Coping with friends family and social situations

UK Helpline: 0 345 123 23 0 4 | tcf.org.uk Going forward People in our social and family circles who are kind, patient and caring, who speak with love about our child, who are with us “for the long haul”, are giving us a safe place in which to grieve. This will help us immensely. It's likely that there will be other times when we feel that we have no-one around to support us, and people just don't seem to understand our pain. They can be thoughtless and even unkind. This deepens our grief. It can help to reflect that it is their problem, not ours. We are not to blame for the inadequacies of other people. Perhaps because they have never experienced the death of a child, they simply cannot understand the way we feel. Prior to our profound loss, we too might have been less than supportive of others who were grieving. Our experience has changed us. Other people’s insensitivity towards us might always be part of the landscape of our grief. Still, we might find that as we become more resilient in our grief, this doesn’t upset us as much as it did in the beginning. Hopefully we will also find new sources of solace and companionship.