Chutes and Ladders

Recovering from suicide loss is like a real life game of Chutes and Ladders. You move forward, generally slowly, one step at a time through grief. Each square on the board representing a process. In your mind, you should only need to go to each square once; that is, you should only have to resolve something once. For example, recreating the decedent's biography, resolving “why”, questioning what could have been done if we could go back in time, working through the shame of what we should have done.

Yet, when we least expect it, we hit a chute, repeating the process, sometimes multiple times before we can ever truly move on and past it. We never know when this time will be the last until we reach the other side. The journey says with us, but we’ll never forget those long chutes. We just have to hope that we’ll reach the end of the ladder so we are ready to engage and play the game again.