2011 HCI Annual Report - Hospice Caring

Healing Broken Hearts
When grief moves in, Hospice Caring’s
bereavement program is ready to provide support
quickly and compassionately. We bring together
adults who have experienced a similar loss,
provide two trained and compassionate volunteer
facilitators, and offer a soothing environment
in which to meet. Then we allow the power of
peer support to work its magic in healing broken
hearts. On any given week throughout the year,
six to ten of our groups are meeting.
Our groups have welcomed surviving family
members of tragedies we hear about on the
local news: drunk-driving accidents that kill our
children, lightening that strikes our neighbors,
suicides that shock our community. In addition
to parent-loss and spousal-loss groups, we offer
the only ongoing groups in Montgomery County
specifically for bereaved parents of adult children,
for suicide survivors, and for spouses still shaky
years after being widowed. Some members
commute from Howard or Frederick counties,
D.C., or Virginia.
ADulT BErEAVEMEnT PrOGrAM
Volunteer Adult Bereavement facilitators outside the Hopsice caring cottage.
Recently, three mothers purchased bricks in
the Cottage garden in memory of their grown
children who died of breast cancer, an enlarged
heart, and a stroke. The mothers—strangers
when they met but the closest of friends today
—carefully decided the placement of the bricks
next to each other. One mother spoke for all three
when she said, “We were so desperate when we
first came to the group. We want our children’s
names to be here together where we began to heal.
Thank you, Hospice Caring.”
“
The support and affection of the
facilitators and the group members
has been a life line for me that I
could not have found anywhere
– Support Group Member
else.“
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