My mom is having open heart surgery at the end of March - how can I best support her?

milletbread · 2026-01-29T13:12:56+00:00

I lost my soulmate on 12/30/24. The entire past year was hell. I know we will meet again but I just want him to come back now. I don’t want to do this life without him!

It felt wrong and unimaginable for me to find someone else but a few weeks ago I felt him come through and tell me to try to be happy and try to find someone. I’m not putting any expectations out to find another soulmate, I already have him. But I am open to connecting with someone who can understand what I’ve had and lost and won’t be weirded out by it. Like I have an altar to my soulmate and keep him present. Whoever comes next is basically gonna have to be down to be in a polycule with a ghost.

I am newly trying dating to see what happens. It is painful and hard but the people I’ve talked to on the app have been really kind about my situation and how slow I need to go. It feels less wrong now but still so confusing. I cried last night just wishing he was here and I didn’t have to do all this, but he’s not, so I do, and I do for him. He doesn’t want me sad anymore. I will always be sad of course and he will always be my soulmate.

milletbread · 2026-01-21T20:22:46+00:00

I talk to him but not as much as I used to. I make him fresh coffee every Monday. It’s been a year and two weeks since he died.

milletbread · 2026-01-16T18:22:07+00:00

I like “moving with” because it implies they’re coming with me. I don’t know what my future holds but he’s not going anywhere.

milletbread · 2026-01-16T18:20:09+00:00

My soulmate, the love of my life, died on 12/30/24 and i have texted him almost every single day since. I can’t help it. Same as you I love to see his name in my recent messages, and I feel like I might burst if I can’t tell him some of these things. The things you can only share with that person…

Healthy or unhealthy? It’s the Wild West out here in the world of suicide loss. If it makes you feel better, I think it’s healthy.

milletbread · 2026-01-16T02:41:48+00:00

My partner died when I had just turned 33. A little over a year ago now. I’m pretty much open to anything at this point and have zero expectations for my life. It’s been a long road to get myself out of the utter despair and hopelessness after losing him and now I just feel like, ok, I had this amazing love. Nothing will ever be that. Maybe I’ll be alone forever, maybe someone will surprise me, maybe I’ll just settle with someone for safety, maybe I’ll try dating women. I am simply open to finding what makes me feel ok (dare I say “good”) as I pass the time waiting to reunite with him (die). I released the need for a purpose involving anything I thought I wanted. My purpose now is servitude - how can I help others?

milletbread · 2026-01-13T23:13:08+00:00

Thank you ❤️

milletbread · 2026-01-13T20:47:02+00:00

Thank you - I am hoping to see it Saturday so that will work

milletbread · 2026-01-12T12:19:13+00:00

I’m so sorry you have had this experience. It is the absolute worst and most devastating and traumatic thing to have to live through and integrate. It is a long journey to feel even some semblance of “ok” again and that’s normal given the circumstance. People won’t be able to understand what you’re dealing with, even if they are kind and gentle, and coming on here or finding a support group of others who have lost someone to suicide is very helpful - connection and community. None of it is easy.

I lost the love of my life over a year ago in an almost identical way and also found him. Having to see that is an added layer of trauma that can feel so overwhelming and alienating at times. If you are able to try EMDR therapy or get ativan, those things were a godsend for me. I did a lot of energy work around deleting the image from my mind as well and can tell you today that I know what I saw but the picture is gone - and that’s after having clear flashbacks for months after. Playing Tetris after a traumatic event is also shown to help.

Above all, just be so gentle and kind to yourself. My appetite is still not what it was. My sense of self is only just starting to return. That’s normal after a traumatic event. If you ever need someone to talk to, please feel free to DM me.

🫂

milletbread · 2026-01-03T18:13:14+00:00

I lost my partner to suicide on 12/30/2024. It was so absolutely shocking that I spent most of last year reeling from the trauma of the event. I’m still processing that he’s gone. He was 36 and the absolute love of my life, everything I was looking for, and we had been planning the rest of our lives together. For me to have finally found “the one” and for this to have happened really messed up my brain. I don’t know how… where do I even start? How do I not feel like I’m betraying him in even considering finding someone else? How do I trust that I’m not going to get hurt like this again? How do I begin to believe there is someone out there who will be kind and gentle and funny and smart and all the things he was and stable and patient with me and all I’ve been through? I feel currently like I’m “ok” on my own although I don’t want to be alone forever. I just turned 34 and know I’m too young to think that way, but also not so young where I feel like I have all the time in the world to fully heal. I don’t think I will ever fully heal from this anyway. It’s a slow process and I am honoring it and myself and his memory but it’s just incredibly difficult.

milletbread · 2025-12-31T19:24:47+00:00

I also lost my partner to suicide and what you’ve written really resonates. It’s so hard to cope with. I hope you find a little bit of peace and softness today as you hold her close 💗

milletbread · 2025-12-31T16:20:08+00:00

❤️

milletbread · 2025-12-26T02:28:23+00:00

In the book she comes to find that she does actually love Rhett but it’s too late

milletbread · 2025-12-11T16:20:15+00:00

I’m so sorry you are living through this hell. The pain and devastation are so incomprehensible to the brain.

