Launched with a powerful narrative thrust of the suicide of her son in 1978, LaRita Archibald leads the reader from the initial trauma of violent death, through the ragged, brutal and unknown psychological and emotional landscape that must be traversed to find eventual peace. Using lessons learned from decades of work with suicide bereaved LaRita helps survivors of suicide loss have a framework for understanding the complexities of suicide grief and the reassurance that what they are experiencing is normal for what they have experienced. She gives names to the unsettling experiences of 'phantom pain' and 'flashbacks' and validates feelings of anger, responsibility, frustration, even relief, as well as the need to search for answers, reasons and cause. By addressing the concept of 'choice' and the impact of relligious beliefs, misconceptions and age-old bias, LaRita helps uncover layers of cultural influence that often create barriers to healling. She shares anecdotes of military suicide loss, the compounded tragedy of murder/suicide and multiple suicide loss and how those left behind gained the strength to work through the extreme circumstance of their tragedies. She offers practical advice for protecting the parents marriage after a child's suicide, for meeting needs of bereaved children and for taking care of one's physical, emotional and spiritual self during acute grief. She acknowledges the evolvement of a 'new normal; the adjustment to the physical and social environment suicide grievers must make to live beyond the death of their loved one and, as well, to live with the fact of suicide as the cause of the death. LaRita offers the reader suggestions for moving from being a victim to a survivor, and eventually, a "thriver". In her book, Finding Peace Without All The Pieces, LaRita Archibald helps the reader place the pieces of their own loss into a mosaic that brings hope and healing just by reading it. She extends the promise that the overwhelming anguish of today will eventually subside into manageable sorrow, that the suicide of one dealy loved IS survivable and there is healing and peace waiting in the future. She takes the hand of suicide bereaved, lending the strength of her own healing, as she helps them cross crevasses of deep suffering and tread the rugged paths through mountains of grief toward a plateau of peace. All the while she comforts and encourages, telling them. "Follow me, dear survivor. I've made this bitter journey. I will show you the way."
About the Author: In early 1979, six months after the suicide of her twenty-four year old son, Kent, the second oldest of her five children, LaRita Archibald joined the American Association of Suicidology, initiating over three decades as a suicidologist. LaRita and her husband, Eldon, started HEARTBEAT, among the world's first support organizations for suicide bereaved, in 1980. Since inception of the first HEARTBEAT LaRita has directed the formation of forty-two additional chapters in the United States, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the Arctic Circle. In the mid-1980's LaRita joined other concerned Coloradoans to form SPARE, a statewide prevention organization and forerunner of the present Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado. She co-founded the Suicide Prevention Partnership of the Pikes Peak Region in 1993 and was one of a three-person team from that organization contracted by the U.S. Air Force three consecutive years to develop and train Crisis Response Teams at USAFE, Ramstien, GR. LaRita has served as AAS Survivor Division co-director, Survivor Award chair, Healing After Suicide conference chair, Surviving newsletter editor and, currently, on a committee developing AAS Suicide Bereavement Support Group best practice guidelines. At the end of 2011 LaRita handed the leadership torch of the Colorado Springs HEARTBEAT chapter to four dedicated, 'seasoned' survivors. She plans to travel with her husband of sixty-two years, to paint, fish, attend football and baseball games and the college graduations and weddings of her nine grandchildren.