Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss
How will I survive this loss?
When her life shifted from fairytale to nightmare due to her husband’s death by suicide, Michelle Ann Collins found herself in the darkest place imaginable, reaching for answers to questions like: How am I going to eat, sleep, get out of bed, and do all the things? As a yoga therapist and wellness coach, she had more tools than many suicide loss survivors do, and yet escaping the dark grief cave required the most excruciating work of her life.
It may feel like it now, but your life did not end with theirs.
In this book, Michelle shares the tools, insights, and practices that enabled her to drag herself out of the cave, release the mental and emotional burdens, and build a deep resilience as she climbed the mountain of grief and eventually gained enough strength to turn around and help others.
When you need to remember how to breathe, eat, sleep, or wonder if you will ever be able to move forward, open up this book and grab Michelle’s hand.
What can I do to help?
One of the most painful parts of Michelle’s journey was the realization that her friends didn’t have the information or skills they needed to help her.
When you don’t know how to help, open up this book and find the information and skills you need to support yourself and your suicide loss survivor.
What Readers Are Saying
What Readers Are Saying
“This inspiring book shines a light into the darkness of grief from suicide loss. Michelle uses the tools of her professional coaching practice, along with her personal story of loss, to guide others on the path of healing.”
~ Carole Marie, Downing, PhD
Author of Singing Beyond Sorrow, A Year of Grief, Gratitude & Grace
“This book is a wellspring of stabilizing and restorative tools and techniques essential for helping others and self through grief and loss. Readers of this important resource will find useful and validating information from both scientific study and personal accounts of loss from suicide, as well as practical, easy-to-follow strategies for navigating the emotional, physical, mental, and logistical ebbs and flows of the healing process. A standout aspect of this hands-on guidebook is that the supporter and the supported both benefit by engaging together in the practice of supportive co-regulating activities.”
~Karlyn Pleasants, PsyD
Author of Feathers From The Fire
“Michelle shows us how she transformed her life after her loss in this thoughtful, inspiring, and deeply personal book. Her stories highlight how healing is possible.”
~ Kristin A. Meekhof
Coauthor of A Widow's Guide to Healing: Gentle Support and Advice for the First 5 Years
“From the wound comes the medicine. As a survivor of spousal suicide, Michelle Ann Collins is a shining example of how when we are determined to heal, we not only help ourselves, but we create healing medicine for others. In this book, she weaves her personal story with vulnerability and courage, illustrating for readers how best to support someone in the delicate terrain of this often-disenfranchised grief. With suicide sadly on the rise, Michelle provides fierce yet deeply empathetic counsel for survivors and their communities to recover and claim joy again.”
~ Jennie Lee
Partner Suicide Loss Survivor
“In Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss, Michelle shares her personal heart-wrenching experience of losing her husband to suicide and the journey she undertook to climb out from under the landslide of emotions and trauma left in the aftermath. Michelle bravely and tenderly conveys all this while empowering the reader with an incredible number of tools and techniques for embarking on their own journey of survival and healing.”
~ Lori Giesey
Author of A Moment In Time
Michelle Ann Collins
As the founder of Inhabit Joy, Michelle Ann Collins partners with individuals who have suffered grief, injury, or other types of loss as they recover, reclaim their wholeness, and build resilience for life’s inevitable challenges. After a series of losses, including the death of her mother, her husband’s suicide, and continued estrangements from primary family members, Michelle combined the tools she had collected as a yoga therapist and wellness coach and studies in positive psychology, neuroscience, meditation and mindfulness, and spirituality to turn post-traumatic stress disorder into post-traumatic growth and resilience. With the addition of a certification in grief education and several bestselling books in which she shares her story, Michelle is helping others transform from barely surviving to joyful thriving.
Deeply connected with the healing powers of nature, Michelle spends her leisure time hiking among the trees or paddling on the rivers near her home in Portland, Oregon.
