I've tried for just over three years to get on with my life but

I was the last person my best friend of nearly 20 years called before she shot herself. We talked for nearly two hours and I could not find the words to dissuade her from her suicide.

It takes a long time to suss out your responsibility in such a loss. You really have to take much time to figure out what was in your control and what you could not do. I think this is similar in all great losses.

Do you hold grief and guilt because you believe there was more you could have done to have changed the outcome? This is an important question. You are wrestling the universe for control. You did have some. You did not have some.

And then you have to forgive yourself for what you could have controlled and failed to. Holding on to guilt is almost always an attempt to believe we are more in control of this universe than we really are.

It is very difficult to grant a person who was your child autonomy or to believe they had a path which did not include you. This is a separation in itself that is painful.

Now you must find change. And that means do different things than you have ever done before. You have to create a new pattern of concepts and abilities in your own head.

You also have to replace your painful memories. So deliberately conjure up happy memories of your child and really focus on those. Then train yourself to divert from the painful memories to the happy memories. It does take training.

I know this is a magical universe. I know that energy does not die. They are not gone. It is your life that is diminished and your life which you must fill again.