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For two years, I was invisible

My divorce from normal life happened right after Charles’s suicide.

I would walk through the grocery store, Lowe’s, or the drug store and no one looked at me or noticed me even if I was crying. My grief had transformed me into background noise. I wandered about in my own dimension for some time.

A little over two years after the death of my son, I got off a plane and walked up the boarding bridge into the airport. I can’t remember now where I’d been but I had arrived back into Richmond, VA.

When I walked through the door, people turned and looked at me as if I’d returned from a sabbatical spent in a cave in Peru. I had been a dull, sepia-toned photo that had suddenly burst into color and people snapped to attention.

I advanced to the middle of the walkway as people raced to their next flight. People said, “Hello,” and “Excuse me.” I hadn’t heard that in a while. Had I only been hovering on the sidelines for the past couple of years?

Marveling at having become visible again, people streamed on either side of me like I was a rock in a river. I wondered then how and when I waltzed back into life. Had it really happened just moments ago or had it happened sooner and I didn’t notice?

I had gotten back on the train I’d been watching whiz by for the last couple of years. The loss had changed me but I had learned to live beside my grief and we’d finally found harmony together. Healing had happened.

Published by

AnneMoss Rogers

AnneMoss Rogers is a mental health and suicide education expert, mental health speaker, suicide prevention trainer and consultant. She is author of the Book, Diary of a Broken Mind and co-author of Emotionally Naked: A Teacher's Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk with Kim O'Brien PhD, LICSW. She raised two boys, Richard and Charles, and lost her younger son, Charles to addiction and suicide on June 5, 2015. She is a motivational speaker who empowers by educating and provides life saving strategies and emotionally healthy coping skills. As talented and funny as Charles was, letting other people know they matter was his greatest gift. And now that's the legacy she carries forward in her son's memory. Mental Health Speakers Website.

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