National Military Suicide Survivors Seminar Offered Support

Military suicide survivors help each other heal at seminar
Stars and Stripes
By Heath Druzin
Published: October 28, 2014

Two women hug at a remembrance ceremony at the National Military Suicide Survivor Seminar earlier this month in St. Petersburg, Fla. The program brings together survivors of service member loved ones who committed suicide.
Heath Druzin/Stars and Stripes

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Sitting and sobbing outside the hotel room where her Marine husband had just hanged himself, Kim Ruocco said she was horrified to find that nearly everyone who responded to the scene somehow managed to make her feel worse.

First she asked the hotel manager where her husband was staying, and he wordlessly backed into another room, shutting the door to avoid her. A trauma specialist told her to lie to her children about what had happened.

And then there was the priest.

Addressing the newly widowed woman, just steps away from her Catholic husband’s body, he said, “You know what Catholics believe about suicide? It’s a sin.”

“I said, ‘Are you telling me that I should tell my kids that their dad is not only dead, but that he’s also in hell?’” she recalled. “And he just looked at me.”

That experience in 2005 started Ruocco on what has become a full-time mission to help fellow survivors cope, heal and thrive. That often starts with an annual seminar for and by those who have lost troops and veterans to suicide.

As a testament to the seriousness of the epidemic and the growing willingness of survivors to talk about their experience, the TAPS database for suicide survivors has swelled to more than 5,000.
read more here