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The Leftover Pieces: Suicide Loss Conversations
Suicide loss changes everything. The Leftover Pieces® Podcast explores life after suicide through honest conversations with survivors, experts, and grieving parents learning to live forward after unimaginable loss. Parents, partners, siblings, and friends share what it means to keep living when the world has been forever changed.
Hosted by Melissa Bottorff-Arey, whose 21-year-old son Alex died by suicide in 2016, the show blends intimate conversations with survivors, healers, and mental health professionals with short solo reflections you can actually use. Together we explore child loss, trauma and nervous-system care, anniversaries and seasons, stigma, faith and meaning, legacy, and the everyday practices that help make life livable again.
At its heart, this podcast is about learning to live forward after loss. We never move on from the people we love, but we can learn to carry the grief differently. This road can feel incredibly lonely—but you are not alone here.
For supporters, educators, and professionals, these conversations also offer insight into the realities of suicide grief and what genuine, non-fixing support can look like.
If you’d like to share your story or expertise, you can request to be a guest through Melissa’s website.
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Content Note
This podcast speaks candidly about grief and suicide loss and may feel activating for some listeners. We avoid graphic descriptions and discussion of suicide methods. Please care for yourself as needed. Melissa is not a doctor or licensed therapist, and nothing shared here should be considered medical or mental-health advice.
The Leftover Pieces: Suicide Loss Conversations
"Are They Really Gone?; Alchemy of Science and Spirit"
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Today I am sharing my conversation with Lenore Matthew PhD, MSW. She is a researcher/practitioner from the field of social work, as well as a young widow and a survivor of suicide loss of her husband. Prior to her loss, Dr. Matthew worked as an expert of advocacy and program evaluation for organizations across the globe, including the United Nations. She has presented her research and advocacy widely at institutions such as Harvard Medical School.
Since losing her husband, her interests have shifted to trauma and traumatic loss, and healing through a mind, body, and spirit connection. She recently established the Alchemy of Science and Spirit, a project that melds science and empirical data with the exploration of intuition and the afterlife, to heal trauma and grief. Upon losing her husband, Dr. Matthew's own intuitive gifts of psychic intuition and mediumship awoke, as she immediately began receiving messages from her husband from the afterlife.
She is currently training with leading mediums in the US and the UK, and aims to bring her mediumship into her healing practice as well as her advocacy, normalizing the less-talked about aspects of loss, including communicating with our loved ones in spirit.
AND Again ---> FIND HER HERE AT Alchemy of Science and Spirit
Some Links to things mentioned in our conversation:
The Forever Family Foundation Where science and spirituality work hand in hand to bring comfort to the bereaved
Laura Lynne Jackson - Author/Psychic Medium
Somatic Experiencing International
Dr Brian Weiss MD Author & Scientist
All things John Edward Psychic Medium
The Windbridge Research Center Studying Dying, death & what comes next
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AND ALWAYS ... THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! It means the WORLD to me ... we are in this together!
As with everything you hear on my podcasts, please take that which serves yo
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💜 The Leftover Pieces is support for life after suicide loss. Click links below
🎙 Leave me a message: Share a question, your story, or your person’s name for a future episode → theleftoverpieces.com/voicemail
🔗 Stay connected: Join my email community for weekly support, resources, and honest conversations.
🛠 Start here: Explore website for suicide loss resources for early grief, family support, and next steps.
🤝 For moms: One-on-one grief coaching for mothers navigating life after child loss.
📞 Need support right now? If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988 (U.S. & Canada), or text HOME to 741741.