TCF Boise | Live Series: Another Year Without Your Child January 2021

The coming of a new year is hard on every bereaved parent. It's a confirmation that time is still moving forward even though your world feels like it stops when your child dies. For those farther along in their grief journey, it's another year gone by that they had to continue living without them - missing their birthday, anniversary date, holidays, and family events again in their absence. Chapter Leaders Kristina Cunningham and Steffanie Empey read this story and discuss what it means to them and how to cope with the coming of 2021. We hope it finds you well.

The New Year: A Time of Hope

Another New Year has slipped into our lives, radically changing some things and leaving other things to evolve naturally. For bereaved parents a new year marks another year on the calendar without their precious children. It is a new year, but not much has changed since the old year. Why is that?

We act as the catalysts of change for ourselves. We choose to help ourselves; we choose to stay in a specific place in our grief. We choose to reach out for hope or we choose to withdraw into the familiar and postpone facing life and hope another day. There are no set rules or specific timetables in bereavement. We are each unique in our grief.

Eventually we all find hope. We find it in different ways and in different times. There will be no one moment of epiphany for bereaved parents. Instead, there are a series of minutes, hours, weeks, months and often years until we realize that we can truly say we feel the power of hope coming alive from deep within us. This moment will come for each of us. It will come in its own time and its own way.

Even those of us who have found hope and who shine its light on the paths of newly bereaved parents, still regress and withdraw into the dark sadness of our loss. And that is as it should be. For we have lost the most precious gift of our lives...our children’s presence with us and their future in this life. Our children live in our hearts and our memories and our dreams. They do not share this plane with us. It is normal and it is good to think of our children often and

to shed some tears for all that has been lost. These aren’t setbacks as much as sweet memories that bring cathartic tears.

The element we find in these memories is a closeness to our child and our child’s life. This, too, is healthy. An often-expressed fear is that our children will be forgotten. Worry not, gentle parent, your child will be remembered for all of your days and for many days thereafter. You will never forget your child. Others who knew your child will never forget. The proof of this is in our memories….sweet memories that take us back to another time when our child was with us.

So this New Year’s, whether you are a few months, a few years or many years in your grief, think about hope. You have not forsaken your child when you reach for hope. Your hope brings your child back in a positive way that will warm your heart. Reach for that hope. As you move forward in your grief in the New Year, reach for hope. Your child will still be with you. And one day you will find that your child’s presence is sweeter when hope is within you.

Annette Mennen Baldwin

In memory of my son, Todd Mennen

TCF, Katy, TX