The Leftover Pieces: Suicide Loss Conversations
Suicide loss changes everything. The Leftover Pieces® Podcast explores life after suicide through honest conversations with survivors, experts, and grieving parents learning to live forward after unimaginable loss. Parents, partners, siblings, and friends share what it means to keep living when the world has been forever changed.
Hosted by Melissa Bottorff-Arey, whose 21-year-old son Alex died by suicide in 2016, the show blends intimate conversations with survivors, healers, and mental health professionals with short solo reflections you can actually use. Together we explore child loss, trauma and nervous-system care, anniversaries and seasons, stigma, faith and meaning, legacy, and the everyday practices that help make life livable again.
At its heart, this podcast is about learning to live forward after loss. We never move on from the people we love, but we can learn to carry the grief differently. This road can feel incredibly lonely—but you are not alone here.
For supporters, educators, and professionals, these conversations also offer insight into the realities of suicide grief and what genuine, non-fixing support can look like.
If you’d like to share your story or expertise, you can request to be a guest through Melissa’s website.
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Content Note
This podcast speaks candidly about grief and suicide loss and may feel activating for some listeners. We avoid graphic descriptions and discussion of suicide methods. Please care for yourself as needed. Melissa is not a doctor or licensed therapist, and nothing shared here should be considered medical or mental-health advice.
The Leftover Pieces: Suicide Loss Conversations
Lisa Marie Presley: WHY Her Death Derailed Me
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I go "Down the Rabbit Hole" today for Lisa Marie. I did not know Lisa Marie Presley. We were both born in 1968 and the whole world cried when she lost her father. We "watched" her life - the good, the bad and the ugly from that gaudy front row media seat. But I did not ever know her or even meet her...so why did her death bring me to my knees 10 days ago??
I always thought she was amazing - soulful and gutsy and honest. She was a tormented but authentic rebel, and I adored her edgy, bluesy style & voice.. She was a fiercely loyal and protective mother. She adored her 4 children - as with many of us, they were her heart and her life - her "reason". When Lisa Marie joined this "club" of bereaved parents by suicide in July of 2020, my heart was with her.
HERE is the LINK to People's article, with the Essay by Lisa Marie Presley that I read at the end of the episode. This article speaks to me in SO. Many. Ways. She puts into words WHY I do what I do. She put into words what so many of us think and feel and LIVE every single day now.
I hear her, and see her, for every word she wrote. I was routing for her to find healing. I knew what she was trying to survive. The past two years she isolated and grieved ... but seemed she was getting there. Was she just too late? Were genetics also her enemy or was it just grief? We may never really know, but I know in my heart - deep in my mom gut - that Benjamin's death absolutely played a role.
And "just because" here is a remastered and (obviously) video compilation of her and her dad, The King, singing "In the Ghetto". She went on to do this "duet thing" with several of his songs later but I think this was the first and it has been in my iTunes playlist for YEARS because I have always loved this Elvis song and it elevated it for me to hear them together.
Also, if you are so inclined - here is the LINK to my son Alex singing the solo (opening) to his show choirs rendition of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" His part is only the first 13 seconds, and I have played it on loop at times when I need to hear him but I also watch the whole song because he shows back up and I get to hear him and SEE him, as there are so many things that as his mother I see that made him Alex.... mannerisms, little gestures, etc. I hope you too have videos and memories like this that help you celebrate your loved one's legacy
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