Jacob’s Story: Why I Killed Myself
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
1M ago
Hey, this is Jacob. My mom has written about how my suicide impacted HER … but now, it’s my turn to explain why I killed myself.     I Had a Happy Childhood Really, I did. You’d never suspect that I would grow up to kill myself. My mom tends to focus on all the abuse–and I’m not going to deny that–but I was a happy little kid. My mom never stopped telling me how she “just knew” that one more little soul belonged with our family, and that she yearned for me ever since my two older brothers were born. As for my dad, well, I was pretty much his favorite. He called me his “little buddy ..read more
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Moving Away from the Grave
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
7M ago
If I move away from the grave where we buried the ashes of my son Jacob–who died by suicide after a long battle with depression–does that mean I no longer care about him?   Abandoning My Son’s Grave My partner had the chance at a job transfer, and we jumped. Four hundred miles away from where we had buried the ashes of my son Jacob just a few years prior, we gave notice to our landlord and packed up the moving van. Our new home would be geographically closer to our surviving children and extended family members … But as we drove away, I had a visceral sense of abandoning Jacob.   Ca ..read more
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Suicide: The Life He’ll Never Have
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
10M ago
I’m just back from an incredible cruise tour all around the United Kingdom. Traveling with several close family members, my partner and I relished the time to hold days-long conversations with them while sharing new vistas; and then, we stayed an extra week with our surviving son, Zachary. It all seemed like a dream … until I woke up and realized that Jacob had missed it all. How can the center of our family be forever gone?   The Life He Might Have Had When my son Jacob died by drowning himself in the Pacific Ocean at age 21, he had only one semester left in college. His depression had ..read more
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Making Miracles Happen
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
1y ago
  If your dreams don’t scare the hell out of you, then they’re not big enough. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, first female president on the African continent (Liberia)   How do you believe when you cannot believe? When a loved one dies by suicide, we tend to measure time in the before and after … Despite many hardships I’d endured and injustices I’d witnessed, before Jacob died, I believed that anything could happen if you just had enough clarity, vision, and belief–to “manifest” it, as spiritualists would say, or accept a gift from God, as the spiritual would say. I share this with you ..read more
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“I Broke My Brain”: from Drugs to Suicide
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
1y ago
  Note: My son Jacob killed himself at age 21. The autopsy revealed he was 100% clean and sober at the time of death. Ironically, I’d hoped he WAS stoned so that he would have felt less pain. What follows here, unfortunately, is merely speculation based on fragments of conversations with him and my reflections after his death.   The Purpose of Drugs Partying Jacob started with cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana in his mid-teens. That was much later than most of the kids around him. I told myself that every year he’d delayed using was a gain for his chances of emerging intact. Jacob ..read more
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“Diving into Death” Ranked Top 10 Blogs on Suicide Loss
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
1y ago
Suicide-Loss Blog Ranked Top 10 This blog, “Diving into Death,” has just been named “Top 10” for the topic of suicide loss by Feedspot. It’s an honor for me, a woman striving from my isolated home office to connect with other survivors–not just of suicide, but really any type of grief or trauma that completely knocks you off your feet … Perhaps that includes all of us. The blog name, “Diving into Death,” refers to both the literal way in which my son Jacob killed himself by drowning, and the psychological way in which we can descend into the abyss, to the point where suicide tempts us, or we ..read more
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Does a Person Still Exist If They’ve Disappeared?
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
2y ago
When my son Jacob went missing and our family searched desperately for him for more than a month, I asked myself many times, “Does he still exist?” It was such a strange feeling to have someone very close to you in your life there one day, and then suddenly not, and to have no idea where they went.   Witnessing Death Up Close It surprises me how many people I know who have never seen someone dying or dead. Many medical professionals face death, but the rest of us remain shielded from its reality. I’ve seen death a few times. Working as a caregiver in my early twenties to a woman who was ..read more
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Childless Mother
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
2y ago
My name is Jessica, and my story is all I have, and it is as old as humankind, the story of child loss. My son Jacob succumbed to depression, drugs, and suicide, at age twenty-one. And I find that I cannot move on—from the loss of him, yes, but perhaps even more, the guilt.    My Story I have feared that writing down the words of my story will serve no one, and that fear has kept me silent for five long years since my son perished. And all that time, while I have muted my grief, mothers all over the world have continued to lose their children—to war, gun and gang violence, misc ..read more
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10 Horrific Realities After Suicide Loss
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
2y ago
Nothing prepares you for the searing, soul-shattering loss of suicide, but here are just ten of the horrific realities you will face in its aftermath, that I wish someone had warned me about. No one can protect you from them. All you can do is to try to muddle through.    1. Your brain will play tricks on you that they are not really dead. Even if you were the one who found their body, or if you saw their lifeless corpse, you will at times suspect that it’s all been a mistake. That person looked exactly like your loved one, or somehow they did not die but ran away and will be back ..read more
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13 Ways People Actually Heal from Suicide Loss
Diving Into Death
by Jessica Joyce
2y ago
Hard To Believe, but Possible If you’ve experienced the loss of a loved one to suicide, you may not believe you ever will heal. — I’m here to tell you that it will take all the will you can muster, along with fake-it-till-you-make-it faith. But the other members of what my support group calls “The Club No One Wants to Belong to” have muddled through, and you can, too. Please–give it a chance–and read on for what you can try that has authentically worked for real survivors.   5 Ways to Begin 1: Rest. The best advice anyone gave me after my son Jacob died was when my pastor told me to take ..read more
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