Why This Blog Exists
Sunflowers After Suicide is a blog created for those navigating the profound grief of losing someone to suicide. This blog offers a gentle space where survivors can find understanding, validation, and hope during their darkest moments. Through personal stories, healing resources, and thoughtful reflections, the site acknowledges the unique pain of suicide loss while illuminating pathways toward eventual peace.
We recognize that grief is not linear, and there will be storms and sunshine, but we believe it gently that healing is possible, even when it feels impossibly far away. More than mere survival, this blog holds the belief that those who have experienced such loss can eventually find themselves not just enduring, but truly living and even thriving again.
Hope is woven throughout every page, not as a denial of pain, but as a gentle belief that life can hold beauty, meaning, and joy once more. We are not prescriptive or rushed, but instead offer patient companionship on your journey.
Whether you’re in the earliest, rawest days of your loss or years into your healing process, Sunflowers After Suicide provides a community of understanding and the quiet reassurance that you don’t have to walk this path alone.
Why Sunflowers After Suicide
Sunflowers are nature’s symbol of resilience and hope. They turn their faces toward the sun, following the light from dawn to dusk. Even on cloudy days, they remain oriented toward where the sun should be, trusting that the light will return.
For those of us who have survived a suicide loss, this image resonates deeply with our experience. In our darkest moments, when grief feels overwhelming and the future seems impossibly distant, we gently turn ourselves toward hope, even when we cannot feel it yet. We do this not because it’s easy, but because something within us knows that healing is possible.
The sunflower reminds us that seeking light, seeking peace, seeking moments of joy again, honors both our loved ones and ourselves. It is part of the sacred work of survival.
Sunflowers also grow tall and strong, their roots anchoring deep into the earth while their bright faces shine gently above. They don’t bloom in isolation but often grow in fields together, supporting one another through shared ground and storms. This is our community: survivors who understand that grief is not something to “get over” but something to grow through and around. We stand together rather than alone, sharing our stories, our struggles, and our small victories.
The name “Sunflowers After Suicide” represents our lived truth that beauty, growth, and meaning can coexist with loss. We are here, still turning toward the light at our own pace, still growing in our own time, and we invite you to grow alongside us.
Who Are We
We are survivors of suicide loss, individuals who have walked the difficult and transformative path of healing after losing someone we love to suicide. Each of us understands intimately the devastation, confusion, and pain that follows such a profound loss.
Yet through our journeys, we have discovered something that once seemed impossible: that hope can return, that growth can emerge from grief, and that meaning can be rebuilt from the pieces of our shattered worlds. Grief counselors often speak of “post-traumatic growth,” the profound personal development that can occur in the aftermath of tragedy.
While we would never have chosen this path, we have experienced this growth firsthand. Through this blog, we share our stories, insights, and hard-won wisdom, not as experts who have “moved on,” but as fellow travelers committed to healing, discovery, and the belief that life after loss can still hold beauty, purpose, and connection.
We write for those on the journey, to remind you that you are not alone, and that the journey toward light, hope and healing though long, is possible.
Our Bloggers
jack – Jack Klingert
A Father’s Loss
Jack Klingert is a suicide loss survivor and support group facilitator who understands the devastating pain of losing someone to suicide from the inside. On April 10, 2009, his beloved son John died by suicide, shattering Jack’s world and forever changing the trajectory of his life.
John had just turned 17 in the weeks before he died. He was an outstanding student, played on his high school football team, was in the school play, was active in the youth group at church. He was a second degree Black Belt in Taekwondo. On the outside, he was living the great life of a junior in high school. But a sudden turn and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder rocked his world. In less than 4 months from his initial diagnosis, he was dead by suicide.
Jack has led multinational teams for large corporations, traveling extensively and navigating the complexities of the business world. But none of that prepared him for the grief that followed his son’s suicide, a grief that challenged everything he thought he knew, including the faith that had always been his anchor.
From Grief To Service
Within two months of losing John,he found his way to a suicide loss support group, desperate for understanding and connection with others who knew this unique pain. What he found there was lifesaving. For fourteen years, Jack and his wife Teri have co-facilitated this group, SOS Madison, and together they have grown it into one of the largest suicide loss support groups in New Jersey. Most meetings draw 30+ suicide loss survivors.
Jack has completed AFSP’s Facilitating a Suicide Bereavement Support Group training and LivingWorks ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training), equipping him to provide both peer support and evidence-based intervention skills. Jack is also a volunteer with the AFSP Healing Conversations program. Through this work, he has walked alongside hundreds of grieving families, offering the compassion, understanding, and hope that he himself so desperately needed in those early, raw days of loss.
Supporting Facilitators Nationwide
Beyond his work with SOS Madison, Jack recognized that facilitators themselves needed support and connection. He founded the Facebook group Suicide Loss Support Group Facilitators, creating the only dedicated space where facilitators can share resources, exchange guidance, and encourage one another in this sacred work. More than 550 facilitators now lean on this community for practical handouts, fresh ideas, and the understanding that comes from others walking this same path.
Faith, Family & Healing
Coming from a large Irish Catholic family, Jack is an active Roman Catholic whose faith, while deeply challenged by John’s death, remains an important part of his journey. He has been married to the love of his life, Teri, for 40 years, and together they cherish their adult daughter, her husband, and two wonderful grandchildren who bring light into their lives.
Why Sunflowers?
Sunflowers hold a profoundly special connection for Jack and his family. Jack’s son, John, loved to garden and helped grow sunflowers in their family garden. He would often say that sunflowers were the happiest flower. They were always smiling.
At the beginning of John’s funeral service, an empty vase was placed on the altar. One by one, John’s sister and each of his cousins brought up a sunflower to place gently in the vase as a sign of love and connection, from the oldest cousin to the youngest, who needed a little help to reach. The sunflowers became a beacon of joy in an otherwise heartbreaking moment, a reminder that even in our deepest grief, we can still turn our faces toward the light.
The funeral service’s impact extended beyond his immediate circle. The editor of the Echoes Sentinel, a New Jersey Hills local newspaper, was present that day without our knowledge, He was moved to write this column about what he witnessed. He believed the community needed to understand both the profound loss suicide brings and the love and beauty that can still shine through grief. His decision to publish openly about suicide helped begin breaking down the stigma that so often silences families like ours.
This is why sunflowers are woven throughout this blog. They represent resilience, hope, and the belief that healing is possible, even after the unimaginable.
Through Sunflowers After Suicide and his published work on Alliance of Hope, Jack transforms his lived experience and 14 years of facilitation wisdom into compassionate, accessible guidance for suicide loss survivors navigating their own healing journeys.
Contact Jack
SOSMADISON Support Group:
For More information about Jack’s Support group
- Meetings: Two evening meetings each month
- Time: 7:30 – 9:00 PM
- Location: Grace Episcopal Church, Madison, NJ
- Contact: sosmadisonnj@gmail.com | (908) 625-0325
For Facilitators:
- Suicide Loss Support Group Facilitators – Facebook Group with resources and support for facilitators nationwide
- Resources for Facilitators – Collection of resources to assist suicide loss support group facilitators to run suicide survivor support groups.
Additional Resources:
- SOS Madison Website – Suicide Loss Support Group in Northern NJ
- Alliance of Hope: “Dealing with the Holidays After a Suicide Loss“
- Professional Profile (LinkedIn)
