Twins Learn Dad Died by Suicide Years After He Vanished. In the Shadow of Grief, They Found They Weren’t Alone (Exclusive)

After learning their missing dad died by suicide, a New Jersey family found community and healing thanks to a grief camp.

“My boys and I would be living with this heavy, dark absence, this scary, like blob that would just sort of be there in our lives that we didn’t know how to manage,” journalism professor Emily Laber-Warren tells PEOPLE.

Comfort Zone Camp is a nonprofit bereavement organization with free three-day camps in about 12 states for anyone who has lost a loved one, including to suicide and overdose.

For Laber-Warren and her twin 18-year-old sons, Comfort Zone Camp offers classic activities like archery and swimming as well as support groups called ”Healing Circles” and a camp-wide memorial service.

The experience was transformative for them after her ex-husband, Steven Warren, vanished in 2021 and was found dead in 2024.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over 49,000 people died by suicide in 2023 — one death every 11 minutes.

And for the victims’ loved ones, suicide can be quite “shocking” and “violent,” Laber-Warren adds.

The New York mom met Warren, a software developer, in her early 30s at a record label party she crashed with friends in New York City. “He was incredibly sweet, and I just really liked him from the very beginning,” she says.

The journalist, now 60, shares that they both had very different backgrounds, but she was crazy about him from day one. “I still am,” she says.

But she says that his issues with substance abuse was difficult. “He really tried really hard to get better. He got a lot of treatment over the course of our time together,” she says, sharing that he also lived with bipolar disorder and depression.

As their relationship progressed, the two married in 2003 and later had their sons, Jeremy and Nate.

“He was just a really fun dad for little kids,” she says, “and they were so young, so we were able to hide from them that he was also suffering a lot at the same time.”

Jeremy admits that his dad did a “good job of shielding us from his issues,” but as his struggles continued over the years, he eventually withdrew from the family.

The pair split up in 2016 with Warren moving to an apartment nearby. For a time, he continued to see his son and the family would even spend holidays and go snowboarding together. But ultimately, Laber-Warren says that he “just wasn’t able to stay stable” and his mental health went downhill.

By 2019, Laber-Warren says Steven’s mania led him to lose his job and all of his money. He eventually became homeless and went to jail for a month over a misdemeanor. After he got out, he ended up in transitional housing in Paterson.

“We were in touch with him, but more by video, especially through Covid,” the mom says. Then on Feb. 12, 2021, he disappeared.

“I went to the police in Paterson, and I did a missing person report, and they assigned a detective to the case, and she worked really hard to figure out what happened to him,” she says. “It wasn’t like him to disappear.”

For nearly three years, family and friends did not know what happened to him. Laber-Warren and her sons would celebrate his birthday each year with a special dinner of his favorite foods. The idea was to try to bring up old memories to “keep him alive.”

But the mom tells PEOPLE she always had a sense that he had died. The boys did too. Then, on March 15, 2024, police came to her door and told her that Steven’s body had been found. An autopsy report obtained by PEOPLE confirmed his manner of death was suicide.

“It’s shocking to get the news that this is actually the case, but the fact that he took his own life was a whole other layer of intensity for me and made it so hard for me to take in the news,” she says.

After telling her sons, she wanted to find a way to help them grieve and connect with others who could better understand what they were going through. That’s when she found Comfort Zone Camp.

The nonprofit was founded in Virginia in 1998 by Lynne Hughes, whose parents died within two and a half years of each other when she was a little girl.

“I truly believe that I was supposed to use my life in some way to make a difference,” Hughes says.

After their deaths, she went to a regular summer camp and loved it. However, she says the trauma she was experiencing was like the “United Nations” compared to say, the death of a pet goldfish, which was a more typical experience for campers her age.

Eventually, Hughes and her husband decided to create a bereavement camp to help children at the beginning of their grieving journey. Her story would even make its way to PEOPLE just one month before the 9/11 terror attacks — a pivotal moment for the organization, which was already primed to help grieving families.

To date, the camp has served over 25,000 children, including Laber-Warren’s sons.

In August 2024, just months after learning about his dad’s death, Jeremy went to his first camp session. That October, Nate did too. The mom says she decided to send them separately so they could individually process their grief. Months later, the entire family came together to attend a suicide loss camp in Johnsonburg.

“They have a place to go where not only can they share their feelings,” Laber-Warren says, “but they can hear other kids, and they can support other kids through their grieving journey.”

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Her son Nate says they have formed a powerful connection with those campers.

“Most of them have gone through at least, I guess, somewhat similar experience or have lost someone themselves,” he says. “I just feel like everybody there, without fail, is just so welcoming.”

The brothers, who are each headed to different colleges, even returned to camp this summer on Long Island, New York. This time, Jeremy was a mentor for a camper called a “Big Buddy,” while Nate served as a volunteer and a “Healing Circle” assistant.

“It’s brought so much, not just solace, but a sense of empowerment, community,” Laber-Warren says. “I hope I can watch my kids grow up with this burden and not feel that it has to drag them down.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.