Author guest post from Lisa Morgan.

Grief doesn’t knock politely. It crashes through the door, rips your world apart, and leaves you standing in the wreckage with nothing but questions. My brother’s suicide did that to me.

Up to that point, my brother had been my mentor – the only person who truly invested time in me, teaching me how to survive and navigate life’s toughest moments. As a Colour Sergeant Major in the army, he passed on invaluable survival skills and life lessons that shaped who I am today. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had such a mentor and recognising this changed everything.

I left. I travelled. And eventually, I landed in Iraq, working in aviation security at Baghdad International Airport during the height of the war. I arrived with just enough strength and skills to survive a warzone-skills my brother had taught me. I used those skills to train Iraqi personnel through role-playing and practical exercises. Sharing what I’d learned from him became a vital part of my own healing and purpose.

Being me has never been an easy fate-I joke, because being adopted was always my excuse to fail. I was very much alone, so finding the strength to move on was incredibly tense.

I understand now why some people don’t move on-staying in the grip of grief is sometimes safer than risking the raw, uncertain road of living again.

After my brother died, I lay on my bed for weeks, not eating or drinking, dreaming that the mattress had swallowed me whole. It took some reluctant counselling before a lightbulb moment came: instead of being sad and useless, why not honour the only person who ever took the time to help me? He was the only person who truly valued me.

I took my brother with me on that journey, instead of living in his death and passing. That’s how I looked at it, anyway.

Many people will go through what I’ve gone through. It’s hard, but once we overcome grief, we move on-and we start living again, not just for ourselves, but because we owe it to those we’ve lost.

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