I Understand: Pain, Love, and Healing after Suicide

By: Vonnie Woodrick

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Synopsis: Time doesn&’t heal—love heals When Vonnie Woodrick lost her husband Rob to suicide in 2003, she was faced with a series of decisions. How would she move on? How would she support and raise her three children as a young widow? How would she talk about Rob and honor his memory? These questions had no easy answers, but Vonnie found herself longing for one thing in particular: understanding. The stigma of mental illness loomed large over Rob&’s death and made healing difficult. But Vonnie found the common assumptions surrounding suicide to be false. Rob was not &“crazy.&” He did not choose to take his own life. He was in agony and only wanted the pain to end. His death was a direct result of his mental illness. Why didn&’t more people understand this? Over a decade later, Vonnie and her children created the nonprofit organization i understand to help others enduring this same grief and loneliness. Since its founding in 2014, i understand has become a haven of compassionate comfort and a powerful voice in the movement to change the way we talk about suicide so that it can be seen for what it truly is: a terminal effect of mental illness, rather than a deliberate choice. This is the story of how love transformed Vonnie&’s brokenness into hope—not only for herself and her family, but for anyone struggling to emerge from the darkness of suicide.