Welcome to your online community

When someone you care about dies or is facing the end of their life, the support you need may feel beyond your reach. With the help of Morrisons - our charity partner - we’ve made this online community to bring people together and help share their stories and get support from other people who have been through the same things. We’re also going to be on hand to pass on our expert advice too.

The community is yours use. Please ask questions and pass on your words of wisdom to help support others. We have some handy community guidelines to help you get the most out of the community - do have a quick read.

You’ll also find an advice section to help you with both the emotional and practical side of death - from what support is available as a carer, through to writing a will. You’ll find all this here.

So what should your first post consist of? Sharing your story is a great way to get started. Has someone you love died and you’re not sure what to do next, or do you have some advice to share that can make a difficult time that little bit easier?

We look forward to reading your posts and helping where we can. If you have any questions at all, please do let us know and we’ll reply as quickly as we can.

Thank you.

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Thank you!

Going through rather a rough time at moment as lost Mum to cancer in December, which was much quicker than we were anticipating … But have lost Mum, Dad and my dog(best friend) in less than 3 years!! … So yep without going into too much detail just yet (give me time), and not in the best of places right now

Hi Pete - thanks for posting. We hope you’ve seen the reply on your other post by Maria, one of our nurses. We’re so sorry to hear about your losses but we hope Maria’s reply helped a bit and went some way to showing that what you’re feeling is “normal” and quite common, from our experiences.

We’ve got some info on our site that might be helpful to read too:

How can I cope with bereavement?

Talking about how you’re feeling can really help, so we’re pleased you found this community. As Maria said, the community is really new (you’re in fact the first person to post!) so as it grows, there’ll be more people to share their experiences that will hopefully be really helpful.

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Thanks Joe, yes have seen the post from Maria, and will take a look at the link you have provided above. Just so hard to make people understand how feeling, and to top it off my counsellor is on holiday for 2 weeks, so next session won’t be until 22nd June - so as I hope you can understand, feeling very nervous and anxious at the moment.

I can definitely understand the difficulty at the moment, Pete. Was there anyone trusted that your counselor suggested you could talk to in the mean time?

The fact you’ve been and found help is a huge step in the right direction - and one that can often be really hard to take. You should definitely look at this as a huge positive!

We’re working hard to encourage people to share their stories here on this community, so hopefully over the coming days and weeks there will be more people are to share experiences and advice with - it should prove helpful we hope.

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It was a huge step, definitely, took a couple of counsellors to find someone I felt comfortable with and felt I could trust. He suggested that if really needed to, to phone Samaritans, but to be honest that isn’t really me.
I do have a good friend who has said I can ring or message them anytime, so that is something - just some things you don’t want to talk about with them, if that makes sense. Just got to try and take one day at a time, and if I don’t feel up to doing something then don’t do it.
Think it would be helpful to hear from other people, as to how they have coped etc…

It’s good you recognise it as a huge step because that might help you start to see that you are moving on - which I would definitely see it as. And moving on doesn’t mean you have to forget those who have died either. Of course it’s hard - often the hardest, in fact. And it does sound a little cliched when you hear “take each day at a time” but it does help…! As does realising that if you don’t want to do something, then you don’t have to. Small steps and all that.

It sounds like the things you’ve done are really helping already which is great. On the Samaritans - can understand why that might not feel like you, but honestly they’re wonderful and can be really helpful. Guess you’ve got nothing to lose by giving them a ring and seeing how it goes, even as a stop-gap until your counsellor gets back?

Once this community has been around for a little longer we’ll have more people to share their own experiences. If you like, we can mention your post on our Facebook Page and see if that will help anyone come and share what they went through? Happy to see if that’ll work - just let me know :slight_smile:

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Thanks Joe, have only been on here today as you know, but am really glad that I found out about this via the facebook page. I have found it invaluable already, even just this one conversation - you don’t realise how much of a difference it makes (I guess its the little things and all that) … But thank you, and yes am happy for you to mention my post on the facebook page.

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That’s good to hear - especially as you’re the first person here and it’s a brand new thing for Sue Ryder! So pleased that we can even start to make a small difference.

When I’m back in the office in the morning we’ll see about mentioning this on Facebook and see if that doesn’t find some people to share their stories and how they coped. Thanks Pete :slight_smile:

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