<p> May 2014 Becky Long, Editor May Meeting: May 13, 2014 at 7:00 P.M. Room 271, Arborlawn United Methodist Church, 5001 Briarhaven Rd., Fort Worth</p><p>We will have the picture button m New Members achine at May’s meeting. Please b When a child dies, at any age, ring a 4”x 6” copy of a picture of the family suffers intense pain We want to extend your loved one if you wish to hav and may feel hopeless and isolated. a very warm, loving, e a button made. The Compassionate Friends and understanding “Welcome” provides highly personal comfort, to our new friends who attended hope, and support to every family the April meeting: experiencing the death of a son or a daughter, Stacey Brooks a brother or a sister, or a grandchild, for the loss of her daughter and helps others better assist the grieving family.</p><p>Love Gifts TCF National Office Julie Johnson Robertson The Compassionate Friends in loving memory of her niece P. O. Box 3696 Katherine Anne Hooton Oak Brook, IL 60522-3696 Fax: 630-990-0246 A Love Gift is a donation made in honor Toll-free: 877-969-0010 of a child who has died or as a memorial 9 A.M. - 5 P.M., CST, Mon.-Fri. to a relative or friend. They are tax Email: deductible and are the only source of [email protected] funds to run our chapter. If you would Website: like, you can specify that your love gift www.compassionatefriends.org be used for the newsletter, continuing The website contains links to education, workshops, or books for our TCF’s national and regional lending library. If you wish for your conferences, brochures, e- love gift to be listed in a particular newsletter, online support month’s newsletter, it must be submitted by the 15th of the previous month. community, We Need Not Walk Alone magazine, “Healing the Send donations to Steve Roberts Grieving Heart” and “The Open P.O. Box 202654, Arlington, 76006 to Hope Show” radio program archives, webinars, chapter websites, and other resources. Picture Button Machine Facebook: The Compassionate Friends/USA In Spanish: Los Amigos Compasivos/USA Upcoming Meetings Twitter: Text follow TCFofUSA to 40404 May 13 th – How Men & Women Grieve Differently, both as Individuals and a Couple Jun. 10 th – 7 P.M. at Holy Family Catholic Church – Annual Butterfly Release</p><p>Driving Directions</p><p>From I-20, take the Hulen exit, stay on the service road across Hulen, turn right on International Plaza, the church is on your right. From I-30, take the Hulen exit and turn left, go 3 miles south on Hulen, turn right on Briarhaven, the church is on your left. If you park on the northeast side of the church, go in the main entrance; take the second hallway to your right, through the double doors and up the ramp to Room 271. If you park on the southwest side of the church, go in the sanctuary entrance and take the elevator that is just inside the door to your left up to Room 271.</p><p>Birthday Table</p><p>May birthdays will be celebrated at this month’s meeting. If your child’s, grandchild’s, or sibling’s birthday is in May, please feel free to bring a photo or memento of them for the birthday table. TCF Fort Worth Chapter Bill Campbell Steering Committee 972-935-0673 Need to Talk? [email protected] Listed below are parents, Chapter Leaders grandparents and siblings who Jeff & Marty Martin have walked where you are today. 817-991-9121 Chapter Website If you are having a difficult day [email protected] www.thecompassionatefriendsfw.com and just want to talk, please call.</p><p>Treasurer Addiction Steve Roberts Helen 817-431-6964 817-914-8689 [email protected] Auto Hospitality Jeff & Marty 817-991-9121 Marty Akeman 817-636-5645 Grandchild/Multiple Loss Lydia 817-829-3801 Christine Anderson 817-300-6196 Drowning Lydia Moore Debi 817-270-3275 817-829-3801 Drowning (young child) Newsletter Stacy 817-656-7540 or Becky Long 817-845-3433 817-275-9297 [email protected] Long Term Illness Welcome Bags Marty 817-636-5645 Janet DuPertuis Homicide/Only Child Committee Members Steve 817-914-8689 or Jeff Abodeely [email protected] Crys Aigner Jerry & Sharon Austry Suicide/Only Child Charles & Genie Dean Joy 817-453-2227 Liz Hutchison Jaye Sanford Suicide Glinda 817-485-3772</p><p>Thanks to the staff members Siblings of Greenwood-Mt. Olivet for Cheryl 817-624-7043 or manning the sign-in table and [email protected] providing the name tags at chapter meetings and printing the Middle of the night calls newsletter. Liz 817-726-3999 We really appreciate your help! Want to share?