Welcome to the Sibling Survivors Site!

The Sibling Survivors of Suicide Loss site aims to provide a safe place for anyone who has lost a sister or brother to suicide. It’s a place to share memories, discuss your feelings and experiences, and to share photos. It’s a place to connect with others who also miss their sister or brother.

The site was created in 2001 by Michelle Linn Gust. She passed the site on to the POS-FFOS Internet Community in November of 2014. It officially re-opened on January 4, 2015.

We invite you to explore the site and participate. We need you; help us make this site a safe and supportive place for other sibling survivors. You can participate by Creating a  Guest Post, sharing an Inspirational Thought or Message, or Writing a Letter to your Sibling. Please see those pages for more information.

Sibling Survivors is maintained by volunteers from the Parents of Suicides (POS) and Friends and Families of Suicides (FFOS) Internet Community and others. Learn more about these groups on the About Us page.

Dear Gregory

My dear brother,It has been almost 5 months since you chose to end your life. Although I’m still alive, a part of me died when I found out you died. I’m trying to keep it together, but it takes so much work to simply do simple things that seemed so easy before you died. Small tasks take so much effort now that you’re gone. I cry almost daily and although the pain hasn’t gotten better, I have accepted the fact that I will never see you again. I wish you could have seen a 1 minute glimpse of all the pain and suffering you have left behind. If you had, I know you would never have killed your self. You were a great man; you wouldn’t want us to be feeling like this. Mom is devastated. Liam & Olivia need their daddy. We all miss you so much…we ache so much without you. Everything has changed; we will never be the same. You had my dream job of being a secret service special agent; I looked up to you so much, but I never told you that. I wish I had told you how brave I thought you were. I love and miss you so much. Please send us all strength from wherever you are.

I love you always,

Miriam

Missing my brother

My older brother took his own life very unexpectedly on January 22, 2024. He was discovered the next day by family. My heart is broken and I know I will never be the same. I had just talked to him a couple days before the incident and I knew he had been fighting with his wife. He told me he was very tired of it but I figured it was just another one of their episodes and he had always said he was tired of it. I wish I could go back and read the signs better and had gotten him some help. We don’t know the real reason he took his life and we will probably never know. It’s extremely painful not knowing the answers or reasons. I keep thinking about all our future plans and how we were suppose to grow old together. I miss everything about him. I do forgive him because he was truly unhappy in a lot of ways and he would always tells me that he was just venting and just wanted me to listen. I’m going to miss our calls and I am taking it day by day to get thru the grief.

I lost my younger brother and my soul is broken

I lost my younger brother on January 3rd, 2024. Im the oldest and have 4 kids of my own and I swear I felt like he was my kid too. He just turned 31 and has been battling with addiction for some time. I would try and check in with him and he would brush it off and say he’s fine.

He had so much going for him, I had him move back in with us because he was saying he didn’t like to be alone.

The night he passed, He apparently took way too much of multiple drugs including magic mushrooms and had a bad trip after a fight that had happened between him and a friend of ours I sent to check on him. He ended up jumping from our 6th floor balcony as they pretty much watched. I blame myself because I wasn’t home to save him or I shouldn’t have called the friend. I haven’t been the same, i don’t think I’ll ever be the same. I’m struggling with this hard and just want my brother back.

My Little Brother

October 19th 2021 the link in our chain was broken, the oldest of my 2 brothers was gone, he took his own life. Handsome, funny, brilliant. He discovered his wife of 21 years was cheating on him, is that the reason why? We will never know. Having lost my husband and parents, I know grief but not this kind. I miss him. I was your big sister, I wish you would have reached out instead of this rash decision. Forever loved & missed.

10/4 The worst day of my life I lost my brother m

At 38 weeks pregnant I received the news that my younger brother took his own life. I am one of four kids and him and I were the middle kids we had a special bond. It has only been 4.5ish months but I’m starting to get bigger waves of grief. I think due to the fact that I couldn’t process what was happening at the time because I had to have a baby via c section the following week. Then I had to try and be happy because that’s what having a baby is supposed to feel. The first months I’ve blacked out for the most part and honestly I’ve just been moving on day to day for my 3 kids and trying to keep going. This feeling of the why haunts me everyday. I’ve read the grief books but I still feel like this isn’t real this can’t be my life. Whenever I’m with my parents I try and put on a strong front for them so they don’t need to worry and they can just focus on grieving my brother.

