Vonnie Woodrick - I Understand

Pain, Love, and Healing after Suicide

Vonnie Woodrick

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2020 Vonnie Woodrick

All rights reserved

Published 2020

262524232221201234567

ISBN 978-0-8028-7804-5

eISBN 978-1-4674-6030-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Woodrick, Vonnie, 1964 author.

Title: I understand : pain, love, and healing after suicide / Vonnie Woodrick.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020. | Summary: One womans pain and healing following her husbands death from suicide leads to a movement calling for change in the way we think about mental illness and suicideProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016401 | ISBN 9780802878045 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Mental healthReligious aspectsChristianity. | SuicideReligious aspectsChristianity. | Woodrick, Vonnie, 1964

Classification: LCC BT732.4 .W58 2020 | DDC 248.8/628dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016401

CONTENTS

The journey of understanding our lives, our families, and the reasons we have to go through tragedies and loss is a long one. I have an intimate connection with i understandthe organization and now a book. I was the keynote speaker in 2017 for an i understand event in Michigan. Prior to going there, I didnt think too much about it, as I speak all over the country about mental health, addiction, and the suicide that has been a part of my family for generations. I enjoy sharing my story about my struggles with understanding my legacy because it always teaches me something more about myself. I also share because I feel that we all come from stories of loss or trauma, or something that has been a challenge for us but has gotten us to where we are in our lives currently. I arrived in Michigan three years ago; Vonnie met me at the airport, and we began a two-day journey that would touch my heart.

Vonnie introduced her daughters to me, both beautiful, intelligent, and looking for opportunities to talk with me. Her son too, was dealing with his family history and eager to share that with me. He dealt with his trauma through the books he read and the relationships he made through the authors who had touched his life (he happened to love my grandfathers work, so we had that in common). But it was when I began talking with Maddie, Vonnies youngest daughter, that I felt a familial connection. You know when that happens... you meet someone, a total stranger, who is not strange to you at all. You simply feel a sense of comfort in their presence. I realize now that that is why I tell my story: because once in a while a person like Maddie comes along and my words resonate with her, and then my own life makes sense. It is a gift when you meet someone who sees the world from the same perspective as you do.

Maddie was newly in college then, and, although she was young, her understanding of literature and of my grandfathers writings felt incredibly succinct and familiar to me. While we were speaking, she made special reference to my grandfather Ernest Hemingways short story Up in Michigan (written about a place in which she and my grandfather had both grown up). She asked interesting and pertinent questions about the story and its relevance to the modern world we live in today. It was intriguing. Maddie also read my own book, Out Came the Sun, and she seemed to understand it at a cellular level. Like me, she uses nature, mountains, and the outdoors as a way to bring meaning to the thoughts in her head and the past she has overcome. She processes her life through her connection to the wild exactly as I have done for decades. We were/are soul sisters, for lack of a better term. After a somewhat brief exchange, I felt seen by her, and I knew that she felt seen and understood by me. My connection with Maddie and all of Vonnies family is linked to the whole reason behind the story of i understand. Just like my story of the Hemingway legacy, it is not about the fame of my family or the fact that I am a public figure... it is about the power of sharing your story. The impact of storytelling and how it can heal you is important. When we share our journey, whether it is ugly and weak or strong and bittersweet, it takes the sting out of the past. It gives all of us permission to have and share ournot always prettyjourney. Once you tell your story, you can begin to heal.

For herself and her amazing family, Vonnie has taken the time to write down the story of her life and her lifes mission to make a difference in the world of mental illness and suicide with her organization, i understand, and in doing so she gives us all reason to step up and be honest about the families we come from. Not all of us have suicide or depression or even mental illness in our lives, but I can almost guarantee that there is some secret story about our past that we allow to define us. This book is an invitation to be brave enough to share our demons with others, so that we can let them go. Whether it is with a close friend, a spouse, or a family member, maybe even in a public forum, wherever one shares ones journey is not pertinent. The important thing is that you write or voice your family secret. In doing so, you begin to release the power that it has on you. When you speak truth to your life, the story it comes from becomes just that... a story: a lesson that has colored your past, not a sentence that interrupts your future.

Mariel Hemingway

A person never truly gets over a suicide loss. You get through it. Day by day. Sometimes moment by moment.

Holly Kohler

After losing my husband, Rob, to suicide, I was devastated, confused, and heartbroken. No life experience could have prepared me for suicides claim on my husband. I was left to wonder, What happened? I thought suicide was something that happened to other people, other families. Only crazy people die by suicide, right? Yet my husband wasnt crazy; he was kind, gentle, and loving. How did this happen?

In the days, weeks, and months that followed his death, I learned of a past that Robs family never talked about. My husband was not the first. His was one of many suicides that spanned generations.

My life changed the day that Rob died. November 8, 2003. Things have never been the same. I was left with three young children to support and raise. The illness that consumed Rob created a new and strange life, a life we never imagined. There were no easy answers. There was no map to guide us.

I pushed through, both for my children and myself. On the journey, I chose to listen to my heart and my instincts. The choices I made in the shadow of Robs deathdecisions made in the trenches of emotional painformed me and shaped me.

In the face of devastating loss, it is difficult to comprehend or even imagine the rest of your life. The fog grows thick in an unforeseen reality. What is real? How do I go on? Where do I begin? What comes next? What do I do? I struggled intensely.

Yet in the world around me, I saw no trace of the emotion and fear that rocked my world after Robs death. The loss struck me with the precision of a thunderbolt. A hovering cloud of depression shadowed me. But everything around me continued apace. People seemed the same. Life moved on. But not for me.

Things did not return to normal for me. My life changed. This is my story. This is the story of how I came to understand.