</p><p>If you have read an article, poem, Regional Coordinator book, or other material that has helped you along your grief National Conference News children's grief support programs journey, please share it with our that has been implemented newsletter editor. We also Early Registration nation-wide. Alicia is the encourage you to submit Ends June 6 president of Grief International your own works of poetry or and a consultant for Grief, Inc. prose for our newsletter. Conference registration and reservations at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare are still available on the National Conference page of the national website. Keynote Speakers</p><p>In addition to Eric Hipple (Friday Luncheon Banquet) and Dianne Gray (Saturday Evening Banquet) the Sunday Closing Ceremony will feature Alicia Franklin, a bereaved sibling, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, grief management specialist and a board certified hypnotherapist. She is the author of Am I Still A Sister? and a contributing author in Dear Parents and The Dying and Bereaved Teenager. She co- authored A Place For Me: A Healing Journey for Grieving Kids, Footsteps Through Grief, The Other Side of Grief and Finding Your Way Through Grief with her mother, Darcie D. Sims. She is featured in the video, When A Loved One Dies: Walking Through Grief As A Teenager. A former Air Force Captain, Alicia designed the pediatric social work program for Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland AFB and served as the Chief of Mental Health at Columbus AFB. Her military service included leading the Critical Incident Stress Teams at two different bases. Emerging as an internationally recognized authority on children and grief, Alicia has designed an award winning self-help model for Chapter Meeting News chapter in this capacity, please Steering Committee Meeting contact our chapter leaders. At our May meeting, chapter Our next Steering Committee members Charles and Genie Dean meeting will be at Marty & Jeff will speak on how men & women Martin’s, 9309 Watercress Dr. in grieve differently and share their Fort Worth, on Saturday, May 3rd experiences grieving as a couple at 10:30 A.M., with a potluck afterwards: please call Marty at 817-991-9121 to RSVP. Firemen’s 5K Directions: From 820 in Lake The 16th annual Firemen’s 5K and Worth take Jacksboro Hwy One Mile Fun Run will be held at heading northwest. After 8 A.M. on Saturday, May 24th at crossing the lake go to the second Arborlawn United Methodist light and turn left across the Church. All proceeds benefit the highway and left on the access Fort Worth Chapter of The road. Take the first right onto Compassionate Friends, The Rankin Road to the bottom of the WARM Place, and The Firemen’s hill. At the fork go right on 5K Scholarship Fund. Watercress Dr. to a green house on the left or lake side of the road. This is a major source of funds The door is on the lake side of the for our chapter. house through the gate. We invite you to walk or run in Membership in the Steering memory of your loved one. Online Committee is open to all chapter registration is now available at members; please join us as we www.athlete360.com, and a plan our future programs. registration form is at the back of this newsletter. Volunteers are also needed to pass Butterfly Release in June! out packets, point out the route or Make plans to join us to release a distribute water to the runners. If butterfly in memory of your you can commit to a Thursday loved one on June 10th, at 7 P.M. evening meeting and the Saturday at Holy Family Catholic Church. morning of Memorial Day weekend, please call Lori Carver at Feel free to bring other family 817-819-5530 or e-mail members and friends of all ages to [email protected]. this special event. Directions to Holy Family Catholic Church: Take I-30 from Chapter Librarian Needed either direction to the Bryant Irvin Maintaining the library and exit. If you are coming from the checkout log involves very little west, turn left on Bryant Irvin time and most of the work can be Road, then left on Pershing done just before our meetings. If Avenue after you cross the you would be willing to help our highway. If you are coming from the east, turn right on Guilford A Sibling Speaks Out</p><p>Road, then left on Pershing An Anthology for Bereaved Siblings Avenue. The church will be on your right.</p><p>The Room Across the Hall</p><p>The room across the hall is dark and empty now. All of the things that once filled it have been removed somehow. The clothes that were once in the closet have all been given away. The occupant won’t be needing them, for he died in the month of May.</p><p>The room across the hall was filled with a young man’s things: Guns, and knives, and video games, and rocks from many springs. All of these have been locked away inside a small square chest. Just like the rooms occupant, they have been laid to rest.</p><p>The room across the hall arouses feelings such as pain. The fact that it is empty can make tears fall like rain. I cry because the occupant was very much like me. The occupant was my brother, whom now I cannot see.</p><p>The room across the hall belonged to a normal boy. He could bring you heartache and lots of sorrow, but he could also bring you joy. He was not another Socrates, for he wasn’t quite that clever. But the memories he left me will be with me forever.