Hi W

I’ve started to feel some anger now. It never really crossed my mind in the early years bc I just missed you and was trying to protect you from any person that would suggest anything bad about you. Now I’m starting to feel angry. It has been a decade. I was just so frozen. I didn’t want to be mad at you really. I was concentrating on the pain you must have felt. It’s been years of pressure from declining parents and unrest with siblings. It’s been so tiring. I can’t even begin to describe the impact. Mom and Dad declined so much and it’s been so hard. I really wish you had been here for support. I really needed you. We all did and do. Some how I picture you up there in heaven having a good time and that makes me mad. It has just been so much suffering. In another way I am comforted by this thought of you doing well but in another way I’m angry. Why did this have to happen? Why did it get so bad? I guess I’m stronger now but I didn’t want the strength to come like this and for this reason. I feel like I don’t have much more to give. It’s been so much caregiving. I’m so tired. I just really wish you’d be able to come back. For comfort. I miss you and all the fun times we had.

6 Days After Turning 49

I just lost my younger brother to suicide on December 27, 2023. He had just turned 49 on December 21st. He is the baby of the family out of all 4 of us siblings and I am only a year and a half older than him. We were very close throughout most of our lives. I was his only sister and tried to always be there for him. I am a wreck. My heart physically hurts and the guilt is overwhelming. I am still numb. I’m having trouble sleeping and eating.
He was diagnosed bipolar and fighting mental illness for a long time. I’m struggling to wrap my head around him being gone.
I have never felt this kind of sorrow.
Love you always my little Brother.

To K

K,

It’s been almost 9 years now. I’ve really been living by the whole “grief doesn’t shrink, life gets bigger around it” thing. I graduated college but my own mental health is still bad, even on meds so I’m still living with mom and unemployed at 26 :/.

I just don’t know where to go in life really. Everything makes me feel bad and reminds me of you and our trauma overall really. I’m just used to you being there to mark the path before me and without a big sister I have to face all of it alone with no example set for me. I’m older than the few friends I have and none of them struggle the way we both have so they don’t really get it. I’m trying to forge a path on my own but I still feel like a little kid, completely lost in the woods without you.

I haven’t given up on my art and have improved a lot since you saw it last but I still feel disappointed every time I finish a painting and you’re not there to see it. I listened to an album by a band you would’ve hated bc they’re my depressing indie music, but one line the singer wrote is “I don’t want to learn anything from this”. I feel that way every time I paint you or tell someone about losing you. I don’t want you to just be a story that makes people hold their family a little closer when they hear it.

We have a stepdad now and he’s actually really great. Just when I’d given up on having real loving parents, he came into my life. I just wish you’d been around to meet him and enjoy all of the changes that have happened. I guess I would enjoy them more too if you were there to enjoy them with me like you’re supposed to be. Above anything else I miss laughing with you at stupid memes and cuddling in your awful neon magenta bedroom and doing your makeup for Xmas eve.

I hope T is with you at least and that wherever you are, you both remember playing baseball in the field with the lightning bugs and wild strawberries until it was too dark to see the ball and mom called us for dinner. I dreamt you were together after she died.
You’re missing out on H too. He’s adorable and so silly. You would’ve loved playing together.

I just hope there’s an afterlife and I see you again. I don’t want to die lately but life just doesn’t excite me. Everything seems so boring and pointless when I’m facing a future without your smile. Anyway, I hope you still exist somewhere.

Love you sis,
G

2 years on NYE

Querida hermanita;Two years ago, we were celebrating Amelia’s birth on Christmas Day. You seemed so happy! Even now, I wonder what went wrong. I know you didn’t want to die. You went to the hospital to get help. You had the crisis number next to your phone by the bed. What went wrong? My dear sister, I am so lost! So broken! I ache. Yes, I ache all the time. My heart aches My whole body aches. My mind aches. I have a difficult time celebrating New Year’s Eve anymore. I had a terrible sense of foreboding that NYE. I felt that someone had died or was going to die and Mike just told me to stop being dramatic, nothing bad was going to happen. I had no idea that it would be you, that I was actually feeling you leaving this earth. We were so connected that I felt you. And all I can say now is why why why? When will the crying stop? When will I be myself again? Will I ever? I am sorry for the things I said wrong, for the things I didn’t say right. I miss you. And I will always love you. With much love, con mucho amor, tu hermana.

37 years

Thirty-seven years ago tonight my life changed forever. I have posted here in the past, usually around this date and again in early February.
On this date 37 years ago my brother set himself on fire and lived for 43 days. Today they put you in a medically induced coma for such an event, but back then not so much.
It has gotten better for me across the years. It is still the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I do not have to will every breath I take. I don’t wake up crying from my nightmares.
I do know now my brother made a choice and it was not my fault. I know he did not wish us pain or harm. I believe he was exhausted from a life of too many secrets and maybe a bit too much alcohol. He shared himself for as long as he could.
Each of us here are on our own journey, but these pages keep us from being alone. Keep coming here. Seek help. Journal. Talk. Nurture yourself. Wrap up in a blanket on the couch. If that is all you can do, that is enough. You are more than enough.
We have each stood in the unfathomable moment of being told or finding the body. We have thought over and over, “I cannot survive this.”
I am here to say breathe. Keep breathing. Keep coming back here.