I’m not exactly sure where to start with this, nor am I sure what will have come out by the time I finish this writing.
But I feel like a response is required to all of you who have recently been reaching out to me and/or my children over the last few months.
I have not responded until now, because I have been sitting with the emotions that have been stirred up within me, in receiving messages (directly and indirectly) from people who until recently had completely stone-walled us, and made it very clear that they had nothing to say to me.
I am going to write this as a group letter, because I am not prepared to re-write what I have to say, over and over to everybody, and there are a fair few of you that this applies to.
Let us start at the beginning of this particularly dark chapter of our lives.
Dan’s death. This terrible and tragic event that has affected us all so deeply was the unfortunate catalyst for a whole pile of really unbelievably cruel behaviour by a whole pile of adults towards three innocent children who deserved to be treated far better by ALL of Dan’s most precious people.
Whatever your views and opinions about me - then, or now - it defied my understanding of decent human behaviour, that Dan’s parents and best friends chose to completely stone-wall Dan’s own children in the collective grieving process around his death.
(In contrast, Emily, Dan’s sister was on the phone to us within a few hours of us finding out about his death, and we have been in regular communication since. She and I have always been close, and I believe she was Dan’s closest confidant, so she probably knew his inner workings better than any of us.)
Ultimately, the deafening silence we experienced from the majority of Dan’s nearest and dearest, as well as the Chinese Whisperings of blame, shame and guilt being piled onto me as the kangaroo court convict for this terrible tragedy, all contributed to my children not going to their own father’s funeral, because I was basically told that I was not welcome and that it was better if I stayed away.
This message was delivered both actively and passively through word and behaviour, from a number of different directions.
So not only were my children not allowed to participate in their own father’s funeral and community grieving process, with their family and community.
But I was also made to feel like I had no right to participate in this group lament for a man we ALL loved and lost.
Please try to imagine how our children felt, experiencing all of this… coming to the understanding that all these people blamed their mother for their father’s death, trying to understand why they couldn’t go to his funeral because of this blame, whilst also grieving for him.
This was a huge and unfair emotional burden to place on three young children.
It was excruciatingly clear to myself and the children who was holding us in compassion as we grieved, by who called, sent messages, emails, texts.
The deafening silence from a certain sector made it abundantly clear who was not wanting anything to do with us.
Our children did not deserve that.
And while I understand that time has given everyone a chance to process their own grief and feelings, and eventually start to reach out to us, it is six months to a year too late.
The horrific emotional damage has been done. And while I am an extremely accomplished healer, and have been using my tools extensively all year to undo this damage, I cannot turn back time, and they will never get another chance to go to their own father’s funeral.
They will remember that for as long as they live. That is something that you will all have to live with, for it was your group behaviour that resulted in this emotional damage done to Dan’s children by his own nearest and dearest. Is that what you think he would have wanted ?
Not only did they have to deal with the awful reality that their own father had chosen to abandon them by killing himself, but that their family and his friends were also rejecting them.
How could you do that to children in their time of deepest pain ?
And so now, I am receiving heart-felt messages, from some of you who stone-walled us a year ago, telling us how we are being thought of, sending well-wishes and love ?
Not an apology from any of you. Not one single person who is now reaching out to us has said sorry for the disgraceful behaviour, the absolute rejection and outcasting that happened a year ago.
Not one ‘Sorry’ for the fact that no-one contacted me to ask me or my children if we had anything we wanted to contribute to Dan’s funeral.
Do you understand that no-body asked his own children if they wanted to say or do anything that was meaningful to them?
And yet, you ALL had a chance to speak. I watched you. To publicly express your love for him and share your happy memories. While twelve years of my life with him was glossed over and my sharing of over a quarter of his life went unacknowledged as my name was not mentioned once in the telling of his life story.
Funerals are a Rite Of Passage for both the Dead and the Living. My children and I were denied the right to say goodbye to the man that we all loved, and whose life we shared for a long time. He was my life-partner for 12 years. He was their father. And we weren’t allowed to say goodbye.
You have no idea how cruel that was.
And so now you reach out to us, hoping that we will just open the door and forget that all of that happened.
You want me to receive you graciously and behave as if we never went through that excruciating experience of not only losing Dan, but then being punished by his friends and family.
I understand that grief does strange things to people. It brings out the most irrational reactions.
And I honour whatever within you has sought to reach out to us now.
And I want you to know that I forgive you. All of you. For all the extra pain, on top of the pain we were already going through, that your group cold-shoulder resulted in for myself and our children.
While there is a part of me that wants to hold onto that anger, and that is outraged at how we were treated, I know that ultimately it does not serve me, and that forgiveness is the path to peace. Inner peace, soul-deep peace.
But I could not forgive without also speaking my truth about how this group behaviour affected myself, but more importantly our children.
