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A new world opened at an awful cost: honest account of PTG

Neal Tricarico · · 9 min read

Post-traumatic growth after losing his son Anthony to suicide was not a glow-up for Neal Tricarico -- it was a wider world that opened at an unbearable cost, and both truths hold at once. This post examines the paradox honestly.

Open ocean and vastness under a warm dusk, on A new world opened at an awful cost: honest account of PTG - The Endurant Way

Post-traumatic growth after suicide loss is real. The research says it, and I have lived it. But here is the part nobody markets on the brochure: the world that opened up for me after Anthony died by suicide did so at a cost I would pay any price to undo. A wider world. A deeper life. A purpose that saves other people. And an entry fee of losing my son. Both truths sit in the same chest every morning I wake up, and neither one cancels the other.

TL;DR

I lost my son Anthony to suicide, and in the years since, something real did grow out of the wreckage. But calling it growth without naming the cost is dishonest. This is an honest look at what PTG actually feels like from inside the paradox: a wider world you never wanted, a deeper life you did not ask for, and the awful price of admission that you carry forever.

What did the loss open up?

Before Anthony died, my world was orderly. I knew who I was, what I was building, what the next decade looked like. After he died, all of that was gone - the floor, the walls, every reference point. And in that terrifying emptiness, something else began to enter: a radical clarity about what matters and what does not. I stopped sweating the small things almost overnight because the scale of what I was carrying recalibrated every other measurement in my life.

The research on post-traumatic growth describes this as one of the five classic domains: a greater appreciation for life Posttraumatic Growth Resource Center. The studies are right, but they cannot capture what it feels like to have appreciation arrive as a consequence of everything that mattered being ripped away. A wider world opened - different people, deeper conversations, a mission I did not choose but could not refuse. And I would set fire to every bit of it if it meant Anthony was still here. That is not a contradiction I am trying to resolve. It is the honest truth I live inside.

Why does growth feel like a betrayal?

Because every time I get on a stage and help someone, every time I write something that reaches a person in their dark hour, there is a voice underneath it asking: what kind of father are you? How can you be okay when your son is gone?

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention puts this directly: post-traumatic growth does not imply a lack of suffering from mental pain or distress. Growth can, and often does, result from and take place alongside that suffering AFSP: To Turn a Personal Tragedy Into Triumph. Reading that sentence for the first time felt like being handed permission to exist. I did not have to choose between being broken and being useful. I was both.

The betrayal feeling does not come from the growth itself. It comes from the cultural script that says you are supposed to "move on" or "find closure," as if healing means the loss stops mattering. That script is a lie. The growth is real and the loss is real and the two do not negotiate. They share a room, and you learn to live in a room with both of them.

Can you be more awake and still want it all back?

Yes. A thousand times yes. I am more awake now than I was before Anthony died. I see people differently. I notice what someone is carrying instead of what they are performing. I do not waste time on things that do not feed something real in me or in someone else. The intensity of loss cracked something open that has not closed back up, and I do not want it to.

But awake is not the same as grateful for the loss. Nobody gets to tell me that the cost was worth the awareness. I get to hold both: I am more alive in the life I have now, and I would give every moment of that aliveness back to have my son alive today. That is not a contradiction to solve. It is a paradox to carry.

Research on meaning-making after suicide loss confirms what survivors already know in their bones: meaning and grief coexist Continuing Bonds After Loss by Suicide. The people who are able to make meaning of the loss do not report less grief. They report a different relationship to the grief, one where the grief has a shape and a purpose inside a larger story. That is what happened to me. The grief did not shrink. The story grew around it.

What is the cost nobody markets?

The cost is the person. The mornings where you wake up and realize again, fresh, that they are gone. The surviving children grieving their sibling while you are supposed to be the strong one. The thousand tiny moments - the empty chair, the missing laugh, the future that will not happen - that accumulate as background radiation for the rest of your life.

The five domains of PTG that the researchers catalogued - appreciation for life, deeper relationships, new possibilities, personal strength, spiritual development - are real. I have experienced all of them. But each domain has a price tag stapled to it. The deeper relationships come because you lost the deepest one. The new possibilities exist only because the old ones were destroyed. The personal strength is forged in a fire nobody would choose to walk into. This is why I have written before that post-traumatic growth is not closure - the wound stays, and how you carry it changes.

The National Institute of Mental Health describes trauma's aftermath as something that can affect someone emotionally and physically - anxiety, sadness, anger, intrusive thoughts NIMH Coping With Traumatic Events. That is the clinical description of being inside the fire. And PTG is not what happens when the fire goes out. PTG is what happens when you stay in the fire long enough that something else begins to form.

How do you hold expansion and devastation together?

You stop trying. That is the answer. You stop trying to hold them together, because holding them together implies you are keeping two opposite things from flying apart, and the truth is they are not opposite. They are the same thing, seen from different angles at different times on different days.

On a Tuesday morning I feel the expansion: the call with a grieving father who heard me speak, the text from a stranger who says something I wrote kept them going another day, the moment where my own pain becomes a ladder for someone else. On Tuesday night I feel the devastation: the quiet house, the phone that does not ring with Anthony's number, the photos I can scroll through but never add to. That tension between the dream I lost and the destiny that arrived is something I explored in I lost my dream and found my destiny, and it sits in this same paradox every single day.

Neither Tuesday cancels the other. The research is clear: growth and distress routinely coexist. Many bereaved people who report deep growth also report intense, ongoing pain. The two are not on opposite ends of a scale where one going up means the other goes down. They are on parallel tracks, both running at the same time.

So I do not hold them together. I let them both be true. I let the morning be about purpose and the night be about grief, and I do not apologize for either one. That is not holding. That is living.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it wrong to feel changed for the better after losing someone?

No. The research is unambiguous that positive change after trauma is a documented, measurable phenomenon. The key is that the change does not justify the loss or make it "worth it." Feeling changed for the better is not the same thing as being glad the loss happened. Those are different sentences, and you get to speak both of them separately.

Does growth minimize the loss?

It does not. Growth after suicide loss sits alongside the grief rather than replacing it. Many loss survivors report that their personal strength, relationships, and philosophy of life deepened in the years following the loss, and none of that made the loss any smaller. The grief does not get lighter. You get stronger carrying it AFSP Suicide Loss Resources. For me, finding a way forward after suicide loss started with the smallest steps, not with the big revelations.

What is the PTG paradox?

The PTG paradox is the lived reality that the worst thing that ever happened to you can also be the thing that reshapes you into someone more present, more purposeful, and more connected to others. The paradox is not that the bad thing becomes good. It is that the bad thing stays bad, and growth arrives anyway. Both things are true at once, and neither one is the whole story.

How do I know if what I am feeling is PTG or just getting by?

You do not need to know. Most people experiencing PTG do not realize it is happening while it is happening. It is only in retrospect, looking back across years, that the pattern becomes visible. The five domains - appreciation, relationships, possibilities, strength, spirituality - are not a checklist you work through. They are a description of what often emerges, not a prescription for what you ought to feel. If you are getting through the day, you are already doing the work.

Sources cited in this analysis?

If you are in crisis, call or text 988. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7/365, free and confidential.