When someone loses a partner to suicide, their grief journey is vastly different from other people. Sarah Johnston’s life changed forever in 2016 when her spouse took her own life, and now she wears purple every day to honor her late husband’s memory. In our conversation, Sarah looks back on how she discovered the right support group to guide her through the grieving journey, which is unfortunately riddled with stigma and blame when it comes to suicide loss. She also opens up on how she deals with people who put her under scrutiny for her husband’s death, showing them compassion instead of hatred. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.  Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here Honoring My Late Husband Everyday With Sarah Johnston My guest, Sarah Johnston, has some nuggets for you. We are going to discuss shame and blame for people who have lost their spouse to suicide, how people in the clergy can better show up to support the grieving, and so much more. Let’s get into this conversation now. Sarah, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to be here. Are you really glad to be here in the widowhood conversation? I’m not glad to be in the widowhood, but I’m glad to be in the conversation. When you hear that, welcome to widowhood, what comes to mind for you?     This is not my hood. I was not meant to be here. Like, “Why am I here? I was supposed to have purple hair by the time I ended up here.” Let’s talk about that. In a reality in a world that everyone dies, how are you not supposed to be here in your mind? I was thirteen years younger than my husband. In just daily living, it just made sense that he would go first, but we would be old. I was prepared for us because we were empty nesters for like two years before he died. We would sit in the backyard and discuss what our retirement in a few more years was going to look like. We were like, we’re going to sit at the farm and rocking chairs on the porches and he’s going to drive the tractors and I’m going to bring him a beer. We were going to die old and gray out here on the farm. Not like this. When you say not like this, what does that mean for your situation? He died too young. He was 54. I, at the time, was 41. Your husband’s name, if you would share that with us? Jeff. How did you and Jeff meet? Funny story. My sisters are both quite a lot older than me. I was a whoops. My oldest sister’s husband at the time, I married his childhood best friend. Jeff, was that? My brother-in-law’s childhood best friend. That made for fun times with family get-togethers and doing things. We did all the things together. We were just a super tight family unit. Many memories. What memory came across your mind? What did it look like? Just all the family gatherings that we had together. We’d always do it in crawfish boils and turkey fries and things like that. Everything together as a big family, all the cousins together. We don’t have that anymore. Do they still have them, or they do not exist at all? They really don’t exist at all. Did that happen when Jeff passed, or was it something before that? I would say so much when Jeff passed. Now that I think about it, you’re making me reflect on new things. I feel like I need to get my notepad out. Go get it. I need to journal this. Hang on. You bring up a good point. Why do you journal? I have always journaled. All of my life, I have written things down. Even if it’s just a quick note, a side note in a book, or whatever I’m writing, like seriously, when I pass, my kids are going to have so many notebooks and random things to clean out. There are hundreds of them. It just came naturally to me. It’s always been something I’ve done. With the grief, I found that it was absolutely my greatest tool and instrument. If you connected with someone that was a new widow and she was like, all that journaling is trash, it doesn’t do any good. What would you share with her? My journaling can look as basic as that. My journaling can look as basic as these quick things. That’s journaling. The fact that I wrote down, I’m just super angry, and I cannot work it out. That’s journaling. Writing down, “I’m super happy, and I want to have this moment that I can look back on and remember every detail.” I’m going to write it down. I also do. I go back and look at those. That was especially important to me during my mom’s dementia journey when I earnestly started using it as a tool. I wasn’t aware that that’s what I was doing until I started working on healing and people were talking about, “It’s part of the process.” I realized it is because when I would go back and look at those, I would then write again from a different perspective. It’s interesting to read those and the number of times the perspective of how it changes over time each time. I’ve never thought of that. I’m in the eighth year of my late husband’s passing. Every week, I’m sharing journal entries. Have you seen some of those? I have. I weirdly stalk you. Not like stalk