SUPPORT GROUPS FOR CHILD LOSS
Support groups can save your life while grieving the loss of your child. They're the only place that has a whole group of people who UNDERSTAND YOU. At first you don't want to talk to anyone. You feel awkward and you don't feel safe. How could you describe the pain your feeling? It's BIGGER than life. You're eating and breathing it. Your engulfed in it. How can you crawl out from underneath it to explain it to anyone? First you can go to a support group and just listen. No one makes you talk. Listening to people that has gone through what you're going through is so healing. My suggestion is to journal and read your books until you feel like you can form a few words. But, keep going. The safest place for me to start was an online support group. I was searching the internet over looking for someone or something to help me. I'd stay up most of the night reading everything I could get my hands on to comfort me. I was looking up Heaven and Angels and I stumbled onto "Angel Moms" a support group for women who have lost a child. I went all over the sight and read how mothers supported each other and told of their loss and helped each other with the grief they were struggling with. I decided I'd join angelmoms.com and It was my first major break through. No one could see me. I could talk to someone anytime of the day or night (they're international) when I was hurting so bad. They have a "yahoo" group where you can post how you are feeling and others post back to help you. Then one day, a new mom joined and I had something to say to help her. That's where real healing begins because when you're helping others it helps you to heal. That's why I started this website. I wanted to help others, and I found it healing me as I wrote. joemama-survivor.com was a stepping stone for me. People with sites need to have ads to support their site or they couldn't afford to have them. I try to advertise only companies that can be a tool or stepping stone for my subscribers. "Angel Moms" has a retreat once a year where you can go and meet moms that you have talked to online. At my first retreat I was nervous to meet the moms , but after 15 minutes with them it was like I knew them all my life because we had talked countless hours online. The other group I joined a few months later was "Compassionate Friends". So many of the books I was reading would mention "Compassionate Friends". Then when I started going to counseling the therapist mentioned them so I got online and looked them up so I could find the closet chapter to me because they're nation wide. They are support group for people who have lost their child or grandchild. They only meet monthly, so it's good you have "Angel Moms" too. I went to the first couple meetings alone. I couldn't believe just how comfortable it was. When my husband saw that the meetings were helping me he decided to join me. Often times he would be the one that got the most out of the meeting for that month. Everyone there had been through a loss. There were tragedies of every kind. They had people that had lost a child in a car accident and people who had lost a child through an accidental overdose. I fit in. They had people that had lost their child to murder and suicide. The hardest loss I saw was where a parent had accidentally killed their own child. You ask "How can that possibly happen?" It can. I've heard everything from they were the driver of the car to they put the garage door down with a garage door opener and the door killed their toddler. You cry together. They have some guest speakers come sometimes that really helps your broken heart. We had a psychologist that spoke about her own near death experience and told about what she saw at Heaven's gates. To find the chapter closest to you log onto www.compassionatefriends.org now.
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