Dying to Be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After a Suicide

After losing my son to suicide in 2019, I have spent years trying to understand. This book is incredible and helped tremendously. I could finally understand where his mind could have been when making the choices he did. This book was very comforting to me and is recommended to any one who is not even sure if they know what looking for.

A dear friend lost her daughter to suicide and I felt ill equipped to know what to say. So I bought this book for her. It’s helping her immensely. She is finding her way through her grief. Thank you so much for helping my dear friend.

Not a whole lot to say, thought I reviewed this right after reading it in 2012 but I guess I didn't. Anyhow, Ms. Cobain does a really good job of relating her traumatic experience with Keith Cobain's suicide, the book is well researched with plenty of references. I read so many books about this during that first year after it happened. Now, two years later, things are better but you also start to relate to many of the things in this book and other similar ones about the survivorship process involved in this manner of death and Ms. Cobain details her struggle with it in a very impactful way. Should be at the top of a grieving survivor's reading list.

I got this book after I lost my brother. It helped with some of the question of the way somebody thinks and their actions leading up to the tragic day. I understood my brother had bad depression, but you really don't know how bad somebody suffers inside. I also gave it to my mother to read and it helped her also. I have just sent it to my niece and nephew too. You will never get over such a loss. I will never stop missing my brother/my best friend, but it helps to try and understand a person's actions. The book explains the feelings and grieving you may feel but it does not address how to deal with them. That is best addressed in therapy. This book is good for the early weeks of the suicide. Some of the examples given of the persons actions helped me to understand my brothers behavior the last two weeks. A person planning suicide finally feels in control because they have made a plan and sometimes will seem much happier. That can be confusing to those of left behind wondering why... "he seemed so happy the last few days." I am now reading The Forgotten Mourners: Sibling Survivors of Suicide.

My very smart, gentle, son killed himself last month. He seemed happy as could be and out of the blue we found a note saying he had been unhappy for a long time and couldn't go on any longer. He apologized for the pain he knew it was going to cause, but said nothing meant anything to him anymore. He was graduating from college in a few weeks.The PAIN I have felt is way beyond anything anyone can imagine. It plain HURTS to wake up in the morning. At the advice of a support group, I got this book and it is very good. It really helped me understand how he got sucked into such an awful place. It helped me understand that it wasn't my lack of love or lack of anything....it was all going on in him. Suicidal individuals are very good at hiding their intentions. My son was. We had no clue, we thought he was on top of the world. Because of that we are having a terrible time reconciling what we thought was going on with our son and how his life ended.This book will not bring your loved one back, but it will help to ease the searing pain in your heart.

This an excellent book, simple and to a well-put point. Suicide is not a word that often escapes our lips. There is so much stigma still attached to it. I do not think the stigmas will ever go away, and so much more education is still needed. I know for I have been there. Be forewarned, suicide is on the rise at all age levels. I know the pain that drives one to a desperation point. Being involved in mental health advocacy, both as a victim and a survivor of suicide, I welcome more of this kind of writing. We all need to speak out on this topic. I have purchased six of these books, distributing them where they are needed, and will purchase more. Kudos to the authors for a job well done ... thank you from me! You have helped me enormously in my suicide prevention work.

After the death of our daughter we were left wondering WHY? This book put some of our questions into perspective while assuring us that we will never know the answers to many of them. That was actually a comfort during this tragic time. It forgave us and let us stop asking the WHY's so often. It brought perspective to the terrible pain she must of been in and that she saw no other way out. It is very sad but our daughter suffered from a disease. The disease of depression and mental illness and she did not survive her disease. We should not villify these people, but we should talk about the subject of suicide. Leaving it in the darkness and harnessing it with guilt and criminal intent does nothing to help those who are still on this side of the veil. It just serves to lock them in. And it locks the survivors of suicide into their grief. Let it be opened and discussed so that all who are surviving and still living may heal.

After the suicide death of a loved one this summer, I was an emotional mess. I felt like my life had ended along with his, and I couldn't figure out how to heal, accept, and begin anew. I also felt very alone, scared, angry, hurt, sad, confused . . . the list of emotions I experienced all at once is endless. I wanted help finding peace, contentment, and acceptance, but most of all, I wanted to understand why he did this. No one can answer that question for me - except him - but when I bought this book, my motivation was to get a better understanding of what could drive someone to take his life. This book helped in so many ways. Yes, it provides some insight into what a person may be experiencing that could lead them to think taking his life is the only option. But the most important thing it did was to help me put into perspective everything that I was feeling. Being a "survivor of suicide" is the hardest thing I have had to go through. I am so grateful to the authors of this book for writing about this subject and sharing their own experiences and the experiences of others.