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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
Do We Ever Stop Grieving?: Life After Suicide Loss and the Truth No One Tells You
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Do we ever stop grieving after losing a child to suicide?
In this episode, we go 'down the rabbit hole' to explore the reality of long-term grief after suicide loss and what happens after the initial survival years.
Many grieving mothers find themselves asking “what now?” after the first few years, when support fades but the grief remains. This episode introduces a new way of understanding grief—not as something to overcome, but something we learn to live with as we rebuild our identity, our life, and our sense of meaning after loss.
If you’re searching for answers about life after suicide loss, ongoing grief, or how to move forward after losing a child, this episode begins that conversation.
n this episode, we talk about:
- The truth about whether grief ever “ends” after suicide loss
- Why surviving the first few years is not the same as learning to live again
- The difference between grief and healing—and why both matter
- The “now what?” space that often comes after the early years of loss
- That child loss and suicide loss fundamentally change who we are
- That this loss means we must rebuild your life, identity, and sense of self after loss
- Why this year (season) of Down the Rabbit Hole episodes will focus on living forward—not just surviving
A gentle reminder:
If you’re early in your grief, this conversation may feel heavy.
You are not meant to have this all figured out right now.
Survival is enough in the beginning.
This episode is here to offer perspective—not pressure.
Take what serves you, leave the rest.
🎙️ Want to share something with me?
I’ve created a space where you can leave me a voice message—
whether it’s a question, something you’re carrying, or just saying your loved one's name -- I am here for you & it would be my honor to hear from you.
Your message may help shape a future episode, and you can always remain anonymous - just let me know at the beginning or end of your message
🎙 Leave a message here:
🔗 theleftoverpieces.com/voicemail
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