The death of a child presents unique challenges for the bereaved parents suffering through unimaginable loss, and for the entire family. Many experiencing this type of loss don't know where to turn for the help and grief resources needed to help them get through their grief.
A parent who's experienced the death of their child might begin to feel lonely and isolated from their friends and family. Generally, this is because of a general lack of understanding of what it's like to lose a child.
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More and more grieving parents are turning to strangers on the internet for the help and support they need to help them survive the overwhelming feelings and emotions tied to their loss.
Many online forums exist to help grieving individuals navigate their grief and connect with others who understand what they're going through.
Blogs About Coping With the Loss of a Child
Child loss blogs dedicated to supporting parents and individuals dealing with the death of a child offer many grief resources that are both helpful and informative. Those seeking to connect with others who find themselves dealing with similar losses also benefit from the more modern approach to healing from grief.
Blogs geared explicitly toward coping with child loss become more than just a place to read articles online. They become a lifeline for bereaved parents seeking the support of others, a place to get help and professional referrals, and a great place to meet new people while honoring the memory of their children.
1. Grieving.com
Grieving.com is one of the internet’s leading sites for gathering information related to the death of a child.
This website has a healthy blog filled with several topics related to different types of child loss. It provides a safe space for bereaved parents to collect information from the many resources offered and interact with other similarly situated persons.
2. Modern Loss
The Modern Loss website has a child loss site dedicated to promoting candid conversation about grieving the death of a child. The site’s creator has successfully merged suffering with living after loss by combining the experiences of a diverse group of people in one shared space.
This blog is only a portion of all the added benefits of having a fully dedicated website supporting grief and loss. Founded by Rebecca Soffer, an orphaned young woman left to navigate grief on her own, this website provides invaluable information and support geared to a younger generation struggling with loss.
3. The Compassionate Friends
The Compassionate Friends dedicates its entire website to supporting grieving individuals and families who've suffered the death of a child. This network was founded over 50 years ago by a chaplain in England after bringing together two sets of grieving parents and realizing that they were each other's best source of support. This was when the Society of the Compassionate Friends was born.
In 1978, the Compassionate Friends came to the United States and formed its first stateside grief support group in Illinois. Over 600 chapters of The Compassionate Friends currently exist throughout the United States and its territories who are ready to serve bereaved families in person and through their blog.
4. Still Mothers
The death of a child is devastating enough on its own, but when a mother of a stillborn remains childless even after trying to have another child, the pain is unbearable. Still Mothers dedicates its blog to child loss of every type, but it holds a special place for mothers of stillborn children who've never had the chance to have a rainbow baby.
As an often overlooked community, this is a safe space for mothers with no living children to support one another. But anyone is welcome to join and share their unique stories of grief and loss.
5. Silent Grief
Behind how Silent Grief came to be is the touching story of a woman who's struggled with grief since she was a child. After experiencing her sister's death, who died at the age of thirteen, founder Clara Hinton had to learn to survive her loss on her own.
Years later, when rocked with a miscarriage at the age of 22, she found herself dealing with grief once again. The lack of resources at the time available to grieving mothers sent her searching for answers. A book by the same name emerged from her grief that helped her make sense of her loss. Now she dedicates her blog to helping others cope with the pain of child loss.
6. Cake’s Online Child Loss Library
Cake has a vast collection of articles on child loss available in our online library. Here, you’ll find hundreds of expertly written articles by grief and loss professionals to help you make sense of your grief.
The library is free to access for anyone needing to learn more about the grieving process and coping with the devastating loss that accompanies the death of a child.
Forums About Coping With the Loss of a Child
What exactly is a child loss forum? Online forums are a place for like-minded individuals to meet and gather to share their experiences. They differ from the chat rooms of the past in the sense that you’re able to have and continue conversations in forums even when not all members or participants are online at the same time.
Forums give you the flexibility to add to the conversation whenever it’s convenient for you to jump in and share your thoughts and opinions. Forums dedicated to child loss exist all over the world. Here in the United States, they offer a chance for strangers to meet online with the potential to continue the conversation in real life. Here are some of the more popular child loss forums.
7. Grieving.com
Grieving.com offers support groups for coping with the loss of a child. These online grief forums are designed to lend help with the grieving process following the death of a child of any age. The forum is a free resource and is open to anyone interested in sharing their stories of grief, lending support, or receiving the necessary added help to get through this devastating type of loss.
Online grief support groups such as this one are instrumental in helping parents who are coping with the death of their child. This particular website offers a vast array of resources for bereaved parents.
8. Grief Healing Discussion Groups
This particular online grief healing forum addresses the needs of bereaved parents and grandparents suffering through the death of a child at any age. Additionally, they provide support to survivors of child loss due to miscarriage, stillbirth, and other types of infant loss. The forums are accessible to anyone, but the site is designed to help individuals suffering or anticipating a significant loss.
This forum gives members the option of freely joining in any discussion or starting a new one of their own. Distinguishing factors of this forum from others is that it's privately administered, closely monitored, and moderated by professionals. It allows you to verify each professional participant's credentials through a unique link.
9. The Light Beyond
The Light Beyond forum has an extensive archive of community forums dealing with child loss and grief accessible to the general public. To access their current conversations, you’re required to set up an account and log in each time you want to participate in the discussions.
Although this is a minor inconvenience, the information and shared experiences posted online make an effort worthwhile. There’s a detailed FAQ page linked to the site for those interested in learning more about participating in this forum.
10. Grief in Common
A child’s death at any age has a devastating effect on the parents. The forum, Grief in Common, serves the needs of parents who have suffered the loss of an adult child. The founder of the blog that this forum attaches to is a grief and bereavement professional who dedicates his life’s works to helping grieving people heal from their loss.
This platform is active and covers many topics related to the loss of adult children and children, in general. This forum does require you to set up an account and log in to post to the forum or respond to other members.
11. Sands Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity
The Sands online community for the support of parents who’ve lost a child at birth or other neonatal death has a private forum that’s closed to the general public. To gain access, they ask that you join their community by following the link provided.
The organization is based out of the U.K. but offers services to bereaved parents worldwide. They provide 24-hour online access to their community of registered users seeking support. The account activation process takes 24 hours. Alternatively, you can join their public Facebook community by following this link.
Helpful Child Loss Blogs
There’s no pain more devastating than the loss of an infant, child, or grandchild, regardless of the child’s age at the time of death. Online grief forums supporting parents of child loss offer a place to share your grief experiences while promoting healing.
Your unique experiences, grief, and discovered ways of getting through your grief may serve to help others coping with the same or similar types of loss. The messages of love, loss, and healing go beyond what you’ll read in books about losing a child.