Our Credo
We need not walk alone. We are
The Compassionate Friends. We reach out to each other with love, with
understanding, and with hope. Our children have died at all ages and from
many different causes, but our love for our children unites us. Your pain
becomes my pain just as your hope becomes my hope. We are a unique family
because we represent many races and creeds. We are young and we are
old. Some of us are far along in our grief, but others still feel a grief
so fresh and so intensely painful that we feel helpless and see no hope.
Some of us have found our faith to be a source of strength, some of us are
struggling to find answers. Some of us are angry, filled with guilt or in
deep depression; others radiate an inner peace. But whatever pain we bring
to this gathering of The Compassionate Friends, it is pain we will share just as
we share with each other our love for our children. We are seeking and
struggling to build a future for ourselves, but we are committed to building
that future together as we reach out to each other in love, share the anger as
well as the peace, share the faith as well as the doubts and help each other to
grieve as well as to grow.
The Sibling Credo
We are the
surviving siblings of The Compassionate Friends. We are brought together
by the deaths of our brothers and sisters. Open your hearts to us, but
have patience with us. Sometimes we will need the support of our
friends. At other times we need our families to be there. Sometimes
we must walk alone, taking our memories with us, continuing to become the
individuals we want to be. We cannot be our dead brother or sister;
however, a special part of them lives on with us.
When our brothers
and sisters died, our lives changed. We are living a life very different
from what we envisioned, and we feel the responsibility to be strong even when
we feel weak. Yet we can go on because we understand better than many
others the value of family and the precious gift of life. Our goal is not
to be the forgotten mourners that we sometimes are, but to walk together to face
our tomorrow's as surviving siblings of The Compassionate Friends.