Author Seeks to Help Others Experiencing Loss With Book
Author Seeks to Help Others Experiencing Loss With Book
By Tia Carol Jones
Dr. Erie S. Crawford, a Local Social Worker (LSW), was led to doing social work due to her childhood experiences. She decided to make it her life’s mission to improve the quality of life for people who had unpleasant experiences in their childhood and lives. She specifically wanted to help those who were underserved and unheard.
Crawford has been a social worker for more than 25 years. She returned to school to get a Ph.D. in business psychology and organizational leadership. She wanted to be a liaison in the C-Suite for people in the workplace to effectively have their voices heard, because she noticed that there was a challenge for some people.
Crawford lost her husband, James Crawford, a retired police officer, who was also a pastor, in 2019. Shortly after retiring, he lost his life to suicide. She described it as a life-changing experience.
“I often describe it as you literally seeing your life blow up right before your eyes and you’re trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together, even though they’re scattered all about and they didn’t fall in a unified way,” she said.
Crawford said 2019 was a time that went from a joyous occasion, because her husband of 20 years was retiring to him going into a slump of depression that even his counselor couldn’t help him get out of. Being a social worker, she is always looking for ways for people to heal. As a strong proponent of piecing back life when things happen that can knock a person down, Crawford wrote the book, The Other Side of Midnight: A Journey to Healing Spouses and Loved Ones Affected by Suicide.
Because of her faith, Crawford didn’t want to write a book that didn’t provide solutions to help people to heal from the loss of their loved ones from suicide, while helping them reimagine and rebuild their lives. She said when it comes to a loss from suicide, people can spend time trying to figure out why the person did what they did, but they will never know – unless they left a note or something behind.
“I’m trying to help people to move past that point of trying to figure out why their loved one do what they did, versus how can I heal myself from the inside out so that I can start living again,” she said.
In the book, Crawford shares insight into who her husband was. She wants people to know that he wasn’t his depression and that he was a man who lived a normal life, but when he had bouts of depression it took control of the man people knew and loved. In each chapter, she focuses on the aftermath of how each group of people who might have had a relationship with him were trying to piece their lives together. She tries to provide practical tools on how to move forward and the book also has reflection questions to help people process their grief.
Crawford said it took her two years to write the book. She started it and because of the subject matter, she stopped writing it. She went back, changed her husband’s name, as a way to help other people who might have experienced the same kind of loss. Crawford said when someone has experienced the loss of a loved one from suicide, the best way to support them is to sit with them and be available to them when they need someone to talk to, to listen to them, not to provide solutions or to ask questions.
“The person who is left behind is not in any position to answer your questions, nor would they possibly have the answers to your questions,” she said. She added that it was helpful for her when people just sat with her and allowed her to do the talking, just for her to communicate.
Crawford said that depression and anxiety are real mental health illnesses. She said there is a difference between moments of depression and having depression, and being anxious about something versus having anxiety disorder. She said if someone has voiced that they are unhappiness or desire to take their lives, people need to take that seriously. She said it is important for people to check in with their loved ones. She said there aren’t any real true warning signs. While she saw the changes in her husband, she tried to be more emotionally aware and conscious and to be present with him. She said she encouraged him to get counseling, but it was already too late.
“If you see your loved on struggling, check in with them, even when they say everything is all right, because there is a likelihood that everything is not all right, and you can see when the light leaves out of your loved one’s eyes,” she said.
Crawford said she doesn’t want anyone who has lost their loved one to suicide to blame themselves. She also wants more people to seek counseling so they can get help processing their loss. She said her faith community really helped her. She wants people to be more comfortable with allowing people to help them. She doesn’t want people to sit in silence about mental health disorders, she said people in the Black community can no longer sit in silence about these issues. She said the silence doesn’t help, it only allows the problem to get worse.
To purchase the book, visit https://tinyurl.com/4df3ycr6.
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