When It Happens, Is It Happening To You, Or For You?

~ An Exploration Into The Processes After Witnessing A Suicide

~ Written in Spring 2023 ~Posted 30/12/25 ~

 

​

When something challenging happens that you experience first hand, do you think this happened to you, or for you? Do you believe this is a choice you can make?

 

​

This blog begins with a story.

 

On the Thursday the 25th of January 2023, due to unrequested conditions I had to take the route to work which involved me cycling along a walkway where the Brighton cliff base meets the pebbled beach. On my way back I went along the same route and stopped to look at the sea, it was quiet and peaceful, no one else was around.

 

And then began a short series of events that have altered my consciousness ever since.

 

I heard a man scream. I turned to the sound and saw a man falling from the top of the 100 foot chalk cliff onto the walkway. I saw him hit the ground. I ran to him. The young man was painfully still alive. I called 999, I could hardly take my eyes from him – I felt like I owed him that – my only way of supporting him was to see him, that I wasn't leaving him alone in his grief and fear if I could hold him in my gaze.

 

The paramedics took him to hospital still alive. He died later from his injuries. I still carry a song of prayer in my heart for this young man and all those who have succeeded, tried or think about suicide. May we all find the threads of light that lead us through the dark nights of the soul.

 

~

 

I was in a state of shock that was clearly visible for several days. I had frequent and relentless flashbacks and cried often throughout the day. The first few days I questioned my grief - how long should one feel confronted and traumatised? After all, I didn't watch him jump, and I didn't watch him die...should I be “over it” by now?

 

During this talk I want to explore the revolutions I went through in the wake of this event and reflect on the question; did this happen to me, or for me?

 

The first week was particularly challenging, aside from the flashbacks, the anxiety, the weighty, compressed, tension I carried across my upper body and the inability to hold myself straight...I felt isolated and alone, I was amidst the worst argument I had had with my partner and things were tense with my housemates. I needed holding, physically as well as emotionally and spiritually and there was no one to do the holding. So I held myself. Just about.

 

I became acutely aware of my low cognitive function. I found anything using words much more difficult than usual, whether that was listening, reading or speaking. I found forming new memories quite hard, especially in the first few days and particularly if they involved words. I had read recently that when someone experiences a trauma, the left hemisphere of their brain becomes less active - the side that is responsible for processing language.

The one thing I felt at ease doing was talking about what had happened – that is, after the initial moment of bringing that experience into the space, which I still struggle with. My assumption is that so much of my cognitive ability was being directed to what happened; in order to make sense of it, process it, heal my trauma of it, so that the importance of other cognitive functions became less than secondary, there was little left to spare, and what there was I needed... to remember to brush my teeth, how to drive my car, take lunch to work...the mundane yet vital multitude of daily tasks that we usually do without thinking and we take for granted.

 

I noticed that vast difference between how I felt when first sharing my experience to a new audience and then talking about it once that's done. I think I found sharing initially challenging because I feel like once I say this, it totally changes the mood and direction of the group, it drops something that calls for holding into the space and not everyone can or wants to do that. I felt like I was imposing myself, my experience, my feelings onto them. I also noticed, right before sharing my experience for the first time, I almost always felt a horrible gut wrenching rolling wave of breath-taking fear. Once its said, I instantly began to feel better, the tidal wave of emotion begins to settle and I felt like a small yet imposing weight was lifted.

Speaking about by experience definitely helped, putting something as simple and normal as words to something ultimately wordless helped to bring a sense of inner balance to parts of myself I had not met before. But speaking is not enough. As I came to know.

 

3 weeks after the incident I felt much more myself. I went to a 1-1 breath work session, leading up to it I was so nervous I thought I could be sick.

The 1.5 hour session reopened the wound I had begun teaching myself to close, the breath took me so deeply into my trauma and gave it an exit route. I cried, howled and kicked, I let myself be held and I let myself be vulnerable, and it was hard to allow myself to do that.

During the journey the words “a thousand years” kept flowing through my mind. This belongs to the sentence - “finally, I unleashed the rage that had built in my body for a thousand years” - a poem I was working with around the same time about the suffering inflicted on witches and their current waking up from years of silence.