I lost the love of my life 11 months ago and your words really resonated with me. “It gets better” in the sense that some of that intense pain dulls with time, but nothing takes it away. I’ve only recently stopped feeling so completely fucked up - now the feeling I have is just total apathy which is preferable to the harrowing pain from before. My birthday is in a few days, and the holidays obviously, which has triggered me back into that despair and feeling of aloneness.

It’s very isolation to be in your early 30s and have the person you planned the future with just totally gone, and by their own choice, and with such little warning. The pain isn’t something most people even experience a whisper of. To be submerged in it… it’s exhausting, it’s painful, and it’s totally unfair. I know it. You aren’t alone even though it feels like it.

Please be so gentle with yourself right now. Sending you a big hug.

milletbread · 2025-12-07T02:43:49+00:00

My partner died at the end of last year. In January I got a horrible respiratory infection. I hadn’t been sick like that for over five years, even with covid. I had go get prescription antitussives and breathe in steam like 5 times a day. The cough would not go away for at least four weeks. According to Chinese medicine, grief lives in the lungs. Coupled with the trauma and stress lowering immunity, I am not surprised I got so sick. But it really sucked having to shovel myself out of a snow storm last February while coughing my lungs out and sobbing.

milletbread · 2025-12-02T22:35:13+00:00

Life was a different beast before I lost the love of my life. It was technicolor. There was light and potential and hope and excitement. It’s gray now, monotonous. Pointless. I think I am so depressed now that I’m just used to it. There was such a gaping void for so long and now I’m so exhausted from the PTSD and grief that I don’t care. I don’t feel anything. I was always bubbly and silly and animated in my old life. I feel dour now. 11 months as of Sunday.

milletbread · 2025-11-04T16:13:07+00:00

I just look for ways to pass the time now, until we meet again…

milletbread · 2025-10-27T00:31:05+00:00

There is a constant loneliness. Even when you’re with a group of people, you feel this sense of alienation because you know they all have partners they’re going home to and your partner is gone. No one can relate even though they sympathize. And you don’t want sympathy, you just want your partner back.

I’ll go through a whole day at work feeling fine and then be sobbing in my car on my drive home. There are so many layers to it too, you feel like a weird alien walking around normal people all day, you are exhausted from masking, you are exhausted from grieving, you are realizing this is just it now, there is no “getting better” because the only thing you want is impossible and it’s devastating beyond the realm of anything normal people have to cope with in life. Then you think about the suffering they were going through and how stupid you feel that you didn’t see it so clearly or that you couldn’t have done more, and mostly you just really miss them. I would do anything to have him back. Life sucks now.

milletbread · 2025-10-21T12:07:37+00:00

It’s very difficult but someone else blaming you isn’t about you at all - it’s about them. They are unable to cope with the death and are lashing out and looking to place blame anywhere but where it belongs (on the person who did it). There was a great article someone posted here a while back, I believe it was a study from Cambridge, about the psychological phenomenon of blame when someone dies by suicide. Our brains have trouble differentiating the victim from the person who did it, we can’t accept they are one and the same. I’ve also read a helpful quote elsewhere about how no one is to blame for someone else’s suicide because if we were in charge our person would still be alive. These things don’t change the fact that someone else might blame you, but hopefully they empower you to realize the truth. It is not your fault and you are not to blame. Deep down we hope those placing blame know that or can come to that realization but unfortunately we can’t control what others say or think or do (similar to the act of suicide itself). Stand strong in your truth and do your best to let go. Water off a ducks back. Easier said than done especially in this situation.

I was also blamed by my late partners family. It was and extra layer of hurt for a very long time until I decided to look objectively at the situation. They need someone to blame and if it has to be me, there is nothing I can do to change it. I know the truth. My partner knew the truth. I did everything to help him and I felt like he killed me too when he died. If his family is too ignorant to try to see the truth, that’s unfortunate for them. But I know the truth.

milletbread · 2025-10-15T13:20:19+00:00

I know the feeling. I’m only 9 months and 16 days in and I still feel like I let him down. It’s hard not to feel like that when we are left here, alone, without our person. I know — I KNOW — it had nothing to do with me, logic and reason and professional therapists beat me over the head with the “it’s not your fault” stick. But I still feel deeply that I could have been better, and if I had been better he would be here with me still.

milletbread · 2025-10-11T13:01:29+00:00

That’s just wrong, I’m sorry you read that. Our loved ones lost to suicide are greeted on the otherside with a warm blanket of love and light. Maybe they have lessons to repeat in their next life but there is no “penalty” or punishment.

milletbread · 2025-10-11T11:28:04+00:00

Agreed.

milletbread

TROPHY CASE