World Suicide Prevention Day: Helping to change the narrative

September 2025

WAY member Claudia lost the love of her life to suicide in July 2020. Over the last year, she has started to write a blog about her experiences of being widowed to suicide and was nominated for WAY’s Helen Bailey Blog Award. Honouring the theme of this year’s World Suicide Prevention Day, Claudia shares her thoughts on changing the narrative around suicide…

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James was just 33 when I lost him to suicide… In the first couple of years, if I met anyone new and I talked about James, I would just say he had passed in July 2020, during lockdown. People would nod and assume he had passed away due to Covid. I wouldn’t talk about what took him from me. I was ashamed… I grew up as a Roman Catholic, in a small village in Portugal. I went to Sunday school when I was a kid and learned that making an attempt against one’s life was a capital sin and there was no salvation for that poor soul! 

Even though I grew up believing God is love, and as a loving Father he would not send us away if we did something against His wishes, I was still ashamed to tell people I lost James to suicide. I couldn’t stand the looks and the judgement of people who didn’t know me and James, and think that it was my fault, or that he wasn’t happy with me … As if being a young widow wasn’t grief enough, I had another layer added to it – the suicide widow. I was still working on being able to see that it wasn’t my fault… Yet, sometimes, the thought of what if I had done this or that still pops up in my mind…

The truth is that James was sick. He had a “cancer” in his mind, as I prefer to call it. He couldn’t think straight. His “cancer” took over his mind and thoughts… He started to feel like a burden and that he wasn’t good enough for me… Even though I was always telling him how much I loved him and how much I needed him… I remember, on our last night together, I fell asleep thinking how lucky I was to have him in my life, that we were really made for each other… I turned around in bed, and he was already sleeping, so I just kissed him softly on his shoulder and didn’t wake him up…. He had been struggling to sleep over the last few weeks, so I didn’t dare to wake him from that so deserved rest… I regret that so much now… I wish I had woken him up and told him what I was thinking – that I loved him and he was what made me a better person!

Tackling the taboos

In 2023, I finally started to be open about James’s death. I realised that there was still so much taboo and stigma surrounding the loss of a loved one by suicide. I needed to help to change that somehow. I started to talk about James’s death and how it had affected me. I raised money for charities involved with mental health and suicide awareness (including Mind and Tough to Talk), I will be one of the Baton of Hope Bearers (https://batonofhopeuk.org/the-tour/) and I started to write a blog about my experience of being a young widow and a suicide loss survivor. 

Every time anyone said the words “committed suicide”, I would correct them (something unfortunately, I still have to do frequently). People who died by suicide didn’t commit a crime! They were sick with an invisible sickness, and because of its invisibility, it is so hard to detect, diagnose and treat… It is a sickness so wrapped up in taboo and stigma, that people don’t seek help for it… It’s heartbreaking that suicide is the number one preventable cause of death for men under the age of 50 in the UK.

I had noticed James was not his normal self. I talked with him. He tried to hide it from me, until around one week before his death, when he realised he wasn’t OK, he couldn’t sleep. He thought he wasn’t good enough for me, that he wasn’t good enough at his work (he was one of the best). I begged him to seek help, to talk to his GP… He didn’t want to because of the stigma of mental health. He thought if he went to seek help people at work would never trust him again. Unfortunately, so many young men think they need to hide their mental health struggles, because if not they will not be man enough. It enrages me when I listen someone telling a young kid to “soldier up”! That is not OK! Let boys cry! Let them know it is OK to cry and to talk about their feelings!

I made James promise he would never kill himself (the cases of suicide were raising during lockdown, lots of people were struggling with their mental health and with feeling isolated). He looked into my eyes and he promised me, “babe, I would never do that to you…”, and I believed him. I believed him because he was no liar… He promised me he would talk with the GP and take some days off.

In our last call (he was working away from home that week), he told me he was feeling better and that I was right, “babe, next week I will take the week off and go to the GP”. I was so happy and relieved to hear that… James would be OK again…. Next day, I had the worst news of my life… James was dead, he had taken his own life…

Remembering James

In July, made five years since we talked last time... is still so surreal that you aren't here... I miss you so much... I love you as much, or even more, than I loved you five years ago... This year you will be gone for longer than the time we were together, and that is bothering me so much... turning everything even harder...  I keep busy, with work, friends and other hobbies… 

So many things happened these last five years... And I just hope that you are proud of me. Every time I achieve something you are the first person in my mind... I want so much to share all with you... but you aren't here anymore... and is so painful... I wish I wasn’t in pain anymore, but unfortunately, the pain that made you decide to end your life has migrated to me when you died. I still miss you and I know I will for the rest of my life. I also know you would like me to be happy again and live my life to the full, and I promise I am trying! But there are days and days… But I try to live by what the father of Bridget Jones told her in “Bridget Jones: Mad about the boy” movie, “It is not enough to survive, you have to live”! And I am here, every day, living, for me, for both of us!

I love you James… I still love you and I will always love you… I wish you could see you as I saw you – a gentle, loving man with a big golden heart! You were too good for this world… Maybe it was because of that that you had so much pain within you… You absorbed all the world’s pains…