Benefits of support

Is a support group for me?
These are some of the benefits that fellow loss parents have found in going to meetings:

• Guidance in the grief process: Hearing from other loss parents (dads included!) that are further along in their grief journey, hearing how they were able to move forward and how they were able to experience joy again, gave us hope when I was in the early days of grief. Tools to help get through the darkest days and a chance to learn about other available resources 

• Feeling understood in grief: In the beginning days of loss, it’s incredibly shocking and you may feel like you’re the only one experiencing this unique loss. Meetings helped us feel understood and less alone in my grief process. It especially helped me with guilt and self blame. Connecting with loss parents that had a loss around the same time also helped us keep going knowing others are on the same path 

• Normalizing the grief process: This helped me when I wondered if what I was feeling was abnormal or crazy.

• Talking about your baby: This may sound simple, but I found that family and friends that didn’t have the same experience, might feel uncomfortable talking about my baby because they don’t know what to say and feel bad about that. 

• Learning about new resources to help on the grief journey.