A Love Letter: Where Psychologists Cry, Flowers Have Thorns, and Life Takes Shape Again*

by Jalane Moura Maia Bezerra**View original image "Young Woman Writing a Letter" (Federico Zandomeneghi, 1874)

Today is no ordinary day! Today is September 17, 2018, and you would have turned 64. I decided to write your story, Dad, our story. Whatever many people may think or say, this is a love letter. It is my gift to you and to the universe. For a long time I kept quiet. I was ashamed to say whose daughter I was. Whose daughter are you? Who are your parents? When you live in a small town, your identity is bound up with your parents' identity. Fear has been with me ever since you died by suicide in 2010, along with the tears I hid, the anguish, and the grief. It was the worst year of my life. My husband had a heart attack that same year, at 27. We had only just married. Less than a month later came the tragedy. My father experienced a psychotic episode in which he killed my two brothers and my stepmother, then took his own life. Nothing would be the same after that Saturday, May 15. My life took a 180-degree turn. But how could that be? The psychologist's father did this? Did he have a breakdown? What kind of psychologist can't even take care of her own father? How is she going to look after her patients? Those are some of the questions I heard at the time. It was so hard to survive all that judgment. The term survivor really does fit those of us bereaved by suicide. “Murderer, murderer! How could he take the lives of two children, one two years old and the other four?” “When he turns up, we'll finish him off! We'll burn him, lynch him.” I heard these words at the wake and especially at the burial of my brothers and stepmother. And I thought, my God, isn't his death enough? They want to kill him again? We lived through three days of terror. My father's body had disappeared in the waters of the Rio São Francisco. To make sure he would die, he had shot himself and then thrown himself from the metal bridge that connects Paulo Afonso in Bahia to the state of Alagoas. I was certain he was dead, but people had all kinds of theories, including that he had done it all and fled. The fact that his body was missing fed that fantasy. My suffering was visceral. I cried out to God and Our Lady to deliver us from that nightmare. The family who died was the family of my father's second marriage, to which my two little half brothers were born. My mother, my two other brothers, and I were his family from his first marriage. Our unity, closeness, strength, and faith let us rise from the ashes like a phoenix. In those days we never left one another's side. We slept together and handled every loose end and problem together. On the third day, the Rio São Francisco gave our suffering a reprieve. It released Dad's body, which had been underwater, caught on branches and stumps in the same place where he had jumped. It was a great sign that things would start to get better. There had been so many rumors, so much cruelty toward our feelings and our lives. Photos of the killings leaked online. People talked about the “exceptional cruelty” of the crime he had committed, and no one spared a thought for me, my mother, or my brothers. It was a display of horrors. People shared the images of violence and commented on them. How can human beings take pleasure in another person's misery and pain? Because we lived in a small town, what happened assumed enormous proportions, even making national television. As soon as his body was found and identified, we hurried to bury him. It was almost six in the evening.

We slipped past the reporters near the forensic institute and rushed to the burial. Very few people were there: me, Mom, my two brothers, my father-in-law, four or five close friends, and a cousin on my father's side. Thank God we found a priest to perform the rites of committal, since we are Catholic. We had to do everything quietly as night fell. Many people were outraged and ready to “kill him” all over again. The days passed slowly. My older brother, who lived in Salvador, managed to spend the month with us, and my younger brother was already in town on vacation. My mother, a piece of living rock, gave us the emotional footing and support we needed. This woman of rock, whose name is Maria José, took care of every arrangement for the burial of my little brothers and my stepmother. Even in breaking the news of the tragedy, she drew on every bit of her skill as a mother to tell us while sheltering and protecting us. My older brother and I were spared some of the details because we were in Salvador that fateful day. Everything came out step by step: first my father's death, then the suicide, then the killings. My youngest brother was in town on vacation and had no such luck. He found out in the worst possible way, from the radio and phone calls from people who knew very little about what had happened.

Soon afterward, my brothers went back to Salvador and returned to their routines. I stayed in Paulo Afonso. My life went on in a different form. I felt as if I were floating. I forgot a great many things and became chronically disorganized with my belongings, clothes, and personal papers. I also developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress. I slept badly and cried in secret almost every day. I had many dreams and nightmares. I felt profoundly sad. Other people's comments cut into my soul like sharpened scythes. I was numb for a long time. Therapy helped me enormously to get through the tragedy. I went back to seeing patients in my practice soon afterward. My patients also helped me a great deal. None of them intruded on my privacy. Most knew what had happened, yet at the end of a session they would just hold my hand tightly or hug me. Some stroked my hair and said, all this will pass. Each of these gestures of love and respect made me stronger. My practice grew day by day, and many people sought me out for clinical care. I could not understand it because I was still so afraid of being judged.

Later I discovered I was human and that psychologists cry too. After all, we are made of flesh, bones, and tears. Mom, my husband, and I grew stronger together. In 2011, I became pregnant with Dante, my first child. He was born in May 2012, a month that has marked my life with pain and love. In September 2015, my second son, Davi, was born. I continued my studies and my work as a clinical and school psychologist. At first I argued with God a great deal, because many of the people who came to see me were experiencing suicidal thoughts and behavior. Why did they come to me? To me, of all people, marked by such a tragedy? I stopped arguing with God and decided to study more of the world of flowers and thorns that is each human life. In 2017 I took a course in suicidology and fell in love with it. Soon afterward, I was admitted to a master's program with a project on suicide prevention in schools. I am still a mother, a wife, a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a psychologist. Life took shape again and keeps taking shape each day that I accept my calling to care for souls in so much pain. I am no longer ashamed to say who my father was. Dad, you were the great laboratory of my existence. All the bipolar disorder and emotional instability could neither hide nor diminish your love for me and my brothers. You loved us the way you could. You suffered in your own way too, and gave us life so that today we could tell the great love story we lived in the best moments of our childhood. Longing grips our hearts whenever we see the flowers of the yellow caraibeira trees fallen on the spring ground. We know that some flowers may have thorns, yet nothing can diminish a flower's beauty, just as nothing can shake our certainty that life took shape again and keeps taking shape in each of us.

*Originally published in "Histórias de sobreviventes do suicídio: volume 2" / org. Karen Scavacini. — São Paulo : Instituto Vita Alere, 2019. pp. 69-71.

**Jalane is our guest at the LYSIS meeting on October 29, 2025, at 8 p.m. on WebConf: https://webconf.ufpel.edu.br/b/ale-cf2-si3-mcw. The event is free and open to the community. Participants will receive a certificate.