‘Once you get together with a bunch of other broken people, you don’t feel so lost, and you don’t feel so broken.’

Rani Goldman, Bay Shore

“My work has been grief work for most of my life. I got my master’s in thanatology, working with end-of-life issues, coping with all phases of grief. I took care of my grandmother when I was 31 when she was on hospice care. I really wanted to know more about what grief is.

“When I was 26, my cousin died of a drug overdose. We had been close. I had a dear friend who also struggled with addiction. Suicide took her life at 32. We were the same age. It was around the same time I was taking care of my grandmother. It was really tough because you never expect it and you have so many unanswered questions: Why didn’t I see it? How could I have helped? How did I not know this?

People need an opportunity to share and not be afraid to tell their stories and not keep it hidden.

“Grief work has been a way for me to understand what I was feeling, but also to be able to share with other people that you have to talk about it. You need to come to terms with it so you can start to heal.

“When I came to The Neighborhood House in West Sayville in 2020 to work with suicide survivors, I didn’t yet know that suicide and overdose is such a big problem in this area. The entire focus is working with survivors of suicide and overdose. It can be years after a suicide or overdose. It can be the next day. It can be the in-between period of somebody that they love dearly has passed and they’re waiting for a medical examiner to give them an answer of what happened. They come here looking for hope.

“The whole thrust is to bring a community who’s hurting together to be able to process in a meaningful way and develop connections with other people because suicide and overdose is a stigmatized topic.

“People need an opportunity to share and not be afraid to tell their stories and not keep it hidden. It’s been life-changing for me. I feel like I came into this looking for something that was interesting and would give more enlightenment to this issue of suicide. I feel like it’s given me so much more than I ever hoped. I cannot tell you how many people call on a daily basis, and are just completely broken and lost.

“Once you get together with a bunch of other broken people, you don’t feel so lost, and you don’t feel so broken. You feel like you can kind of glue yourself together and you can kind of make it through another day.”

Interviewed by Liza Burby