</p><p>By Melissa Broadway TCF, Atlanta, GA Reprinted from This Healing Journey Mother’s Day Revisitedthreatened to engulf Mother’s Day, Anna attempted to preserve her Many of us in TCF do not look creation as a true “holy day,” a Mother’s Day, then, was borne of forward to Mother’s Day. On this time for solemn reflection and a daughter’s grief and love. More holiday, when the whole nation is prayer. importantly, it was intended as a celebrating the joys of parent-hood, tribute to a bereaved mother-a grieving parents often feel a special brave woman who lost multiple anguish. children but who managed to live Mother’s Day this year looms as with an abiding kindness and a particularly difficult milestone for generosity toward others. I like me, Sunday, May 10, 1998, is not knowing this background, and my only Mother’s Day but also the attitude towards Mother’s Day has second anniversary of the death of been colored by the knowledge. my ten-year-old son, Jacob. The holiday now makes me think Because this day of private sadness of the common sorrow that links all also happens to be a day of public bereaved parents. I feel a bond celebration, I decided that I should with Anna’s mother that stretches start thinking early about the over time and space. In a broader occasion. I engaged in a little sense, the woman for whom the research about the holiday and holiday was founded reminds me learned a story that I think is worth of people I’ve met at TCF who have sharing. continued to live productive, Mother’s Day was the creation of meaningful lives in the face of a woman named Anna Jarvis in the unthinkable loss. early years of this century. Anna, Finally, Mother’s Day in its who never married and never had origins symbolizes both the joy and children of her own, devoted the vulnerability inherent in herself to establishing a national parenthood. Anna’s mother knew Mother’s Day as a way of honoring all too well that from the moment a her beloved mother, who died on child is born, hope and the May 9, 1905. In Anna’s view, her possibility of tragedy go hand in mother deserved a memorial hand. She understood the fragility because she had lived selflessly and of life. endured considerable suffering - Enriched by its own history, seven of her eleven children had Mother’s Day is easier for me to died in early childhood. According tolerate. The coincidence of dates to historians, Anna’s mother this year-Mother’s Day and the mourned the deaths of her children anniversary of my son’s death-is throughout her life. not as jarring as it once seemed. Anna insisted that the holiday Although the commercial images of always fall on a Sunday so that it the modern Mother’s Day still would retain its spiritual moorings. make me wince, I can turn off the Because of her efforts, President television and envision the kind of Woodrow Wilson finally day that Anna Jarvis had in mind: a proclaimed the second Sunday in time for quiet reflection and the May as Mother’s Day. Although sharing of cherished memories. Anna couldn’t prevent the new By Barbara Atwood holiday from quickly becoming a In memory of Jacob marketing phenomenon, she did TCF, Tucson, Arizona try. Speaking out against “the mire of commercialization” that Memorial Day so that I can refind me.</p><p>For each grave By Genesse Bourdeau Gentry Where a soldier lies Reprinted from Stars in the Deepest Night After the Death of a Child At his rest</p><p>For each prayer That is said today Out of love</p><p>For each sigh Of remembering Someone who died</p><p>Let us also give thought to The mothers and fathers The brothers and sisters The friends and the lovers Whom death left behind.</p><p>By Sascha From For you From Sascha</p><p>William My partner on life’s journey, we’ve truly been lost souls, losing all perspective, thrown up against the shoals.</p><p>We thought we had the future bright before us shining fine, then life lost all its meaning in a fateful twist of time.</p><p>We’ve been holding on together, keeping company, yet alone. We’ve felt the grief so deeply, it has scarred our very bones.</p><p>The support that you keep giving is in letting me just be, never angry or complaining, The Child Who Wasn’t Perfect</p><p>Directions to Non-Profitthe church Organization can be found on the front U.S.page Postage of the Paidnewsletter. Permit #2321 Fort Worth, Texas 2501 Millikin Drive Arlington, TX 76012 </p><p>ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED</p><p>May 2014</p><p>Fort Worth Chapter Meeting</p><p>Date: May 13, 2014 Refreshments: Annette Gilmore & Delmira Garcia Check In: 6:30 P.M. Program Time: 7:00 P.M. Program: Chapter members Charles & Genie Dean on How Men & Women Grieve Differently as Individuals and a Couple Room 271 Arborlawn United Methodist Church 5001 Briarhaven Rd., Fort Worth To those of you who are newly bereaved and receiving our newsletter for the first time, we warmly welcome you to The Compassionate Friends. We are a self-help organization of parents, grandparents and adult siblings who have experienced the death of a loved one. We offer understanding and support through our monthly meetings, a lending library, support materials and loving telephone listeners. Please do not be afraid to come to a gathering. Every other person in the room has lost a child, grandchild or sibling. They come because they feel the need to be with someone else who understands. We know it takes courage to attend that first gathering, but those who do come find an atmosphere of understanding from others who have experienced the grief that you have now. Nothing is asked of you. There are no dues or fees and you do not have to speak. There is a special feeling at meetings of The Compassionate Friends. We meet the second Tuesday of every month.</p>