When Grief Feels Impossible: Hope After Suicide Loss, Dementia, and Trauma with Rachel Dawn!When Grief Feels Impossible: Hope After Suicide Loss, Dementia, and Trauma with Rachel Dawn!
Anchored by the Sword
Author and speaker Rachel Dawn shares her story of losing her brother to suicide while caring for a newborn and a father with dementia, reflecting on grief, rage and faith. The conversation highlights therapy, journaling and a gentle view of God as crucial supports for those facing traumatic loss.
39:36•26 May 2026
Grief, Rage and Gentle Hope: Rachel Dawn on Surviving Suicide Loss and Dementia
Episode Overview
- Grief after suicide can feel like an emotional atom bomb, and it often takes years before daily life feels even slightly stable again.
- You cannot rationally explain a suicide decision, and releasing the pressure to understand every “why” can ease some of the guilt and self-blame.
- Being gentle, patient and full of grace toward yourself is crucial; six months is a very short time in the life of any significant grief.
- Tools like journaling, counselling and, where needed, medication can be vital supports, alongside bringing your pain honestly to God.
- Grief often heals in layers, and many people experience God addressing unseen wounds one small piece at a time rather than all at once.
“You're never going to understand rationally, as a rational thinking person, you're never going to understand why someone commits suicide.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction and deep loss? This conversation on Anchored by the Sword sits right in that tension, as Gina Fox chats with author and speaker Rachel Dawn about grief that feels utterly impossible to carry. Rachel shares her story as a self-described "recovering success addict" and former "good little church girl" whose faith shifted from rule-following religion to a real relationship with God.
That earlier season of divorce and anger at God becomes the backdrop for an even heavier chapter: losing her brother to suicide while three weeks postpartum, all while her dad was slipping away to dementia. She walks through the surreal mix of breastfeeding, FBI phone calls, national news coverage, and trying to keep a refluxy newborn alive, calling suicide loss "an emotional atom bomb" in a life already stretched thin.
One stand-out moment is the advice from her doctor: "You're never going to understand rationally, as a rational thinking person, you're never going to understand why someone commits suicide." That single sentence helped loosen the grip of guilt and endless “why” questions. Rachel talks honestly about rage, therapy, and how journaling her grief, motherhood, and her dad’s decline became a lifeline.
She and Gina also share a bit of humour—accidental cats, book hoarding, and menopausal brain fog—offering a small exhale in the middle of heavy topics.
Throughout, faith threads through the conversation as Rachel describes God as the gentle friend who sits in the wreckage, binding up wounds layer by layer, often in ways she "didn’t even know she needed." The episode speaks directly to anyone facing suicide loss, traumatic grief, or mental health struggles in a Christian context, and gently reminds them: it’s okay that you’re not okay yet. Could this be the kind of honest hope you’ve been needing to hear?
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