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Mission
Statement
When
a child dies, at any age, the family suffers intense pain and may feel hopeless
and isolated. 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.
Our mission is to assist families toward positive resolution
of grief following the death of a child of any age. The secret of our success
is that seasoned grievers reach out to newcomers. Energy that has been directed
inward flows outward and both are helped to heal. The importance of
storytelling is honored. There is power in repeating the story of your child’s
life and death in a safe place. Although our children have died at different
ages and from different causes, we all suffer the same feelings of loss and
trauma.
We are not here to treat, fix or lead, but to listen, share
and support through the grief journey.
Vision The vision statement of The
Compassionate Friends is that everyone who needs us will find us and
everyone who finds us will be helped. Credo
We need not walk alone. We are
The Compassionate Friends. We reach out to each other with love, with
understanding, and with hope. The children we mourn have died at all
ages and from many different causes, but our love for them unites us.
Your pain becomes my pain, just as your hope becomes my hope. We come
together from all walks of life, from many different circumstances. We
are a unique family because we represent many races, creeds, and
relationships. We are young, and we are old. Some of us are far along in
our grief, but others still feel a grief so fresh and so intensely
painful that they feel helpless and see no hope. Some of us have found
our faith to be a source of strength, while some of us are struggling to
find answers. Some of us are angry, filled with guilt or in deep
depression, while others radiate an inner peace. But whatever pain we
bring to this gathering of The Compassionate Friends, it is pain we will
share, just as we share with each other our love for the children who
have died. We are all seeking and struggling to build a future for
ourselves, but we are committed to building a future together. We reach
out to each other in love to share the pain as well as the joy, share
the anger as well as the peace, share the faith as well as the doubts,
and help each other to grieve as well as to grow. We Need Not Walk
Alone. We Are The Compassionate Friends. Siblings Walking Together (formerly The Sibling Credo)
We are the surviving siblings of The Compassionate Friends.
We are brought together by the deaths of our brothers and sisters.
Open your hearts to us, but have patience with us.
Sometimes we will need the support of our friends.
At other times we need our families to be there.
Sometimes we must walk alone, taking our memories with us,
continuing to become the individuals we want to be.
We cannot be our dead brother or sister;
however, a special part of them lives on with us.
When our brothers and sisters died, our lives changed.
We are living a life very different from what we envisioned,
and we feel the responsibility to be strong even when we feel weak.
Yet we can go on because we understand better than many others
the value of family and the precious gift of life.
Our goal is not to be the forgotten mourners that we sometimes are,
but to walk together to face our tomorrows as surviving siblings of The Compassionate Friends. |