The Compassionate Friends is an International, voluntary, non-profit, self-help support organization, a world-wide family of sorrowing parents caring for one another………. not only parents, but grandparents and siblings too.

The Compassionate Friends reaches across age, society, race, creed, culture and religion to offer grief support, friendship and understanding to young and old alike, who have had a child die, at any age, from any cause and at any time, recently or years ago.

• Nothing can prepare parents for the death of a beloved child.
• That’s just not the way it should be. In a real world, parents should not have to bury their children - but it happens - from new-born babes to adults.
• At first there is a stunned numbness but as that wears off, immense pain sets in. Pain, so intense it cannot be imagined unless you have felt it.
• So many will say “I know how you feel” but those can be well-meant but empty words.
• Even with the support of family and friends it can be helpful to talk with those who have been there and walked the sad lonely walk.

The Compassionate Friends are there to support, not counsel: to offer genuine friendship, help, comfort and hope, in an understanding and informal way through the natural grieving process.

Participants are all bereaved parents dealing with the death of their child and are all on the same long and rocky pathway of grief. Newly bereaved or those who have lost children years before, can meet with others who are surviving this unimaginable loss.

• Talking – you may need to talk. We all need to talk about our child.
• Listening – you may just need to listen. No pressure to speak.
• Laughing – yes, laughing is not a dishonour, but a reaction to wonderful memories.
• Crying – tears are a necessary and natural release. Always plenty of tissues.
• You need not walk alone