"Survivor Outlook" shares the voices of survivors of suicide loss whose experiences with grief and recovery have been reported in the news. To learn more about the survivors quoted, follow the links to the complete stories. Learn how you can suggest a story.

"Murderers can at least be questioned, but a suicide is a murder in which the killer is also the victim: in which the reason, the motive, dies with the act." Jeremy Gavron, son of Hannah Gavron, who died by suicide in 1965 at age 29 (The Guardian, U.K. -- also see A Woman on the Edge of Time)

"Connor, Will [Trautwein], Robin Williams -- they died of an illness, just as people die of cancer and heart disease ... It is common. It is treatable. It is curable. And it is ok. The stigma needs to go away. People need to talk about it." Erin Ball, mother of Connor, who died by suicide in 2011 when was 14 (WMUR, Manchester, N.H.)

"Suicide grief is so complicated. It's a very physical pain. It affects every cell in your body." Grace Young, mother of Jack Young Jr., who died by suicide in 2007 at age 27. (Hartford Courant, Conn.)

I'm not going to be a spoiler for Jennifer White's inspiring closing line in her post about founding the Hope After Project in memory of her mother, who died by suicide in 2011: Please go to her post yourself and read it from top to bottom. Her story is as heartwarming as they come:

I had connected to what was good in [my Mom] and it produced something good in me. I had looked at the chipped paint and dirty walls and dedicated myself to making that school a better place for kids to learn. In that moment I forgot my pain for a minute. I thought about my friend who was with me and realized I had seen a lightness in her, too. By volunteering together we had found hope after our loss. In that moment [the] Hope After Project was born.

When it comes to ideas about grief and healing, the Hope After Project is brilliant. If you've got two minutes, let this creative, innovative young woman tell you about it herself:

It is stories like "Members of a Very Small Club," by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, that help literally to bring us together as survivors of suicide loss. Jessica's mother died by suicide when she was a toddler, and she shares what it meant to her -- many years later -- to meet for the first time someone else who had been affected by suicide:

Suddenly, here was someone I didn't have to protect from the truth. She understood ... the feeling of being an outsider that comes from not having this very fundamental relationship [with one's mother], and the feeling that you have to lie about it most of the time ... the wish to shield people from the grisly idea of a mother violently abandoning her child, and the paradoxical wish to punish them with the thought.

Many of us have had the experience Jessica describes so wonderfully -- of being uniquely and powerfully understood -- and her story goes a long way toward accomplishing her aspiration of "teaching the world's silent orphans an important lesson about openness and connecting with others."

Indeed, knowing that we are not alone is one of the most healing forces that exists.

Thanks to Joanne Harpel for sharing this story on LinkedIn.

Two very different stories came out this week about parents who lost a child to suicide, and later, the parents themselves died by suicide.

In one -- a news report about a mother who never came back from her grief and killed herself nine months after her son died -- the mother's sister says,

"She talked about suicide every day since Mikey died. We took her to counseling and grief groups but she did not want to get better ... She wanted to be with Mikey."

In the other -- a first-person reflection about a father who broke down mentally and killed himself several years after his daughter died -- his other daughter writes,

Perhaps everyone has a breaking point. An incident or event that cannot be overcome, a moment in time that can never be erased. Most of us might get through life without encountering it, but my father was not so fortunate.

The following is from a transcript of the Open to Hope Radio program on Aug. 22, 2013, featuring an interview by OTH hosts Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr. Heidi Horsley with Franklin Cook, publisher of the Grief after Suicide blog (you can listen to the interview here):

Heidi Horsely: Franklin is our friend. He's also somebody that we work with, and our worlds just keep crossing, and we keep connecting. His father died by suicide in 1978. Franklin is a consultant, speaker, and trainer in peer grief support. After volunteering as a support group facilitator, he became an advisor to the Suicide Prevention Action Network and National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and he is now developing suicide survivor services based on life coaching principles. He is also one of our Open to Hope authors. Welcome to the show Franklin.

Franklin Cook: Thanks so much for having me. It's so good to be with you both.

Gloria Horsely: Franklin, tell us about your journey. Tell us about your dad dying and how old you were, and that kind of thing, to start.

FC: My dad died a long time ago now, in 1978. He was 49 years old, and I was 24 years old. Unfortunately, he suffered a very, very severe depressive episode, which included psychotic features and suicidality, and he wound up finally being hospitalized. In fact, my dad died in a psychiatric hospital. So that's how our journey began. My mom, and I have three brothers, and it truly changed our lives -- shattered our lives at first -- and we can take that anywhere you'd like to go with it.

Don't miss Elana Premack Sandler's recent post, "Showing Support to Suicide Survivors," on her Psychology Today blog, in which Sandler, who is a survivor of her father's suicide, recounts her mother's observations about how to be helpful to people who have lost a loved one to suicide.

The kinds of things my mom shared were simple, human: a neighbor took all three of us kids into their home while my mom dealt with the EMTs and police; the EMTs and police “didn’t make it worse"; people from our synagogue helped by bringing food and assisting with funeral arrangements; a friend helped my mom sell my dad’s car and arrange for a death certificate so that she could access life insurance and survivor’s benefits.

Sandler adds her own observation about how to be helpful:

Be there. Do the little things. Don’t say something to make yourself feel better, but say something to make the person who’s just lost someone feel better. Sometimes, you don’t have to say anything at all. Let the person who’s lost someone be angry. Let her feel abandoned, which, as my mom said so thoughtfully, is “a different form of anger.” Don’t be too quick to help look for a “silver lining.”

She closes by noting that "it’s much easier to say, 'Talk about suicide' than it is to actually talk about suicide" and reminding everyone that "there’s truly no time like right now to just talk."