S-A-S: Sibling After Suicide

Between June and September this year (2019), I had 10 sessions of EMDR. I have written previously on why I opted to try EMDR specifically (to address the persisting vividness of my brother’s death by suicide) - what follows here is a little of what I learned from the actual experience of having this still-relatively-niche form of therapy. Firstly , it’s quite something to have someone look directly into your eyes and say without a shred of exaggeration, “you’re traumatised”. Not gonna lie, it made me uncomfortable. My face, I believe, revealed no real reaction to the therapist’s comment, but in my mind I pictured another me, head tilted, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, sarcastically responding “Am I, though?” Middle class, white woman, good home, family, job etc. etc. “Am I really ?” My first feeling was fraudulence, a lacking of justification to ‘own PTSD’ - I’m no veteran recovering from horrific conflict zone experiences or victim rebuilding after living through natural disaste...

At the beginning of August 2017, I came across an article by Poorna Bell (author of the brilliant Chase the Rainbow ). In it she discussed the issue of ‘name’, specifically surnames, their meaning and the circumstances under which they are or can be changed. Name-changing is not necessarily an unusual topic for discussion, especially for women, given the still-relatively-normal-for-many action of changing surname to indicate marriage (see Finch, 2008: 712). But Bell’s piece was particularly interesting because it raised the issue of name changing after the loss of a spouse to suicide: “It’s a question I was asked a lot in the first year after Rob died. Was I changing my name? Vehemently I said no, but it was also complicated. It was my married name, and I was no longer married…but my maiden name was like a stranger’s house and the locks were changed. I am no longer that person anymore. And I felt by changing my name, I was erasing him from my life, when the absence of him was already...

At the foot of the Penglais Road hill in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, there is a small, almost shack-looking, one-storey beige building that is the West Coast tattoo parlour. I passed it almost daily, during my commute to the lectures and seminars and Union Bar nights-out of my undergraduate-student days, each time tempted to investigate more. A friend of mine had had a large red rose with green splayed-out thorns and leaves printed into her lower back and I thought it was lovely, graceful. At the age of 19/20-ish, though I never voiced the thought, I really wanted my own tattoo, something ‘little and pretty’ was my thinking. Then I heard a rumour story about another friend who’d fainted and fallen off a chair due to the pain whilst having one done – I never found out the truth basis of the tale, but nonetheless even the slightest idea that such a needle response could happen kind of put me off. I moved on to other desires. Now, however, almost 7 years on from my little brother and...