Sharon has lost her best friend and her former fiance from suicide. In addition to that pain,she has also lost her father from a fall. This combination of heartaches and grief has put her in a dark place where she thought she was not gonna make it.
However, she got up, faced grief, and even helped other people who are dealing with grief by founding her company, GRIEF REIKI.
Episode Pointers:
- Back in 2009, I lost my best friend to suicide. And it just threw me into a place, you know, that I'd never been before.
- I felt so isolated and lost and didn't know where to go.
- And then a couple years later, my former fiance also died by suicide. So that double whammy, I felt even more isolated, because people were still, you know, they don't know what to say, you know, they they don't want to say .
- Most recently, my dad died, it's been four years he he died after a fall, but all of those things combined, it just put me in a dark place where literally, I thought I wasn't gonna make it, I really didn't, I couldn't understand what was going on or what to do to move forward.
- I was one of the last people to speak with her. And so the conversation ran through my head, what did I say what I mean, I literally made myself sick, thinking about going through every little detail of those days, and those hours and then everything before that, like our whole friendship,
- And then you know, you just replayed and replayed and replay it, I would wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about it and blaming myself in many ways, you know, realizing that, you know, there are things that, you know, maybe I shouldn't have said or that I should have said, maybe I should have gone and visited her more
- guilty blame, you know, self blame kind of thing, you know, really rips you apart.
- And then I think the bigger issue with suicide is, you know, trying to understand why, you know, why?
- So my brain automatically goes analytical. And I'm like, Alright, let me get some books. I'm gonna get every book I can find on suicide. Some of them were devastating to read, and I'm gonna read and when I'm done reading, I understand exactly why she did it.
- And so I mean, I spent probably the first year you know, reading and going to websites and you know, trying to analyze all of it in my head and nothing was coming together right and nothing was coming together.
- And so it you know, it really made it very difficult and then on top of that, you know, With the stigma associated with it, you know, no one would ask me, well, how are you What's going on? You know, there was really nobody to talk about. And obviously, people have loss and death in their life. But you know, you add, like you said very well, that layer of, you know, and that stigma associated with suicide. And people are kind of like, you know, I'm not talking to you. Because they can't wrap their head around it.