Losing Family To Suicide (11 Years On) | The Dickinson Family on Tom's Talks Podcast

The Tom's Talks Podcast is a place where we speak to a vast array of people from different walks of life and find out what makes them them. We will speak about their unique journey and delve into the highs and the lows which ultimately define them. 

⚠️ This episode discusses suicide in detail, as well as addiction and grief. If you’re struggling, Samaritans are available 24/7 on 116 123.

“I’ve got four children. And that’s never going to change.”

Tomorrow marks eleven years since Tom lost his brother Liam to suicide. Tom has spent seven years telling his side of that story. In this episode, he sits down with the people who lived it alongside him: his mum, his sister and his brother.

This is the conversation about suicide bereavement that families rarely get to hear. It covers the guilt, the anger, the things they said and wish they hadn’t, and the long years of loving someone through addiction while being terrified of what might come. It also covers how a family that was nearly pulled apart ended up holding each other together.

Liam was charismatic, hilarious and fiercely loved. He quoted films constantly, gave everyone a nickname and could make a room laugh without trying. He was also in pain. After a serious accident at 16 and years of addiction, the people closest to him were left trying to help someone who couldn’t yet ask for it.

What we get into:
- The memories that still make them laugh: the film quotes, the nicknames, the Mrs. Doubtfire impressions
- Liam as a person, not just the story of how he died
- What it was like to love someone through addiction, and why the family says the drug was never really the problem
- His accident at 16, the long recovery, and the link between brain injury and mental health they only understood years later
- The impossible mix of love and anger, and being embarrassed by someone you’d do anything for
- A mum who was a mental health nurse and still carries the question: “should I have been able to fix him?”
- The funeral, the 500 people who came, and the moments from that week nobody expects to remember
- How each of them grieved differently: pulling over in the woods on the way to work, crying in the gym shower, being afraid to cry in front of each other
- The voicemail she played again and again, and the day she couldn’t remember what his voice sounded like
- “How many children have you got?” The question that still stops a grieving parent in their tracks
- How the next generation keeps Liam in the family, including a little girl who never met him but talks about her uncle all the time
- Why the occasions are harder than the ordinary days
- A poem written ten years on, read for the first time
- Tom on finding purpose in the work he does, and why it’s exhausting being in his own head
- What they’d say to Liam if they had one more day
- Advice for any family in the first year after losing someone to suicide

If someone you love is struggling, the message this family wants you to hear is simple: you’re not a burden, you are loved, and there is always a way through, even when it can’t be seen.

Whether you’ve been bereaved by suicide, are supporting someone who’s struggling, or just want to understand what grief looks like from the inside, this one is for you.

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