I just have to keep going forward … and reminding myself that I’ve been through a lot, but I still have a long future ahead of me and it’s just like another chapter that I closed. – Heather Miller
On April 11, 2010, Heather Miller’s father woke her up in the morning, gave her a hug, told her he loved her, said he was going out for the day and would be back later.
However, John Miller, 53, never returned home.
He decided, instead, to take his life.
Heather, now 24, recently sat down at a local coffee shop in Chardon to talk about her dad, his struggle with addiction, health issues and depression, as well as her own journey through healing.
“Growing up, it was my dad and my mom,” said the Newbury Township resident, adding she has a younger sister, Hannah, 20, and a half-brother, Sean Miller, 34, both of whom she is very close with. They all grew up in Columbus before college brought Heather to Geauga County.
“And I don’t have a relationship with my mom anymore. (My dad) worked a lot, but anytime he’d come home, he was always an amazing dad,” Heather said. “He was just very caring and very honest with us, and always encouraged us to do what we were passionate about.”
She added, “The entire time I was growing up and until he passed away, he had cirrhosis of the liver and I just found that out recently. I guess the cirrhosis of the liver really contributed to (his depression).”
John also had a mini stroke and, as a result, retired early, cutting off access to health insurance or proper medications for his liver condition, she said.
“So it was really painful. A couple weeks before he took his life, he quit all of his medications. It was a snowball effect at that point I would say,” said Heather.
John and Samantha Miller, Heather’s mom, both struggled with prescription painkiller abuse, she recalled, adding she and her sister never really noticed anything out of the ordinary until middle school.
“We found out that my parents hadn’t been paying the mortgage, so we were losing our house, and we also had foster kids at the time and we lost the foster kids,” Heather explained. “So it really came out of nowhere. We lost everything basically.”
The Millers found an apartment in the same school district and everything seemed to stabilize, Heather said.
“Things started to look up … and I remember I was on my spring break. It was the second to last day of spring break and I went to visit my mom at her job at the local gas station right up the road. My sister was at my aunt’s house for the weekend,” Heather recalled. “And my dad came and I remember him just standing there and looking at the sky, and I was like, ‘Are you OK? Are you depressed?’ He said, ‘No, I’ll be OK.’
“I remember thinking something is kind of off, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. Then, the next morning around 10 a.m. … he came and woke me up and said, ‘I’m going out for the day and I’ll be back later.’ I gave him a hug, he told me that he loved me and that was the last time I saw him.”
John shot himself at a nearby gun range, Heather said.
“Around 4, 5 p.m., a police officer came and knocked on the front door,” she remembered. “He asked if my mom was home. I got her. I remember her screaming and it was kind of blank from there for a little bit. My sister came home and they told my sister. All they said was my dad was dead, but I didn’t know what had happened until that night when I accidentally read the police report.”
The Aftermath
The next week was a blur, Heather said.
“We moved out of the house, had the funeral, everything was just like, boom, boom, boom that week and I remember feeling exhausted,” she said. “The next four years of high school were really rough. My mom progressed from prescription painkillers to harder drugs. We moved in with her boyfriend. We moved from friends’ houses to hotels. I can’t even tell you how many times we moved by the time I was a senior in high school.”
Heather said she and Hannah were put on anti-depressants, but she never felt like they were allowed to cope with or process their father’s death.
However, during her first year of college at Kent State University, Heather’s maternal grandfather killed himself in the same manner — an act that would not only spur Heather’s grieving process, but ultimately change the course of her life.
“I wasn’t really close with that grandpa, but I was sitting there at the funeral and I just remember sobbing because I hadn’t dealt with it, I hadn’t processed anything,” she said. “That was the last time I saw my mom in person was at the funeral.”
Journey to Healing
Heather, who had been dealing with really bad anxiety and depression, as well as post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, decided to see a therapist while in college, but the campus counselor did not end up being a good fit, she said.
In 2015, she met her current significant other, Isaac Praul, 24, who ended up helping her get back on medication, go back to counseling and continue her healing journey.
“He really held my hand and supported me through everything,” she said. “Two years ago, I started seeing a new therapist. She’s amazing. I love her. She’s wonderful. I used to see her every week and now it’s to the point where I see her once a month or if something pops up. I made a tremendous recovery. I didn’t realize how angry I was for a really long time. I was very angry, very emotional, so I got to dive into why I was having all of those issues. It’s really helped a lot.”
For Heather, a combination of medication and counseling, putting up boundaries with toxic relationships in her life as well as talking with her maternal grandmother to better understand her childhood and its impact on her current life have all helped her heal from the trauma of her dad’s suicide.
Heather also expressed gratitude for her boyfriend, her sister and brother as well as his wife, Alison.
“(Hannah) is at Miami of Ohio for her undergrad degree. We talk a lot. We’re very close,” she said. “My brother is doing great. He’s from my dad’s first marriage. He’s an amazing big brother. He and his wife, Alison, helped me through my undergrad career. They’re amazing. They have an almost 2-year-old named Clara. (Sean) has always been my role model.”
Plans for the Future
Heather received her undergrad degree in psychology in 2018 and plans to go into social work with a focus on foster and adoptive kids — a decision influenced by her experience with a social worker as a child.
“Looking back, I really wish the social worker had done more. I would never want a kid to go through what I went through,” she said.
Heather said today, she mainly just misses her dad, wishing he were there for current and future milestones.
“I guess I just miss what the relationship could have bloomed into because we were very close. He was my best friend growing up,” she said. “And it really hurt for a very long time and it still hurts. I wouldn’t say it gets easier. I’d say you just learn how to deal with it more and how to cope more. Some days are worse than others. Random things will trigger it. I try to remind myself of the positive memories I did get with him . . . instead of focusing on the death itself.”
Heather volunteers at the National Alliance on Mental Illness Geauga County to help others in her shoes.
“I’m definitely into the advocacy portion of things,” she said. “I want to make a difference and helping people is really what drives me at the end of the day … what keeps me going. Knowing that I’m making a difference in people’s lives really means a lot to me.”
Through all of this, Heather said she learned she is a lot stronger than she realized she was.
“I just have to keep going forward … and reminding myself that I’ve been through a lot, but I still have a long future ahead of me and it’s just like another chapter that I closed,” she said. “I go back and look at it every once in a while, but I move forward. Because if I look back too much and focus too much on the past, it triggers things. My therapist reminds me frequently that I could be in a completely different place, but I chose to process it.”
Her advice to others going through a similar experience is to know it is OK to view it as difficult.
“Sometimes you just gotta keep going forward. It’s OK to feel weak and down, but you have to remind yourself that you are stronger than you know and it’s just temporary,” said Heather. “My therapist used an analogy, life is like a staircase, you keep climbing and sometimes you fall or the steps are bigger than you realized, but you just gotta keep moving forward.”
NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
COPELINE
1-888-285-5665 or 440-285-5665 to access a Crisis Intervention Specialist.
Text the keyword 4hope to 741 741 and expect a reply from a trained Crisis Counselor within five minutes. Your message is confidential, anonymous and secure.
NAMI HelpLine
1-800-950-6264
For a list of additional resources visit: https://namigeauga.org/crisis-info/
