Alice Hendy
Alice Hendy is Founder & CEO at Ripple Suicide Prevention Charity, an online interceptive tool designed to ensure more help and support is provided to individuals who are conductin...
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Has what happened affected your social life?
What's happened has hugely affected my social life, particularly at the beginning. From a social perspective, I didn't really want to go out. I felt like I was bringing the mood down if I went out with my friends, because I was always sad and feeling upset and not really wanting to join in with any of the fun that they might've been having. I think also there's an element where you just want to be by yourself to process what's happened, and as a result you decline any offers of going out and so on. But it does improve. It does get better. There was a time when I first lost my brother, where I thought, I don't ever really want to go out again here. Now I can quite happily go out for lunch and actually enjoy it, or I can go out with my friends of an evening or to a pub and smile and have a good time, and I didn't think I'd ever get to that stage. So yes, it does impact your social life, but from that perspective, it does get better.
What questions did you have after your loss?
So many, many. I think first and foremost, I wanted to know how my brother had died. I wanted to know where he died, the time he died, what happened in the lead up to his death to make him want to do that or make that decision. I wanted to know where all of his belongings were. I wanted to know if he had left me a note of any kind to sign off really, and tell me, or explain to me why he has done this. So there are so many questions that go around your head. You don't get an answer to all of them because the police have to carry out their own investigations at times. And so sometimes it might take a while to actually get the answers to some of these questions, but you do get the answers eventually, in most circumstances. So try to be patient and try to piece together what happened in your own time, because some of it might be quite traumatic to hear, but there's no real guidebook in terms of what questions to ask. It's just really the amount of information that you want to know, and that can be different for everybody.
Can the lost of someone cause physical feelings?
The physical feelings that you can feel when you've lost somebody in this way are quite varied, and again, it is really dependent on the person. So what I'm feeling physically, you might not. I know from my own personal perspective, I violently vomited. You have pains sometimes in your stomach. I had a really weird reaction actually, which I've never had before, which is my head and my scalp became absolutely full of dandruff. Really, really weird. Never had any issues with that before, but it became a real issue for me. As soon as I learned the news, my body went completely weak. I couldn't stand up, I had to sit down shaking. It's not nice, it's not a nice experience, but everybody has a different experience, so it can be very varied, unfortunately.