Dr. Suzan Song

Dr. Suzan Song I'm a Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, author & adviser in humanitarian settings

06/04/2026

Suffering is not the event, it’s the explanation.

06/04/2026

Suffering Is not the event it’s the explanation.

If you’re new here, welcome.I’m Dr. Suzan Song — a psychiatrist, researcher, and humanitarian adviser. I’ve spent the pa...
06/03/2026

If you’re new here, welcome.

I’m Dr. Suzan Song — a psychiatrist, researcher, and humanitarian adviser. I’ve spent the past two decades working across clinical practice, policy, and field settings, with everyone from government officials and founders navigating high-stakes instability to survivors of war and children escaping trafficking.

The question that has driven all of it: why do some people find their footing when life falls apart, while others stay lost in it?

What I kept observing was that it wasn’t luck or personality. It came down to three things:
- the stories people allowed themselves to tell,
- the practices they returned to, and
- the sense of something larger they stayed tethered to.

Narrative. Ritual. Purpose.

I call them the Three Friends of Winter. My book Why We Suffer and How We Heal is built around them. So is my newsletter and content.

Glad you’re here.

06/03/2026

When someone you love receives a difficult diagnosis, the grief is immediate and obvious.

But there is another grief, slower and quieter, that nobody names. It is the loss of the relationship you had before. The dynamic shifts. Roles that were once shared become yours alone. The person is still there, still the same person in many ways, and yet something between you has fundamentally changed. You become the one who manages, coordinates, holds, advocates. You love them. And you also quietly mourn the version of the relationship where you were simply their partner.

Psychologists call this ambiguous loss: grief without a clear object, someone still present but changed in how they can show up for you.

It is one of the loneliest forms of loss because it often comes wrapped in guilt. You are not supposed to grieve a relationship with someone who is still alive, who needs you, who is suffering more than you are.

But your grief is real. And it deserves to be named alongside theirs.

Bookmark this if it resonated. 💙

This is a specific form of ambiguous loss. Someone still in your life, but unreachable in the way you need them to be. P...
06/02/2026

This is a specific form of ambiguous loss.

Someone still in your life, but unreachable in the way you need them to be. Physically present, emotionally elsewhere. Showing up when it suits them, disappearing when it feels inconvenient.

The grief from this kind of relationship is real, and it is complicated by the fact that there is no clear ending to mourn. No goodbye. No moment that gives you permission to let go. Just a recurring hope, and a recurring disappointment, and the quiet erosion of your trust in yourself for continuing to hope.

Psychologists call it ambiguous loss: grief without a clear object, with no ritual to mark it and no one who thinks to ask how you are doing.

It doesn’t look like loss from the outside. But it feels like it from the inside.

And that is enough for it to be real.

Bookmark this if you needed a name for it. 💙

06/02/2026

Are kids affected by war zones?

Parenting is a long practice of letting go.And most of those losses have no ceremony.Nobody throws you a party when your...
06/01/2026

Parenting is a long practice of letting go.

And most of those losses have no ceremony.

Nobody throws you a party when your child stops reaching for your hand in a parking lot. Or when they stop telling you everything. Or when the house goes quiet in a way that is supposed to feel like success, but somehow doesn’t.

Psychologists call this ambiguous loss: grief without a clear object.

Someone still in your life, but a version of them, or of you together, that no longer exists.

It doesn’t make the front page of anyone’s suffering. So people carry it privately, wondering why something that is supposed to be right still aches.

It is real loss.
And it deserves to be named.

Bookmark this for later 💙

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+12027412900

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