Day 117
Today I felt the need to connect with more members of my tribe - Parents Who Have Lost a Child. Not sure why I felt this way. But I didn't overthink it; I just went went with it. In my brief time searching the internet I found several organizations that align to this specific circumstance:
- Grieving.com
- The Compassionate Friends
- Bereaved Parents of the USA
- Grieving Parents
- The Vilomah Project: Parents Grieving Together
I signed up for 2 of these: The Compassionate Friends and the Vilomah Project. I'm not sure about the latter as it appears that it contains information from only one person who I assume is also the site's moderator. I'm not going to give up on it before I give it a chance though. Maybe it has something for me, maybe it doesn't. Only one way to find out...
The Compassionate Friends (TCF) seems to be a much more established community with over 500 local chapters, two of which are reasonably close – one in Johns Creek, the other in Lawrenceville. Looking at the profile of the organization, I think they might be a good fit. For starters they are not a faith-based organization. Had that not been the case, I would have dismissed them from further consideration. Their website also made a favorable impression. On one page they called out the psychological, emotional, physical, family and social impacts that a person - a parent - can experience with the loss of a child. Several of these rang absolutely true for me. My take away was that the people who run this organization "get it". I did sign up for an online support group ("Suicide Loss") that meets Sunday evenings. If that goes well it will help motivate me to go to a meeting at one of the local chapters.
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Dawn and I heading out of town again. Tomorrow morning we are flying to Sarasota (FL) for a long weekend. In early December before Damian died, I had rented an AirBnB for when Damian and I were going to be there in early January for the regatta. A few days after he died I reached out to the owner and asked them if I could delay the booking until now due to my new found circumstance. Of course they agreed, which I very much appreciate. So off Dawn and I go on another mini adventure. I can't say that I'm excited about going. I wasn't that excited about the last two trips either, and yet still managed to enjoy myself so there is no reason to expect this trip to go any differently.
Talk to you tomorrow.
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