How To Live Fully After Something Bad Happens: Alice Foeller (Transcript)

He was gone. I found a yellow Post-it that said “note in phone,” and I opened his iPhone to read his suicide note.

Grief and Suicide

Daniel was a wonderful and sensitive guy, but he was beset by anxiety and depression. He had been laid off from his job, and he just couldn’t see the possibilities that his friends and I could see. So he drank a poison so he could fall asleep and never wake up again. Suicide brings its own kind of grief journey. It’s very shocking. People have big reactions to it. Many of you might have had a reaction from me telling the story.

My friend Gina is also a widow as a result of her husband’s suicide. We tend to find each other. It’s like a very exclusive club that no one wants to be in. Gina said to me, “When I tell people someone died of cancer, they lean in and kind of open themselves. When I say someone died by suicide, they lean back and kind of protect themselves.”

I noticed that too. In the times when I was delivering the bad news, which I was doing a lot in the first couple of weeks, it felt like it ricocheted off the other person and hit me again with the added force of their emotional reaction.

Lessons in Grief Support

Daniel’s death was certainly not something I wanted, but I learned some incredibly valuable lessons about how to be with people in different times on their journey through grief. The first of three lessons I’ll share with you is how to hold space for someone in those early days when they might need to process or they just don’t want to be alone.

Lesson One: Holding Space

So before this, if I heard that something happened to a friend of mine, I would say, “I should call them,” but I didn’t really want to call them. I knew it was not going to be a fun conversation, and I was very concerned about what I was going to say. I would rehearse the whole thing in my head before I pressed the call button if I worked up the courage to actually call them. Now I guess I’ve just been in so many of these conversations. I’m not scared of it anymore.

So when I heard that my friend Julie from high school had witnessed something awful, a violent crime, a murder, actually, and that she wasn’t doing very well, I said, “I’ll call Julie tomorrow.”

And I did a few things. I texted ahead to see if it was okay to call, and I set up a time. I called exactly when I said I was going to. And when Julie answered, I said, “Hey. You know, you can tell me about the thing that happened to you, or you can not talk about it at all. It’s completely up to you. I just want you to know that whatever you share with me, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to talk just in this calm tone of voice. I’m not going to raise my voice or do anything dramatic.”

And she did end up sharing with me what she experienced. And then we went on to talk about our kids, and then we talked about how awful high school was sometimes. And it was a fun conversation. I’m happy to report that Julie’s doing much better these days, certainly not due to anything I said, and I believe she’s here in the audience with us, which makes me super happy.

So I didn’t read about those things in a book. I didn’t Google how to talk to Julie about a traumatic experience. You know? It was just with my newfound wisdom that I was not going to die from being on the phone with someone. I was able to focus on her. And when I did that, the first thing I realized was here’s a woman who’s been through a terrible shock. The last thing she’s going to want is any more surprises. So I’m going to be the least surprising person I can be.

And that’s how I knew how to hold space for Julie. Lesson number one.

Lesson Two: Be Neutral

For lesson number two, I’m going to take you back to my childhood again. I was not only the youngest in my immediate family. I was the youngest in my whole generation of cousins. And there were aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles. And as you can imagine, at the top of that stack, you know, people were starting to pass away. Now we were just a funeral home-going family anyway. It’s what we did.

By the time I was eight, I knew to sign in at the guest book and take a prayer card. We were Catholics, so I’d walk over to the casket, kneel down, and say a prayer. I also knew that there were free cookies in one of those side rooms if I could sneak away and find them. It was just a place where I was kind of comfortable. I can’t count how many corpses I saw by the time I was 16. You know? But the interesting thing was, if we saw that family the next day at the grocery store, we did not talk about what happened. Life marched on.

So it was a huge surprise to me what life would be like as a suicide widow. I felt kind of like a cartoon villain, like a woman with a set jaw and fiery eyes and a big black cloak spreading out in all directions with clouds of doom coming up off the cloak. And when I walked into a room, it felt like the lights dimmed a little and the cheerful music came to a screeching halt.

And the people in the room, there were people who were understandably kind of freaked out to talk to me, and they would sort of glide away. And then there were other people who would catch sight of me, and they’d say, “Oh, Alice.” And their face would get all scrunched, and they’d come walking over, and they’d say, “I’m so sorry,” and give me a huge hug all dramatically. Now when I had read that book about Madeline, I was thinking this part would be great, all the sympathy and attention. But when it was happening to me in real life, I kind of wish I could turn invisible.

See, by this time, I was out of the shock part. And I was planning Daniel’s memorial and going through his personal effects at the house, which is no fun, and dealing with paperwork and police and probate. When I went out into the world to go to an event, I was kind of looking to escape from some of that. So it was really great when people could just be neutral. That’s lesson two, be neutral.

My favorite thing was when a friend would walk up and say, “Hey. I heard about what happened. I’m really sorry. Are you okay? How you doing?” in a normal voice. It let me know that they knew what was going on, so I didn’t have to brace myself for that blowback if I told them. But it also made space for me to talk about an upcoming camping trip or an interesting new client at work. I was really lucky that I had loved ones and family who could just be up for any place where I was on the emotional roller coaster that day.

