The Compassionate Friends NSW

17/06/2026

💛 When we are grieving we are not looking for pity, nor do we need to be treated as fragile. We are simply trying to survive something that has altered the course of our lives and often feels impossibly heavy and beyond our control.
What we need most is understanding. We need others not to add to that burden with thoughtless comments, impatience, unsolicited advice, or expectations that we should be coping, functioning, or returning to who we once were within a timeframe that feels comfortable to everyone else. The truth is that grief changes us, and many losses reshape life forever.
Through our shared experiences at TCFV, we know the value of compassion. A little patience. A willingness to listen without trying to fix. Space to grieve without judgement or pressure to "move forward" in ways that no longer fit the reality of our lives.
Grief is already carrying the unimaginable. The least the world can do is not make it harder. While others cannot take away our pain, they can choose compassion over judgement, understanding over expectation, and presence over avoidance. Sometimes, those simple choices make all the difference to people learning to live with a loss that has changed their lives forever.
With thanks to TCF Victoria Inc.

15/06/2026

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There was a line in a book I was reading that said, “The life you build next doesn’t have to resolve the one that came before. It just has to be lived.”
Wow. Those two sentences hit me like a ton of bricks as I was sitting in bed waiting for my eyes to get heavy.
The life before and the life after. That’s what happens when you lose a child, lose a piece of yourself, the world you know.
There is the life with your child, and now there is the life without your child.
I think why that spoke to me was because I have struggled with what to do with my life without my son. I don’t know what it should look like or what I want it to look like.
I know I want to carry him into whatever it is, and I think this line is saying it’s OK to build a new life around Mike, who is so much a part of me. There is nothing to be resolved. All I need to do is live.
Maybe that is enough for now—to stop asking life to make sense without him, and instead let him come with me into whatever comes next. Not as something I leave behind, but as part of the way I keep going.
Love and hugs
Living with Child Loss

12/06/2026

💛🧡💙🩷💜
One of the cruelest things grief does is make people miss who they were before the loss happened. Before life split into "before" and "after".
Many grieving people are not only longing for the person they lost. They are also grieving the version of themselves that felt safer in the world. Lighter. More certain. More able to imagine a future without fear. Because profound loss changes the way people move through life.
Grief often alters a person’s internal sense of safety far more than people realise.
After significant loss, many bereaved people describe feeling emotionally different, even years later.
More vigilant.
More fragile.
More aware of how quickly life can change.
This is not pessimism.
It is often the nervous system adapting after experiencing something deeply painful or shocking.
Psychologically, loss can disrupt what is called our “assumptive world,” the unconscious belief that life is relatively predictable, controllable, and safe.
And once that illusion breaks, people often feel changed by it.
This is why grieving people sometimes miss the person they used to be.
Not because growth has not happened. But because innocence has been replaced with awareness.
And that can feel profoundly difficult to carry.
- Zoe Clark-Coates
With thanks to TCF Victoria Inc.

11/06/2026

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Grief is the only thing we're all forced to
learn without warning.
No preparation.
No instructions.
One day life is normal.
And the next ... everything you thought you
understood about the world has changed.
You don't really understand grief
until it's your heart carrying it.
Until it moves in and quietly
rewrites the story of your life.
3213keepsakelane
photography by
With thanks to TCF Victoria Inc.

08/06/2026

💛 🧡 💛 🧡 💛
The world calls it loss ... I call it devastation.
The world may call it loss, but your heart knows it was so much more than that. Loss sounds small compared to what grief really feels like when someone you love is no longer here. It is devastation. It is shock. It is the ache of having your whole world changed by one absence you never asked for. It is trying to keep going while carrying a pain that touches everything.
When you love someone deeply, their absence does not simply become a sad memory. It becomes something your body, mind, and spirit feel in real time. It can show up in quiet moments, in the middle of conversations, in songs, in memories, and in the sudden wave of realizing all over again that they are not coming back the way you want them to. That is why grief can feel so heavy. It is not just about missing someone. It is about learning how to exist with the devastation of loving someone you can no longer hold.
If your heart knows this kind of pain, you are not alone in it. Some losses do not feel like loss at all. They feel like devastation.
Paula P. Griffith
Artist Credit: Kenneth Crane via PInterest
With thanks to TCF Inc Victoria

06/06/2026

💛 💛 💛

This year at our Winter Solstice, we're taking a gentle look back to look forward.

Su***de and mental ill health can make us and our loved feel as though we're in the dark. Often, the light does not arrive all at once - it returns gradually, and so do we.

In a world that asks us to keep producing and coping, the Winter Solstice gives permission to pause and reflect. To look to the past together, so that we can heal and move forward once more.

For this year's online event, we're bringing together a very special group of speakers and artists to share their experiences of su***de and mental ill health. Through conversations, speeches, songs, and moments of stillness, we'll come together to reflect and to find the light ahead.

We'd love you to join us via livestream on Sunday, 21 June, for this year's Winter Solstice event. Follow us to stay up-to-date with more details and information coming soon.

📸 Manifeasto Photography

04/06/2026

💛💛🧡🧡
Give Yourself A Reason To Live Again
Some people never get to the stage that involves hope and a willingness to be happy again. If this is how you feel, I want you to know that it’s possible to move forward, without dishonoring the person you love and lost.
Getting to this stage can be really hard.
Grief consists of so many emotions, especially the feelings of loneliness and helplessness. The only way to get through them is to let the feelings happen as they come. You can’t go around them, under them, or over them, you have to go right through them.
But allowing yourself to feel, live, and even love again, can be really difficult.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, especially grief, but it’s a key element in the healing process. Once you get through all the emotions of the loss you can start to rebuild your life and find a meaningful way to keep moving forward.
Here’s the thing…human life is a gift, and the relationship you have with someone you love should be cherished.
Holding on to fond memories of that life is important, and the memories remain long after the person is gone.
The best way to honor the person you lost is to live and to remember those who still remain that love you. This isn't always easy to do when you’re grieving a loss, but it can be easier to do if you reach out and bring happiness to someone else that you love and care about.
The person you lost gave you the gift of love and that felt good, that’s why you grieve the loss of it. So a great way to heal your broken heart is to reach out to other people with love and kindness.
This allows them to be the recipient of the gift you were fortunate enough to receive.
Do one thing today that touches another life and makes the world a better place. By doing that you honor the one you love and lost.
And…you give yourself a reason to live again.
Gary Sturgis

01/06/2026

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We didn’t just lose a child.
We lost a version of our life
that will never exist again.
A version of us that felt complete.
The future we pictured.
The ordinary days
that now feel extraordinary in their absence.
And we carry that… every single day.
Even when we smile.
Even when we show up.
Even when it looks like we’re doing “okay.”
Grief doesn’t clock out.
It lives quietly beneath the surface…
in the pauses,
in the memories,
in the moments no one else sees,
And in the moments that cruelly keep going on without them.
I wish people knew…
We still want our child to be spoken about.
We still want their name remembered.
We don’t need you to fix it.
We don’t expect you to have the right words.
We just don’t want to feel alone in it.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do
is simply hold space.
To sit with us.
To listen.
To acknowledge that this loss matters, and matters still.
Because our love doesn’t end.
And neither does our grief.
If you love a grieving parent…
Don’t disappear.
Don’t stay silent out of fear of saying the wrong thing.
Your presence matters more than perfection ever could.
- Shauna Dukes
With thanks to TCF Victoria Inc

26/05/2026

💛 This is a free webinar with Doris Zagdanski, a respected speaker on grief and loss issues. June 10,
5 to 6.30 pm.

A compassionate webinar offering clarity, understanding and guidance around grief.