In 2016, I had been working for over thirty years as a counselor and teacher. I thought I was skilled in helping people deal with trauma and loss. I was wrong.

On a warm, clear October afternoon, I got the call that changed my life forever. My amazing 20-year-old nephew, Karl, had killed himself.

I don’t have children of my own, but my niece and nephew were the center of my family, the young people I looked forward to sharing my life with, the children I loved with all my heart.

In less than a minute, the future where I got to watch his life unfold was gone.

There had been none of the classic warning signs that we are trained to look for. He was happy at school. He had friends who loved him, a wonderful girlfriend, and big plans for his future. By all accounts, Karl was in a great mood the night he died. Everyone who saw him reported that he was having a good time, but something happened late in the evening that deeply upset him. When he got back to his apartment, he was alone with his increasingly dark thoughts. The few short, agitated texts he sent to friends showed him spiraling into a hopeless, overwhelmed place that he was unable to pull out of by himself. Shortly after he sent those texts, he took his own life.

The weeks after Karl's suicide were horrific. In addition to dealing with the loss of such a generous, funny, talented young man, there was also the struggle to attempt to make sense of what happened. While he had not been depressed, Karl had been having severe panic attacks that summer. He had started taking medications that controlled them and, as he put it, “gave him his life back.” Unfortunately, these medications also came with a black box warning that some people (especially those under 25) may experience "increased suicidal ideation." We all knew about the warning, but we had been told that any suicidal thoughts would be noticeable over days or weeks. What we learned later is that some people experience sudden increased agitation and strong self-destructive impulses within hours if they are upset about something and alcohol is involved. It appeared that this is what happened to Karl that night, and in the midst of this he made a terrible, impulsive, and permanent decision.

One of the hardest things in the aftermath of his death was the realization that, despite working for decades as a counselor, none of the classes, trainings, workshops, or life experiences I had gone through provided me with a single thing to comfort myself or the people I loved.

I had dealt with many other losses and deaths in my life, but nothing like this. Over the next few months, I turned to friends, many of whom were also in the helping professions, only to find that, with the exception of a select few, they were not equipped to offer anything in the way of help either. I believe that most people sincerely wanted to fix my pain, but my grief was not something that was fixable. 

What was most surprising and disturbing was the fact that some of my friends who are therapists were often the least helpful when it came to my grief.

Some stared blankly, offering a weird awkward silence where at least a, “So sorry for your loss” would have been appropriate. Others gave me arbitrary timelines ("It's been six months; why are you still so sad?"), diagnoses and pathologies for my reactions ("You’re still angry and cry a lot. You're clearly bipolar."), and the not-so-subtle suggestion that I wasn't doing grief correctly because I was not accurately following the "Five Stages of Grief."

I desperately wanted to see a therapist, but when I looked for help, it was too overwhelming. I combed through hundreds of websites, but they all listed some vague offer to "help with grief and loss." There was no indication that they had training or were in any way equipped to deal with traumatic, out-of-order loss. I couldn't fathom having to tell my story over and over again to people who might not be capable of helping me navigate the depth and the agony of my grief. How could I know for sure that these counselors weren't going to offer me the same kind of misguided, unhelpful comments my colleagues had?

I turned to books and the Internet and read everything I could about dealing with loss. Not everything was great, but I found some books, podcasts, and online support sites that became a lifeline in the darkest, loneliest point of my life. These authors, podcasters, and support groups were people who understood what I was going through, spoke my language, and tolerated my sadness without judging it or insisting I feel better.

I ended up finding more support in the words and actions of strangers than I did in the words and actions of people who worked beside me every day.

For a while, I was really, really angry that some of my colleagues and friends were so clueless about helping with this kind of loss. But after a while, I was forced to look at the fact that, until this had happened to me, I had been clueless too. As strange as this sounds, counselors are not required to get any real training in effective grief counseling even though we are practically guaranteed to work with survivors of trauma and loss. What little education we do receive is often outdated, overly academic, or just plain wrong. And because of this, we do damage to those we believe we are helping.

It's not therapists' fault that we have not been well trained to navigate traumatic loss, but it is our responsibility to learn to do better.

Having lived both sides of the experience, as a helping professional and a griever, I want to find a way to bridge the two worlds. I started Grief in Practice to provide resources to those who are grieving and to those who want to learn to do a better job of supporting grieving people. On this site, you'll find the writers and educators that helped me the most when dealing with Karl's death. More importantly, you'll find stories, suggestions, and life truths from grievers themselves, the uncensored information that counselors need to hear. These lived experiences reflect the wild, untidy reality of grief rather than the bloodless rules and timetables developed by academics who have never faced grief's harsh initiation. These are the stories we all need to listen to if we want to get better at grief.

I would give anything to go back in time and be a better counselor to the broken-hearted people who came to me for help. I can’t do that, but it is my profound hope that Grief in Practice will provide valuable resources for both grieving hearts and counselors who, like me, want to do better by the people they support through devastating, life-changing loss.