Bereaved Parents Newsletter
July 2014
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Dear friend,

Welcome to our newest members. Thank you, everyone, for being a supportive subscriber.

The beginning of July, I attended The Compassionate Friends conference in Chicago. If you have never attended a Compassionate Friends support group meeting, please consider doing so. A place of love and understanding plus information on a variety of topics. Visit their website to locate a meeting in your area or to find resources for bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents.

Much love, many HUGS      
Peggy Sweeney, Editor
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The Compassionate Friends ~ Hill Country TX Chapter
The Compassionate Friends provides highly personal comfort, hope, and support to every family experiencing the death of a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, or a grandchild, and helps others better assist the grieving family.
 
Meetings: 4th Monday of each month, 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Address: 1st United Methodist Church, 321 Thompson Dr, Kerrville, TX 78028
Contact:  Sue Endsley susanendsley@gmail.com
               Peggy Sweeney peggy@sweeneyalliance.org  (830) 377-7389
Hospice House: My Daughter's Place of Comfort, Peace, and Beauty
by Debbie Berry

On Mother's Day 2012, my 33 year old daughter was once again taken over by horrific pain. The cancer she had been battling for 3 1/2 years was showing no mercy. We went back to the emergency room with her doubled over and begging for the pain to stop. She was admitted and on May 18th my daughter was told that there was nothing more the doctors could do for her. Those words, and the look in her eyes, will forever haunt me. She had fought so hard, endured unspeakable pain and many weeks in the hospital. She never once gave up hope that she might beat the cancer and see her children grow up.

Heaven's Child receives a 5 STAR review
by IndieReade
HEAVEN'S CHILD receives a 5 STAR review from IndieReader, making it officially "IndieReader Approved." Judged by top industry professionals not as merely a great indie book, but as a great book, period! I was excited and wanted to share that review with you because it crunches into the core of the story and gets to the inspirational message we must never forget.
Subscribe to Our Newsletters and Coursework in Grief
The Road Less Traveled
 general loss and grief articles
Grieving Behind the Badge
 emergency responders, 
Coursework in Grief: A Lesson in Healing
a free, online study program

Suicide: Changing the Language
by Cathy Seehuetter

Once in a while I write a post regarding the language of suicide. I really hope that people will read it because it is very important for us to spread the word on how we speak of suicide. I've been thinking about it a lot again lately, especially since the two-year anniversary of my stepson's suicide was just on June 2nd, and wanted to share my thoughts in the hope that someone will read it and that that someone will also educate someone, when given the chance, to help us with the mission to change how we say it.

Armen Bacon: My 10-year tour of 'Griefland'

by Fresno Bee

On the street, there are only a few signs of life this morning. I am awake early, a night of tossing and turning. Insomnia, I guess. It's "that" time of year. I walk outside to get the morning paper, greeted by a pair of doves collecting twigs to build a nest. This gives me reason to smile on an otherwise uncertain day.

Join the Voices of Recovery

Spring is in the Air...and It Feels like a Million Knives Hitting Me All At Once

by Nancy Miller

Spring is already here again, the sixth one since my daughter Rachel died on Christmas night, 2008 of a drug overdose. It's one of those seasons that smells of renewal, life moving forward, death falling away, and the whole world is reborn.  But those of us who are continually grieving don't find solace in spring...it often accentuates our heartache, magnifying the feelings of loss and yearning. That wanting, wanting and never having again. The emptiness, the ever-present longing. 

Safe Place ~ Bereaved Parents Weekend
November 14 - 16, 2015
safe place_2 Time moves on at the usual pace. For you, time has stopped. Stopped at the day and time you learned your child was dead. Ever so slowly time starts again. Sometimes you don't think it has and then all of a sudden 3, 6, 9 years have passed. Have you moved with time? Or stuck behind? Or still oblivious to time moving at all?
Books of Interest

Life After the Death of My Son: What I'm Learning

by Dennis L. Apple

On the morning of February 6, 1991, Dennis Apple discovered the lifeless body of his son on their family room couch. Eighteen-year-old Denny had died without warning from what was later explained as complications due to Mono. Sixteen years later, Dennis still struggles with living in a world without his son.Life After the Death of My Son shares a glimpse of the unspeakable pain, helplessness, frustration, and eventual healing that Dennis and his wife, Buelah, have experienced since losing their son.


Lament for a Son
by Nicholas Wolterstorff 
"This book was written more than twelve years ago to honor the author's son Eric, who died in a mountain-climbing accident in Austria in his twenty-fifth year, and to voice Wolterstorff's grief. Though it is intensely personal, he decided to publish it in the hope that some of those who sit on the mourning bench for children would find his words giving voice to their own honoring and grieving. What he learned, to his surprise, is that in its particularity there is universality. ..."

Losing Malcolm: A Mother's Journey Through Grief
by Carol Henderson

One autumn morning Carol Henderson was a new mother recovering in the hospital and cradling a baby the doctor declared perfect. Within days of delivery, the new mother's peaceful world disintegrated into a nightmare of hospitals, tubes, EKG's, and operations. Her baby had a serious heart murmur. Losing Malcolm is a frank and compelling narrative about a naive mother whose carefully constructed life unravels when her infant son dies. Before her son's devastating illness, the author had little experience with the realities of disease and death.

About Us
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The Sweeney Alliance, a Texas-based 501(c)(3) corporation, has been a leader in educational resources addressing the emotional needs of families and emergency responders since 1992. In the last 2+ years, we have published over 385 articles on loss and grief, post traumatic stress and other "hot topics". We currently have over 1,825 newsletter subscribers. All newsletters are free of charge. Your donation today will help us continue as a FREE publication. Learn more here.  Thank you!  

 
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