It’s a club nobody wants to be part of.

Lucrecia Sjoerdsma became a member in 2016 when her 15-year-old daughter died by suicide. Betty Van Thournout joined in 2014 when her 26-year-old son took his life.

What helped them deal with the unimaginable grief was community and knowing they weren’t alone.

“It’s a lonely grief process, but I’ve also learned it’s not something you have to walk by yourself,” Sjoerdsma said. “It’s a long process, something that will be with me until I die, but not anything that I have to do alone.”

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, which always falls on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, is a day designated by Congress for survivors of suicide loss to gather together.

American Foundation of Suicide Prevention and Heartbeat Survivors of Suicide Loss will sponsor a free event for survivors of suicide loss at Redemption Hill Church. Non-survivors are also welcome. The daylong event will include resource tables; a film; a teen panel discussion; breakout sessions about surviving the holidays, healing through art, body movement, and complicated and unresolved grief; a paper butterfly ceremony; and a light breakfast and lunch. Registration is requested. Go online to colorado-springs-colorado.isosld.afsp.org.

Attendees are encouraged to bring 4×6 photos for a photo button and to email the jpeg photo to rileyrain2001@yahoo.com for a scrolling memory wall.

“It’s something to give hope to people who have experienced this type of loss,” said Sjoerdsma, committee chairperson for the event. “Hope and to know you’re not the only one who’s going through this. Suicide isn’t something we talk about. It’s taboo. It’s the unspoken thing that happens to a lot of people. It’s important to let suicide loss survivors know they’re not alone. And to understand what this type of death means. That it’s trying to find meaning in what happened.”

After Sjoerdsma lost her daughter, she and her husband did therapy and began attending support groups through Heartbeat Survivors of Suicide Loss. They now act as co-facilitators of group meetings.

In 2022, suicide was the eighth leading cause of death in Colorado and El Paso County, according to El Paso County Public Health. From 2020 through 2022, suicide was the leading cause of death among ages 11 to 17 and the second leading cause of death among those ages 18 to 24.

The taboo nature of suicide is related to the mystery of mental health, said Van Thournout, who also facilitates support group meetings for Heartbeat Survivors of Suicide Loss.

“If people don’t understand it, they don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Sometimes people think if they don’t talk about it, it won’t ever affect their family. That’s just not the case.”

Sjoerdsma dislikes the phrase “committed suicide,” though it’s still widely used.

“When you commit something, you commit a crime,” she said. “That’s what I dislike. We have better terminology – died by suicide, or took their life.”

She also wants people to know it’s OK to talk with survivors of suicide loss about the person they’ve lost.

“We want to hear the stories, the funny things, the dumb things they might have done,” Sjoerdsma said. “We want to keep their memory alive. People are afraid to talk about them because they think it’s going to make us sad, but we want to hear about them.”

Beyond leaning on support groups after her son died, Van Thournout was helped by friends and family who didn’t try to fix anything, but simply showed up.

“There was no judgment or backlash or anything to make us feel weird,” she said. “People came alongside and said we love you and we love Ryan and how can we help? They would just sit in silence with us because we didn’t know what else to do.”

When people first come to a support group meeting, Sjoerdsma tells them there is no one way to grieve, but to feel all their feelings and to allow others to support them.

Even today, almost a decade after the loss of her daughter, her own emotions run the gamut.

“You feel everything in one day or an hour. You could be happy, sad,” she said. “But I’m doing well. Having a support system is very important, and finding community. It comes in waves. They’re not as intense anymore, but every once in a while, a big one hits me. I’m better equipped to deal with it, where it doesn’t incapacitate me or suck the life out of me. It’s going to be almost 10 years, and sometimes it feels like yesterday.”

DETAILS

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, also open to non-loss survivors, 9:15 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday, Redemption Hill Church, 4811 Bliss Drive, free, light breakfast and lunch provided, registration requested; 719-352-2229, colorado-springs-colorado.isosld.afsp.org

Something else: Memory tree decorating, 10 a.m. Nov. 29, Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site, 3105 Gateway Road; Memory tree lighting, 7 p.m. Dec. 9; heartbeatsurvivorsaftersuicide.org/event-details/memory-tree-lighting-2025