When someone you love dies by suicide, grief can become tangled up with questions that may never have answers.

Why?

What did I miss?

Could I have stopped it?

Did they know how much I loved them?

Carla Fine knows those questions intimately. Her husband, Harry, died by suicide at 43. They had met in college, married at 21, and spent 21 years building a life together. Harry was a physician, a teacher at NYU Medical School, and a father and husband who continued working and seeing patients right up until his death.

Carla didn’t see it coming.

In the years that followed, she began talking with other people who had lost someone to suicide and discovered how many were living with the same guilt, anger, confusion and shame, often without anywhere to talk about it.

Those conversations eventually became her groundbreaking book, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One. She later co-wrote Touched by Suicide: Hope and Healing After Loss with psychiatrist Dr. Michael Myers and has spent decades speaking with suicide-loss survivors around the world.

In this episode of Crying Out Loud, Carla and I talk about what suicide leaves behind for the people who loved the person who died.

One of the things Carla says that stayed with me is that, for a long time, she was grieving the suicide. Eventually, she had to begin grieving Harry.

That distinction opens up so much.

We talk about the “million whys” that can consume you after suicide loss and whether getting an answer to why actually gives you the peace you imagine it will. We talk about guilt and responsibility, including the painful belief that if you had noticed one thing, said one thing, or done one thing differently, the person you loved might still be here.

Carla is also remarkably honest about time. The first year. The second. The fifth. The seventh. The moments when grief changes and the moments when it suddenly comes roaring back. And the realization that wanting to live again does not mean leaving the person you love behind.

We also talk about something I care deeply about: finding people who understand your particular kind of loss. There is enormous relief in being with someone who doesn’t need you to explain why you’re angry, why you’re still asking questions, or why something that happened years ago can suddenly feel like it happened yesterday.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The “million whys” that follow a suicide and what happens when there is no satisfying answer

• The difference between regret and responsibility

• Carla’s experience of not seeing the signs before Harry died

• Why she says she first had to grieve the suicide before she could grieve her husband

• Anger, guilt and shame after suicide loss, including feelings people are often afraid to admit

• What Carla tells someone in the first raw days after a suicide

• Why healing may need to come before helping other people

• What Carla has learned about grief in the second, fifth and seventh years

• How people who love the same person can grieve in completely different ways

• The point when Carla realized she wanted to live again

• How our relationship with someone we love can continue after they die

• Why finding other survivors can change the experience of grief

• What to say when someone you love is in despair

If you’ve lost someone to suicide, I hope this conversation gives you something Carla has spent decades trying to give survivors: the knowledge that whatever you’re feeling, someone else has felt it too.

And if you’re carrying guilt about what you didn’t know, didn’t see, or didn’t do, I especially hope you’ll listen to what Carla has to say about the difference between wishing things had been different and believing you were responsible for making them different.

There may never be an answer big enough for the question of why.

But there can still be love. There can still be connection. And, eventually, there can be a life that you want to live again.

Don’t forget to visit Carla Fine’s website and check out her books, No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One and Touched by Suicide: Hope and Healing After Loss. You can find more of her work and connect with her there.

And if you’re looking for support, connection, or a place to feel less alone, my book, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, and The Grief Healing Collective are here for you. If something in this episode spoke to your heart, share your story or send your questions to cryingoutloudpod@gmail.com.

This episode is also brought to you in part by Channeling Grief, a Substack by Elizabeth Kopple. After her 18-year-old son, Henry, died on his first day of college, Elizabeth turned to writing to explore grief and how we find connection, meaning, and a way forward after profound loss. Now a certified grief educator, she shares essays, interviews, and resources to help you feel seen and less alone. Subscribe for free at channelinggrief.substack.com. We’re so grateful to Elizabeth for supporting Crying Out Loud and our grieving community.

And if you want to explore more of how our brains, bodies, histories and emotional patterns shape the way we love and connect, come find me on my other podcast, The Language of Love. Every week, I talk with leading experts and share what I’ve learned in more than 30 years as a therapist about relationships, intimacy and healing. You can find The Language of Love wherever you’re listening to Crying Out Loud.