I also want it to be known that a few people have reached out in order to try to access my children, whilst still trying to stone-wall me. That is not going to work.
There will be no access to my children without people finding it within themselves to show me some basic respect and grace by simply acknowledging my presence, and communicating with me with civility and decency.
And I also want you all to understand something. I know that you all wanted to pin the blame for Dan’s death onto me, to hold me responsible for his suicide, so that you wouldn’t have to look at the stark reality of how our funny, fun-loving, beautiful Soul that was Dan, actually had some deep mental health issues that he just did a really good job of covering up.
But what you need to understand is that I probably extended his life for well over a decade, as he was already on a path of self-destruction when I met him.
And for the first 10 years of our relationship, he straightened himself out, cleaned himself up and stepped up his level of self-responsibility massively. I wouldn’t have had three children with him otherwise.
And he openly acknowledged that I was the one that took him in that direction.
He openly admitted that he was a mess when we met, but that I encouraged him to maintain a healthier level of sobriety and clarity, because I didn’t really drink or do drugs.
But his own self-destructive behaviour started creeping in again towards the end of our relationship, and he started becoming abusive to me and the children. And it all rooted back to his addictions to alcohol, and to a lesser extent, his drug abuse.
I tried everything I could think of to help him. But he refused all of it. Counselling, therapy, healing, Alcoholics Anonymous. He absolutely refused all of it. So in the end I left.
It broke my heart, and I think it broke his too.
You want to think that it was my fault that he killed himself, because I took the children to Central America.
But he was always supposed to come with us. We had planned to leave the country many years before. And even on the day we broke up, he asked me to give him 3 months notice before leaving with the kids, so that he could organise himself and come with us.
But instead, after we split, he found a new lease of freedom to get as wasted as he liked, without the restrictions of family life, and sleep with just about everyone that he could.
I think this was his coping mechanism from our break up.
I’m telling you all this, because I want you to understand, that far from being the reason that he killed himself, I did more than anyone else to try to help him. But he didn’t want the help.
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want the help.
I know this is really hard to accept. It is horribly tragic and painful. But it is true.
Six weeks before he died, when he came to visit us for Christmas in Guatemala, he finally told me that he thought he had a problem. He had finally reached the point where he could admit it, and I think that was his attempt at reaching out for help. But he was absolutely hammered when he told me this on Boxing Day, and he didn’t remember anything about the conversation the next day. I thought he was at last ready to do something to help himself, but I understand now, he was actually at breaking point.
He also told me that he really wanted to come and live in Guatemala, but he didn’t know if he could let go of The Kraken.
That boat had a hold over him in a strange and destructive way. It was when we moved onto that boat that everything started going really wrong in our relationship.
He threw himself into the boat and forgot he had a family.
He also told me that he had gone to the doctor because he was getting really weird physiological symptoms in his body - numbness in his hands and feet, all the hair fell out on his legs. The doctor did some blood tests on him and diagnosed him with chronic Vitamin D deficiency, and immediately put him onto high strength vitamin D supplements, which had an immediately positive effect upon his mental health and his physical symptoms.
He told me that he thought this might have contributed to our relationship breakdown, and the way he had been behaving.
He also told me that it was coming to Guatemala for two months during the summer that made the hair start growing back on his legs.
He had always wanted to live somewhere hot. He did better in the sun. Every year he would have a low over winter, and when spring came, he often apologised to me for having been so miserable and grumpy over winter.
I have since done some research on Vitamin D deficiency and it correlates to both alcoholism and suicide.
I have been devastated by his death. He was my soul mate. Despite the fact that I left him, I always loved him, and I held onto the hope of getting back together if and when he finally got the help he needed, and sorted himself out. I held the door open for him, and he knew that. But he also knew that this was dependent on him giving up alcohol, and I’m not sure he thought he could do it. I thought that when he finally agreed to sell The Kraken and come here, that things would get sorted out between us. So not only have I been grieving for him, I have also been grieving for the future that we had both spent so many years planning and creating for ourselves and our children.
I realise this is getting long, but I am trying to give you a bigger picture around a few things.
I want to respond to you all with grace.
I am also not prepared to be the fall guy or scape-goat for this situation.
And if you want to reach out to me and build a bridge, that comes with a requirement for Truth as a necessary pre-requisite for Reconciliation.
I do not do sweeping things under the carpet.
And so I must speak my truth in order to move forward.
And I understand that ultimately, we have all lost someone that we loved very much, and that we are all just trying to find our own way of dealing with that loss.
Thank you for finally reaching out to me.
Let us move on with more compassion for one another from here on.
That is what Dan would have wanted.
I am open to continued communication as a vehicle for reconciliation if that is what you want to pursue.
In Peace, Love and Forgiveness,
Jo
