Every year tens of thousands of people are impacted by suicide. Some use their personal experience and try to find a way to heal their grief through advocacy: raising awareness of mental health issues, speaking out for suicide prevention and mobilizing support for loss survivors.

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One such loss survivor is Linda Lajoie, founder of The Silhouette Project. Her son, Senior Airman Dustin Hadfield, an Afghanistan veteran took his own life almost two years to the day after he returned from his military service.

Determined to use Dustin’s story to help others, Linda launched The Silhouette Project, designed to visually demonstrate the alarming number of veteran and active duty military taking their own lives. Powerful in form and profound in message, the life-sized silhouette cutouts each feature a photo and a story of a loved one who died by suicide. The silhouettes honor their memories as well as spark conversations about the often-stigmatized subject of suicide.