My First Year

By Jennie Marks

A little over a year ago, I began my position as Grief Support Coordinator at the Helpline Center. For many people, it was difficult to understand how eager and excited I was to begin working in an environment in which the emphasis of the work revolves around suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. I have friends who are completely mystified when I tell them that I love my job. Marc Anthony said “If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life.” I heartily agree with that quote.
Before I came to Helpline, I had very personal and life-changing experiences with deep grief and loss. Later as a funeral director, deputy coroner, and the person responsible for aftercare in our funeral business, I had plenty of professional experience with all kinds of grief. Many times, that included direct experience with suicide loss. Although I understood what makes suicide loss different from other kinds of loss, I have to admit that I had never exclusively served a community of suicide survivors.
I am humbled by the survivors who have shared their stories with me. It touches me deeply when people let me into their lives. I love getting to know people, but I also love getting to know those that they’ve lost — every one of them unique and special. I know that those people are very much still with us in memory and how they’ve influenced our lives. I am honored to hear the stories of the struggles and the joys, the heights of love and the depths of loss that survivors have shared with me. I am awed at the bravery of those that work to move forward and create a “new normal” and yet continue to remember and treasure the past.
I am continually amazed at the generosity of our community of survivors who lift each other up and give of themselves day after day to help those that are new to suicide grief. It truly is a wilderness that is best navigated with a compassionate, understanding friend. It has been so gratifying to see new survivors enter support group, tenuous and timid and secretive about the gamut of emotions that they experience, only to find out that they need not feel shame about those emotions. They instead find that their emotions, while unique, are at the same time quite normal and expected aspects of their grief.
So thank you all for your support and acceptance of me in your lives. I appreciate each and every one of you. I have learned so much and am still willing to learn, so don’t be afraid to teach me things that will help me grow in my job and be able to serve the community more effectively.