Why I Wrote This Story

I wrote Brain Pain to give insight to children who have lost a friend or loved one to suicide.

It was on Father’s Day, 2015, that I sat down with a pen and a notepad and started writing this book. As the morning unfolded, so did this story. I had been participating in Survivors after Suicide support groups for many years and I felt that I was writing this story both out of respect for my Father as well as for my own sense of Fatherhood. I had lost my father to suicide 50 years earlier. At that time, he was 60 years old and I was 18 years old. Now, I am a father and a grandfather as well. In 1965 when my Dad died, there were no such things as “support groups" to aid people who had experienced such a loss. I learned early on that for most people the subject of suicide was conversationally taboo. I learned to think about it as the “S” word.

I am dedicated to helping our society come to grips with the “S” word, and I am working to be an active participant in how that will occur. I wrote this book as a means of opening the conversation between adults and young people who have experienced the loss of a friend or loved one to suicide.

The statistics regarding suicide in America, are going up each year. Over 45,000 suicides are known to have occurred in the U.S. in 2018. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that this leaves our country with somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 new survivors of suicide loss annually. Loss Survivors need our support and our help.

To be a part of that help and support is the goal of my story.