There’s no official playbook for how to navigate the grief of a loved one taking their own life. It’s a journey that Charlotte Maya knows all too well.
In 2007, Maya came home from a hike with her two sons and family dog to find police and a priest in the driveway of her Southern California home. Her husband, Sam, who said he was staying behind to take a nap, had instead killed himself.
His suicide came totally out of the blue to Maya and catapulted her and her sons into the unchartered waters of grief and loss.
This past year, Maya published Sushi Tuesdays: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience. The memoir details her family’s experience navigating the aftermath of her husband’s death and the stigma of shame that often accompanies a suicide.
(Courtesy Charlotte Maya
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Courtesy Charlotte Maya)
“Suicide was a story demanding to be told,” Maya told our newsroom’s AirTalk program, which airs on LAist 89.3 FM.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is among the top 10 causes of death in the United States, with an estimated one death every 11 minutes.
Maya and others directly affected by suicide know that talking about it makes a difference. It took her more than a decade to write the book, primarily out of fear that she would be ostracized. What Maya discovered was the opposite.
“People are aching to have this…
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