Finding Online Support

Online support groups and websites are also available for parents who grieve. Following are a few of the many meaningful tips often shared through these formats.

• You have to encourage yourself. Tell yourself every morning to “Choose life.” Parents who choose to live also choose to make their lives meaningful.

• You don’t have to stop doing things for your child. Every day, you can do positive, meaningful things in memory of your child. You can establish a scholarship in your child’s memory, pick up litter when you walk, or tutor a child who needs your love. You can serve as a Guardian ad Litem – the voice for a child who may be neglected or abused.

• Talk about your child. It helps others know it’s all right to talk about him, and you’ll always love hearing his (or her) name.

• Talk to your child. Or write to your child. Say the things you want to say. Say the things you wish you’d said.

• Search out something to be thankful for every day.

• Simplify your life for the time being. Do only what you have to do.

• Establish new rituals for your family for anniversary dates and holidays.

• Change the way you handle daily things – where you sit at the table, the route you drive from work, where you walk.

• You can’t accept the death of your child. What you have to accept is the fact there is a mammoth, monstrous unacceptable thing that’s going to be inside of you, forever.

• Your sense of humor will start coming back. Let it. Your loved one would want you to laugh, to smile.