National Bereaved Parents Day 2023
The Compassionate Friends are supporting National Bereaved Parents Day on Monday 3 July 2023.
Please join us to help spread the message, keep that conversation going, raise awareness and show the bereaved parent community that they are not alone.
Please follow our Facebook page to see how you can show your support and share our posts.
Alistair and Sarina
"We tell our sad story of personal loss because it’s a therapeutic process in itself, whether telling it to a professional therapist, to our TCF grief companion (who we had between year one and two), to other bereaved parents in support groups facilitated by child loss organisations including TCF, or just to the trees and birds.
We share our story of Sarina's very short life because if somebody else is also experiencing something similar then they might take a tiny bit of comfort from knowing they're not alone. We also want to share it with a wider audience - to appeal to people who fortunately for them won't ever have to experience something similar.
Because it can be a very lonely existence as bereaved parents, when on top of everything else people can often be unwilling to validate the way we choose to move forwards with our lives". - Alistair
Denise and Abbey
"What helped me was connecting with other grieving parents, joining groups such as this one and hearing their stories. It gave me strength to keep on going. It may sound selfish, but the knowledge she was not alone in leaving early made me think she was not targeted, nor was I as her Mum." Denise, Abbey's mum
What has helped me since I lost my beautiful daughter Abigail, aged 22 to an aggressive medulloblastoma brain tumour – 4 months from diagnosis in 2019.
In those early days I realise I was in complete and utter shock. I can remember mixed emotions from crying hysterically, to being able to chat about shallow meaningless things, even laughing and entertaining people. All the time knowing it was a big act, or a way of staying connected to my other life – my life before my loss. But then it became more and more exhausting and around that time covid struck. Even though that was a bad thing, it made me realise that I needed space to grieve.
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Each year thousands of parents suffer the loss of a son or a daughter. Please help TCF to support families in their time of greatest need.
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