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Dear friend,
Thank you for your continued support of the Bereaved Parents newsletter. Your stories have been inspirational and helpful to many of our readers.
Peace and love this holiday season.
HUGS  Peggy Sweeney, Editor |
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The Compassionate Friends ~ Hill Country TX Chapter
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 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: Ambulatory Care Center, 620 Cully Dr, Kerrville, TX 78028
Contact: Sue Endsley susanendsley@gmail.com (830) 928-7745
Peggy Sweeney peggy@sweeneyalliance.org (830) 377-7389
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Preventing Others From Forgetting Our Child
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 My deepest fear: that my precious daughter will be forgotten over time. Surely, that is understandable coming from a mother's point of view. As time passes, others begin to continue with their lives, and I want to shout, "But what about my child? She lived too. She would not want to be forgotten". And I would not want her to be forgotten, ever. How can I prevent that, and what have I done so far to keep her memory alive now and forever? |
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Alive on Canvas®-A New Way to Share the Memory of Your Loved One
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 What should families do with a deceased loved one's personal belongings? This situation is hard to contemplate. Meaningful, memorable possessions usually end up stored in a basement or drawer, or displayed in a lifeless shadow box.
Now, there's a poignant way for families to share and enjoy such cherished items. Artist Gina Klawitter creates life-like, celebratory keepsake portraits featuring her subjects' personal clothing and belongings. From christening gowns to sports uniforms and play outfits, Gina artfully forms clothing and other items into custom collage paintings.
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by Melissa Dalton-Bradford
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 Early October. Two months and two weeks after burying Parker. The shock of major loss has crash-landed our family on an island of pain. We've also literally landed in a foreign country: just days after the funeral, we've moved with our three surviving children, catatonic with grief, to Germany. We're doubly shipwrecked. And still we've had no word from Grandma and Grandpa. No phone calls. No emails. No messages in a bottle. Nothing.
I need my parents now more than ever. But do I call them?
No.
Why not?
Because I'm overwhelmed with sadness. I'm soaked through with our three children's sadness and with my husband's sadness, which sad saturation is compounded by the demands of an international move managed under extreme physical and psychological impairment. The vacuum of no familiar anything or anyone is gaining suction with each day that passes.
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Subscribe to Our Newsletters and Coursework in Grief
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 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
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 When a person you love dearly dies, one of the hardest things to come to terms with is the reality you will never see them again, you will never hear their laughter, you will never hug them, or feel their touch, or smell them or simply enjoy the presence of them being there beside you watching the idiot box silently from the couch. All interaction is gone. The only place they live on is in your memory. The good things cement themselves in your reminiscences forever and much of the bad or annoying things fade away. The fact that there are no new memories to be made is oft times crippling. |
I thought of you and closed my eyes
And prayed to God today,
I asked, "What makes a Mother?"
And I know I heard him say:
A Mother has a baby,
This we know is true
But, God, can you be a mother
When your baby's not with you?
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 | Child Memorial Sculptures
(Texas Country Reporter) |
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The death of Benjamin's wife and two children through an HIV infection  became the watershed experience that reshaped his life. Lydia was infected in 1982 at the birth of their first son, Matt. Three months after Bryan's birth in 1985, the family discovered Lydia and the children's HIV+ status. Bryan was 8 months old when he died in 1986, Lydia died in 1992 at the age of 38, and Matt was 13 when he died in 1995.
I wanted to go the distance. At the beginning, it was quite clear what that meant. When he died, distance became different, less clear, a nebulous path of a tenuous life. |
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 When the Moon Is Dark We Can See the Stars
by Pamela Prime
In her book, When the Moon Is Dark We Can See the Stars, Pamela Prime candidly and courageously shares her journey from a traditional religious mind set to an open-hearted spirituality. Pivotal to her awakening are four major upheavals in her life: the deaths of two children (one to SIDS, one to suicide), her divorce after 23 years of marriage, and her shocked realization of the repression of the feminine in her own religion. These cataclysmic events propelled her into a fearless, spiritual quest in which she discovered a powerful secret, "If I am willing to feel into the depths of my being, any experience can wake me up and take me more fully to love. My life isn't about the terrible, tragic things that happened to me, but rather, it is an ongoing journey of awakening to Spirit."
 Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers
by Carol Henderson
Carol Henderson tells the spellbinding story of how her one-day writing workshop for bereaved mothers turned into an ongoing journey of self-discovery and healing for 13 women who had lost children. Each woman brought to the group a powerful story of loss and bereavement, and each discovered the sustaining power of reflective writing. The women's stories, harrowing and poignant, are rendered both by Henderson and by the women themselves-the book includes generous portions of their own writing.
 Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child
by Ellen Mitchell
Meant to comfort and give direction to bereaved parents, Beyond Tears is written by nine mothers who have each lost a child. This revised edition includes a new chapter written from the perspective of surviving siblings.
The death of a child is that unimaginable loss no parent ever expects to face. In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond:
*Harmonious relationships can become strained
*There is a new definition of what one considers "normal"
*The question "how many children do you have?" can be devastating
*Mothers and fathers mourn and cope differently
*Surviving siblings grieve and suffer as well
*There simply is no answer to the question "why?"
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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. By the end of 2014, we will have published over 500 articles on loss and grief, post traumatic stress and other "hot topics". We currently have 2,000 newsletter subscribers. All newsletters are free of charge. Learn more about us, visit The Sweeney Alliance website.
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