Recovery
Grief, slowly: how peer support carried me through losing my brother.
Therapy helped. Medication helped. But it was peer support — someone who'd lost a sibling — that made me believe I'd survive.
When my brother died, I had access to good therapy. I had a primary care doctor who prescribed an antidepressant. I had a yoga class and a journal and the kind of supportive friends who showed up.
And I was still drowning.
What I needed — and didn't know to ask for — was someone who had survived the specific kind of loss I was inside. The platform matched me with a peer who had lost his sister three years before. We talked once a week, sometimes twice. He never said the wrong thing because he had been on the receiving end of all the wrong things. He laughed at the dark jokes I couldn't tell anyone else.
Therapy gave me tools. Medication gave me a floor. But peer support gave me proof that the other side of grief was a place where humans actually live again. That was the part I needed to believe.
A note on names. Stories on this page are real, shared with permission, and lightly edited for clarity and privacy. Names and identifying details may be changed at the storyteller's request.
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