Hope can feel like a strange word when you’ve lost someone to suicide. There are days when hope feels almost impossible to find because grief has a way of making the future look completely different than the one you imagined. You can wake up, make breakfast, take care of the kids, go to work, go to church, laugh at something someone says—and still carry a piece of your heart that hurts in a way nobody else can see.

I used to think hope meant believing that everything would eventually be okay. I don’t think that anymore. Sometimes hope is much smaller than that. Sometimes hope is simply getting through today. Sometimes it is getting out of bed when you don’t want to. Sometimes it is finding one good moment in a day that was otherwise incredibly hard. Sometimes it is allowing yourself to laugh without feeling guilty that you are laughing.

For me, hope is also found in my children. It is found in the ordinary parts of life that continue happening even when part of your heart wishes time could stop. It is in the people sitting around my table, the conversations, the chaos, the little moments I might have once overlooked. Loss has a way of changing what you notice. Things that once seemed ordinary can become reminders that life is still happening, and there is still beauty here.

My faith has changed the way I understand hope, too. I don’t believe God asks us to pretend something doesn’t hurt simply because we believe in Him. I don’t think faith means we stop asking questions or stop missing the person we lost. I think sometimes faith is continuing to reach for God when you don’t understand what He allowed to happen. It is trusting Him even when the answers don’t come in the way you want them to.

And maybe that is one of the most important things I can say during Suicide Prevention Month: hope doesn’t have to mean that the pain isn’t real. Hope can exist right in the middle of the pain.

If you are struggling right now, please don’t make a permanent decision based on a moment you believe will last forever. You may not be able to see what tomorrow holds, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing ahead of you. There are people you haven’t met yet, moments you haven’t experienced yet, places you haven’t been, laughter you haven’t heard and pieces of your story that haven’t been written.

And if you’re grieving someone who died by suicide, I want you to know that hope doesn’t mean leaving them behind. You can carry their memory and still keep living. You can miss them and still smile. You can have hard days and still have good ones. You can love the person you lost while learning how to love the life that remains.

I still have hard days. I still have questions. I still have moments when grief catches me off guard. But I also have hope. Not because I have figured everything out, but because I believe there is still goodness ahead.

So if today is hard, don’t worry about figuring out the rest of your life.

Just get through today.

And then tomorrow, get through tomorrow.

Sometimes hope begins with nothing more than deciding to stay long enough to see what comes next.

You are not a burden. Your life matters. Your story is not finished. There is still hope.

If you or someone you know is struggling or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is immediate danger, call 911.

#SuicidePreventionMonth #SuicideAwareness #SuicideLoss #HopeAfterLoss #MentalHealthAwareness #EveryLifeMatters