Surviving Suicide: a mother's story

by Heather Hapeta, Ann-Marie Stapp (Foreword)

A practical guide for people who have had someone die by suicide. The first half is about a son's (Greg) motorbike accicent at 15 years old, then his suicide at 20 years.


The second half offers the family many helpful tips for surviving this grief and also shows friends of the bereaved ways in which they can help each other during an extremely difficult time. Written by a mother and therapist.

61 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 29, 2012

About the author

Heather was first published in 1998 .. a story about her canoeing trip down the Zambezi River. Since then she has had hundreds of travel articles printed in magazines & newspapers around the world.

She loves to interact with readers and especially values reviews on Amazon and Goodreads - thank you n advance!

Reviews

[Pip Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many people, suicide has been a part of my life from an early age. I found Surviving Suicide: A Mother's Story a very helpful book. Although, thankfully, it has been almost a year since the last suicide in our family I still gained a lot of information and hope from this book.

The book begins with a detailed retelling of the author's experience of her son's suicide. Hapeta recounts this time in an intimate way, explaining exactly how she felt and what she did, in the time leading up to the suicide as she tried to help her son recover from the debilitating affects of a serious accident, when she found her son's body after his suicide and in the time following. I found this account very affecting and the detail was extremely helpful. I have found that we often talk in abstracts about suicide, with our relatives and friends, but to read a detailed account of one person's experience was very useful. I could relate to many of the experiences Hapeta recounts and I found it quite helpful to compare my own experience with hers, both the similarities and the differences. In this section Hapeta also talks about what worked and what didn't during this time in her son's life and death. I'm not sure what it would be like reading this account closer to a suicide but I found it very helpful.

The second section of the book (I am not sure the book is as clearly deliniated as I am presented it as, Hapeta's voice continues into the second section which is great because its easy tone and direct language is part of what makes this book so helpful) offers some invaluable advice concerning a large range of things. This makes the book an extremely useful handbook to have in the time of a suicide. This section begins with some lists about how to deal with the time directly after the suicide and comes from both Hapeta's personal experience and her word as a grief cousellor. There is one particular list which helps friends of people surviving suicide might help them. I remember Hapeta giving me this list a long time ago after a friend died and I found it useful then and I think it is still useful now. As well as guidance on how to navigate the emotional landscape of suicide, Hapeta offers pragmatic advice about the law and the media. I think this is an extemely important part of what makes this book so successful. I remember directly after the suicide of a close friend, whose will I was the executor of, being inundated with legal requirements which I didn't understand. I'm not sure I would have been robust enough to read these sections of this book but if I had a copy I am sure someone close to me could have read these and clarified what needed to be done. This legal information deals mainly with New Zealand law, but I feel that if you are an overseas reader it would act as a checklist of things to ask legal experts about. I also found Hapeta's sections about the media very helpful. There is a lot of publicity about whether the media should report suicide and Hapeta offers really intelligent and caring recommendations about how to deal with this that again come from her unique experience as suicide survivor and professional.

This book is unique, I believe. I have never read anything quite like it. The blend of personal and professional experience is invaluable. My hope is that no one will every need a book about suicide again, but I suspect they will and if they do, I think this is a very good option.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the author I'm biased.

Nevertheless, I wrote this helpful guide for all, parents, friends, soicial workers, counsellors - in fact anyone who has been touched by a suicide. It is available in all e-pub/ kindle versions.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful, insightful, at times very sad and well written book about one mum's ordeal through coping with the motorcycle accident, healing process and unfortunate suicide of her much loved son...

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very glad I found this short book of a mother's moving summation of living through her suicide grief process for her son. My son suicided a month ago, and although I received much support and compassion from family and friends, I found I had no one to talk to who has been through this most heartbreaking and devastating pain I am barely enduring. The suicide grief process, I learned, is nothing like the "5 Stages of Grief" most of us are familiar with. This book describes it very reasonably as a "can of worms." I learned that some of my thoughts and feelings were common, and studies show that many suicide survivors "are immediately eight times more at risk of suiciding than they were the day before the death." It is imperative that suicide survivors receive formal or professional help as soon as possible to protect themselves. I highly recommend this book for any who are faced with this most painful situation. Additionally, at the end of the book, there are several lists with helpful information for those who are left to pick up the legal, emotional, and physical pieces that are left behind.