This helped me gain the idea that what I had begun to release wasn't just of this isolated incident, but this trauma may have attached to old traumas – of this life and past lives, ancestral lives and wounds, collective wounds...perhaps thousands of years old - and this was bringing them up to the surface for release. Maybe, this happening to me was for me - to heal the past that still suffers. I believe that some people are sent here to do just that – to be, see, experience. To allow themselves to feel, really feel it so it can finally be healed.

 

Ive realised several things from this – 1. That what I thought was me gaining balance and returning to a state of “normal” may have been the result of me closing the wound with a plaster and beginning to repress the trauma in order to get back to my life. 2. That doing so may be a compassionate, gentle and appropriate way to heal – to open, release, process and gently close, coming back to the world, then, when ready, repeating. This may allow the smaller fragments of shattered trauma within the wound time to surface to be seen and tended to, when otherwise they would get swallowed up by the depths of the pain. 3. That trauma triggers trauma, and we can accept the opportunity to heal it. 4. That in order to really come back, the trauma that's stored in the body, needs loving and compassionate tending to, and that cant always be done alone. 5. The absolute necessity to go gently and patiently.

 

I feel that this journey was creating a process where from the insides out, I had to re-form myself starting from a place of deep release and inward listening. I had a similar process of re-assembling myself some years ago, that I now regard as one of the most challenging and important phases of my adult life.

 

When I was ready I began enquiring into why I felt so hurt that I couldn't see him when the paramedics came, as a police officer had made me leave the scene. At first I just thought that it was my right – I was the only one who watched him fall, I should see the impact. But I felt so much emotion, mostly anger, regret and shame. Time helped bring clarity to this – by walking away from him, by removing my watchful eyes – I felt I was abandoning him. I bore witness to part of his most painful hour on earth, my soul chose to be there, my soul had its service to provide, and by walking away, I felt I severed that. And that's what was painful, that is what I regret and felt shame for – for severing the tie in moments that count.

 

I want to talk about how I felt altered by this event 8 weeks on. I felt like sometimes I walked the knife edge between; being aware that anything can happen and fear that a horrific thing is about to happen. I felt this especially when driving. I watched myself make the journey from, “now I recognise the fragility of this world” to “something terrible could happen” to “oh no something terrible is about to happen!” Fortunately I knew the pathway of my mind so I was able to reel the paranoia in. I believe this contributed to the sense of gravity I often felt as well as being so aware that this life; the states of relative stability and sanity we live in are so delicate and easily disrupted.

 

My journey in the aftermath of this has been a continuous unfolding process. I became an ever watchful observer to my inner and outer revolutions. I noticed that I dropped the need to perform, across circumstances, I no longer had that in me, more willing to show up as and how I was, making no apologies for that, I noticed that I was not trying to be or act a certain way.

I observed a simultaneous softening and hardening within myself; softening myself to myself, letting things go, the realisations of what doesn't matter, I felt a gentleness that enwrapped me. Yet there was also a hardening – I felt less emotional generally, a little more removed from the outside world whereas before perhaps I felt entwined with it in so many more ways.

I noticed myself slowing down, my thoughts slower, I often spoke slower, taking more time to choose my words.

 

A dear friend told me she believes we are only presented in this life with what we are capable of receiving. Some people have said; “I'm so sorry this happened to you”. I often felt like saying; “don't be sorry – I'm not.” I fully believe in the depths of my heart I had to be there, for him and for me, that I am capable of holding this, that this is opening and closing within me what is necessary for whatever purpose Ive come to this earth to do. Months before the event I wrote my own prayers and stuck them around my house, the one on my bedroom window said “thank you for giving me eyes that see the beauty and pain of this world”, I can still read that prayer with my whole heart thankful that I can bare witness to such pain. It is necessary to be held by those who can and are willing, I cannot turn my awareness away from the darkness in this life, it is false for me to call only upon the qualities held in the light. The darkness is a friend of mine, even now as I sit with the horror of suffering so close to my heart, the darkness is still my friend, and when the time is right, I choose to lean in and be absorbed by that infinite potential of what is unseen in the depths of the darkness. The womb, the compost, the cosmic black present across all of time and space.

 

And so, I return to the opening question; did this happen to me or for me?

 

I am sure, with every portal of my immense being, as I have been from the moment I heard him, this happened for me.

​

~

​

If you have been affected by this post, or if you have an experience of suicide and want someone to talk to please don't hesitate to contact me. You need not carry it alone.