grieving people often hear. What I will tell you is that transformation is possible. The shattered pieces of your life can become something new.
The mosaic you build will not look like the picture you had before. It will carry the marks of what happened. It will include dark pieces alongside light ones, jagged edges alongside smooth curves. But it can still be beautiful. It can still be meaningful. It can still be a life worth living.
As you move further along your journey, you will likely find yourself drawn to helping other suicide loss survivors who are still standing among their own shattered pieces. You will share your road to making a mosaic, not because you have all the answers, but because you have walked the path. One of the most unexpected gifts of being a griever is that you become deeply empathic in ways you never were before. You begin to understand pain in a way that allows you to sit with others in their darkest moments without flinching. And in those moments, you will find yourself offering your own beautiful pieces to their mosaic as well. The transformation you have experienced becomes a gift you can share, and in giving it, you often find that your own mosaic grows more beautiful still.
Grief does not go away with time alone. Just like that glass that tumbled in the waves, you need to work on softening those sharp edges. But if you engage with the work, if you allow the tumbling to happen, if you trust the process even when it’s painful, you will start to see that there is a colorful future waiting for you.
You are not broken beyond repair. You are shattered, yes. But shattered is not the same as destroyed. And from these pieces, something beautiful can emerge.
Other Posts You May Also Like
Understanding Grief — Learn about the phases of grief, including the acute phase where everything feels shattered, and how grief evolves with time and active engagement.
Finding Your People: The Healing Power of Suicide Loss Support Groups — When you’re shattered, being with others who truly understand can help you begin to soften the sharp edges of grief.
The Road to Healing: Finding Your Path Forward — When you’re ready to begin picking up the pieces, this post explores how to take the first steps on a journey you never planned.
What Does Healing Look Like? — Understanding that healing doesn’t mean being “fixed” or returning to who you were, but learning to carry your grief in new ways.
Something You Get Through: Finding Hope After Suicide Loss — Grief isn’t something you get over, but something you get through, and there is hope even when everything feels broken.
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