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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
Honoring What Helps, Releasing What Hurts: Letting Every Day Be Different
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A daily December series offering tender, truthful support for surviving the holidays after suicide loss — with grief, grace, and gentle company.
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This is December 11 — Welcome, Fellow Griever
Honoring What Helps, Releasing What Hurts - A Daily Journal Prompt: What helped me breathe a little easier today… and what felt too heavy to hold?
Today’s Reflection
Today’s episode invites you to honor the shifting landscape of your grief — the changes in energy, tenderness, and resilience that shape each day in December. You're encouraged to let today be exactly what it is, without forcing it to match yesterday.
Quoted or Referenced In This Episode
– “If you listen closely, the body will tell you where it wants to be.” — Victoria Erikson
A Gentle Closing Reminder
You’re allowed to let every day be different.
Stay Connected
💜 TheLeftoverPieces.com
💜 Instagram @theleftoverpieces
💜 Download the Leftover Pieces App
Click to Send a Text or Voicemail to Melissa
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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
Support After Suicide Loss
If you are grieving after suicide loss, you do not have to carry this alone.
Visit The Leftover Pieces for podcast episodes, grief support, resources, and ways to connect with Melissa’s work: https://theleftoverpieces.com
or Join Melissa’s email list: https://theleftoverpieces.com/join
If you someone you love is in immediate crisis or may be in danger, please call or text 988 in the United States. You can also text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line