When Creativity Feeds on Grief

After losing my brother to suicide, I turned my pain into daily posts. It resonated — but at a cost.

When my younger brother Austin died by suicide, I did what so many grieving people do in the digital age: I started writing.

I wrote about him on LinkedIn — the small memories, the hard truths, the questions that would never be answered. I wrote about suicide, about grief, about the quiet ways loneliness can kill.

The posts resonated. Tens of thousands of people read them. Strangers messaged me to say my words mattered. My audience grew by more than 10,000 followers. I told myself I was helping others heal.

What I didn’t see was the way I was quietly hurting myself.

---

A Loop I Didn’t Recognize