Anam Cara’s Volunteer Parents Gather for Training and Support
Anam Cara’s Volunteer Parents are the cornerstone of our peer-to-peer support groups. Since our founding, the voice of lived experience has been central to everything we do. What these parents offer month after month is genuinely extraordinary. These parents not only help the professional facilitators hold groups, welcome new parents, share their stories, and provide vital insights for our office staff– they are bereaved parents themselves first. It is in recognition of this dual role, and of the centrality of Volunteer Parents in Anam Cara, that we hold an annual training day especially for Volunteer Parents.
What do we do with what has happened to us?
We were delighted to have welcomed Brid Carroll as the facilitator for this year’s workshop. The theme of this year’s workshop was ‘Holding Space.’ That means holding space for whatever experiences and emotions bereaved parents bring to the groups– anger, fear, guilt, sorrow, relief, etc.– it is truly dedicated work. It means being fully present, offering a safe, non-judgemental environment for all to express themselves without expectation. It means sitting in stillness, allowing parents to trust themselves without offering solutions or advice. Brid offered ways to engage in self-care that take seriously the impact of these stories on the body; ways to breathe to recentre, poems and exercises to connect deeply to one’s self. Take a moment to sit with yourself, if you can, and join our Volunteer Parents in reflecting on “For One Who is Exhausted” by John O’Donohue:
For One Who is Exhausted by John O’Donohue
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laboursome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
Thank you
To all the Volunteer Parents who were able to attend, we are honoured by the gift of your time and presence, Saturday and at our peer-to-peer support meetings. We are endlessly grateful for the wisdom and experience you bring to each and every one of our groups, and honoured that you have chosen to share the love that your child brought into your life with other grieving parents in Anam Cara.
In gratitude,
Team Anam Cara