And I was also fortunate that I have a ton of responsibility in life. I have two sons. At the time, this happened a year ago. They were a junior and senior in high school. I have a business with employees who expect to be paid on time. I have a nonprofit I cofounded that needed my guidance. So I was super clear that I was going to be doing whatever it took to get past the guilt and the consuming anger and the irrational thoughts because I had stuff to do, which brings me to lesson three, being a resource for people who are at that point where they’re ready to move forward and try some things and start to heal.

Lesson Three: Being a Resource

For me, that required resources, intention, and movement, even when the steps I could take were tiny. I am a distance runner and a triathlete. I am not fast, but I can go for a very long time. When I travel to other cities, I go running in them. It’s tourism for me.

So about three years ago, I was in Long Island on business, and I went for a run. And I was looking at all the beautiful houses, and I was looking at the spring flowers, and I tripped on a crack in the pavement. It wasn’t one of these trips where I was like, “Whoa. I’m falling.” You know? It was just one second, I was running. The next second, bam. My knee was smashed into the pavement. I was on the ground.

I remember calling Daniel crying, and he talked to me while I limped back to the place where I was staying, put ice on my knee. And then I limped to the airport the next day. And when I got back home, I went to physical therapy. And at physical therapy, there’s a doctor standing over me saying, “Hey. You need to, like, stretch your knee like this, and you need to do lunges like this, and you need to put a hundred pounds on a single leg press machine.”

And I was like, “Whoa. Are you sure?” And he was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “So I put a hundred pounds on the single leg press.” And what do you know? My knee got stronger. Now it’s not the same. It’s not ever going to be the same at this point. It’s been three years. It’s kind of sticks out a little bit funny compared to this one. It’s a purple splotch, and the skin is kind of thick and scarred. But later that same year, I ran a full Ironman Triathlon on that knee.

So I know—thank you. Thank you. I know that my weird crooked purple knee is strong as hell. With physical injury, it’s common knowledge that if we sit around and don’t move, it’s pretty hard for it to get better. With emotional injury, it’s easy to forget that or just overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. There is a treatment plan, but it’s not commonly known. But I was determined to get better. There were days when I did not want to get better, and there were days when I honestly didn’t feel like I deserved to get better.

But when I was clear-headed, I signed up for everything. I had people around me who were amazing, who could recommend the best large group awareness training, who knew the location of the local indigenous sweat lodge. I had a friend who was a trauma-informed counselor. I had someone who could refer me to an affordable hypnotherapist. It was great.

So that’s lesson three. If you can be that kind of resource and help people find things that will help them depending on what it is they need, which is different. You know, it was great when someone would say, “Hey. I’ve heard support groups help.” But what was amazing was my friend who said, “I know of a support group for exactly the thing you’re going through, and I personally recommend it. Let me make an introduction.” And then they backed off because, you know, it might not be the right time. But that stuff was super helpful.

The Power of Choice

Now I didn’t have to do any of these things. There was no requirement. The world was happy to have zero expectations of me at this time. People were happy to drop off dinner on the porch and then run away before I opened the doors, and they didn’t have to talk to me. But I chose. That brings me to my favorite word that I would like to share with you today. Volition.

I will use it in a sentence. Everyone who is gathered here today came of their own volition. It means that I choose for me, not because of some outside pressure. I have my life back a year later because I chose to have a triumph over this thing and because I was open to the kinds of opportunities that show up when everything falls apart. As Leonard Cohen sang, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Daniel’s suicide and the challenges that came after opened up more than a single crack for me, but I tried really hard to embrace all the light that could get in. Now I kind of secretly had wished that I could be Ray Charles or Johnny Cash where some seminal tragic event flips a switch of creative genius, and I became a rock star. But my singing voice is sort of hot and cold, and my guitar playing is like a C plus. So that is probably not the kind of rock star that I’m going to be.

What I do get to be is a rock star at being with people when they’re going through something difficult. In a moment, I’m going to ask you to stand if you’ve experienced any of the things on the list I’m about to name. I’m going to name the things off kind of quickly so it won’t be a privacy issue for you. If you hear something that applies to you, you can stand kind of slowly, and no one will know which thing you’re standing for. If you are unable to stand today, well, you’re already on the list, so you can put your hand up if you like.

So please stand if you have experienced the death of someone close to you, if you have experienced the loss of a job, if you’ve lost a beloved pet, if you’ve been in a bad car accident, if you are estranged from a family member or other loved one, if you’ve had a failure at work or school that you just couldn’t really fix, if you have a physical ailment that won’t get better, if you’ve witnessed war or violence, if you have a family member who’s very ill. Thank you for standing with me. Now, sit down if you want that to be the end of your story. Yeah. Me neither.

I choose to live of my own volition. If you’re standing right now, you know that you have the strength to be in a difficult conversation with someone who needs your support. Be that gift. Listen so hard, you forget yourself. If you’re standing right now, you know that human beings were designed to heal stronger at the location of the wound.

Even on your worst day when you can’t lift your head, know that you will mend. Make no mistake. You won’t be the same. You won’t go back to being the person you were before. But there will come a day when you won’t want to be the person you were before the hurts because you will know yourself to be someone who emerged stronger of your own volition.

Thank you.

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