The Compassionate Friends/Kirkland WA

12/20/2025

Reminder: Our monthly TCF Coffee meeting is tomorrow, Saturday 20th of December at 10am in Starbucks, in QFC, at 11224 NE 124th St, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come and join us.

"The first year, we mourned for Grace and the loss of her presence in our lives. The second year, we grieved for ourselves because we knew she would never come bounding down the stairs in her jammies to see what Santa had brought. By year three, we'd begun to move out of the fog, and glimmers of hope, like shoots of new grass, began to surface." Foreword by Ann Hood.
- Dr Gloria Horsley & Dr Heidi Horsley: Open To Hope: Handling the Holidays After Loss

12/18/2025

Reminder: Our monthly Bereaved Moms’ and Bereaved Dads’ in-person meetings, are tomorrow night, Thursday night, 18th December at 7pm. Please come and join us. We are meeting at Evergreen Hospice. The address is Evergreen Hospice, 12822 124th Ln NE, Kirkland, WA 98034

"The first year, we mourned for Grace and the loss of her presence in our lives. The second year, we grieved for ourselves because we knew she would never come bounding down the stairs in her jammies to see what Santa had brought. By year three, we'd begun to move out of the fog, and glimmers of hope, like shoots of new grass, began to surface." Foreword by Ann Hood.
- Dr Gloria Horsley & Dr Heidi Horsley: Open To Hope: Handling the Holidays After Loss

12/14/2025

Reminder: Please join us in lighting a candle today Sunday 14th December, at 7pm local time, for our children, siblings and grandchildren and all others who have died too soon. The annual Worldwide Candle Lighting, started in 1997 by The Compassionate Friends in the United States and now believed to be largest mass candle lighting in the world. A virtual 24-hour wave of light circles the globe as it moves from time zone to time zone. Our program is being held at Sunset Hills Memorial Park located at 1575 145th PL SE, Bellevue, WA 98007. Their new chapel is beautiful. Plan to arrive between 6:15pm and 6:45pm.

12/11/2025

Reminder: Our TCF Worldwide Candle lighting is this Sunday, 14th of December at Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Bellevue. Please plan to arrive between 6:15pm and 6:45pm. Remembering the children who have gone too soon is a good way for many of us to help get through the holidays. The new Sunset Hills chapel is a beautiful setting for our WWCL.

12/11/2025

Reminder: Our monthly Chapter meeting is tonight, Thursday December 11th, at 7pm at Evergreen Hospice, 12822 NE 124th Lane NE, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come along and join us in person.

“I often taught my clients: STUG-Subsequent Temporary Upsurge of Grief. Coined by the clinical psychologist and loss researcher Therese Rando, STUG is a grief term I've always liked that reminds us that grief comes out of nowhere, obliterates, then passes."
— Meghan Riordan Jarvis: End of the Hour:A Memoir.

11/22/2025

11/22/2025

Reminder: Our monthly TCF Coffee meeting is tomorrow, Saturday 22nd of November at 10am in Starbucks, in QFC, at 11224 NE 124th St, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come and join us.

Coffee with friends was excellent again last month. The holidays are on my mind this month. We are less than a week away from Thanksgiving, the first of the major US holidays. I read an article this week by Anna Whiston-Donaldson, where she wrote about her family’s first Thanksgiving gathering after their son Jack drowned in a flash flood. Anna’s memoir Rare Bird is one of my favorite grief memoirs. A prolific blogger, I followed Anna’s story because her son died just a few months before my daughter. I came to know her family and cried yesterday when I read about their first Thanksgiving after Jack died.

See https://modernloss.com/first-thanksgiving/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOOMhdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFBMmYwZ0NkRTNremNpNjB5c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsat5Bb5XTjkam3jde0cyRc7Nfb714rzO_DWk3RdAvjks2d5y9Fy8fxtaQ4V_aem_l5aEGSlmsd8Q9x2QErkEjQ

If you need a book to help you over the holidays Dr Gloria & Dr Heidi Horsely wrote “Open to Hope: Inspirational Stories for Handling the Holidays After Loss”. See the quote below from Mitch Carmody.

In our bereaved dads’ meeting yesterday, we spoke about the webinar by Dr Bob Baugher about Coping with Guilt during Bereavement. Very helpful to me. I must have listened to this about a dozen times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGohMcvQjAQ

Finally, please do not forget about our TCF Candle Lighting on Sunday December 14th. Mark your calendar. It gives us a moment of respite during the difficulty of the holiday season. Come along tomorrow and tell us, over a cup of coffee, how you are going to remember your child over the holidays.

“When you have suffered the physical loss of someone in your life, the holidays, especially Christmas, can be extremely difficult and challenging. When that loss is a child, it can change how you experience and process the holidays forever.” - Mitch Carmody
- Dr. Gloria Horsley and Dr Heidi Horsely: Open to Hope: Inspirational Stories for Handling the Holidays After Loss

11/20/2025

Reminder: Our monthly Bereaved Moms’ and Bereaved Dads’ in-person meetings, are tomorrow night, Thursday night, 20th November at 7pm. Please come and join us. We are meeting at Evergreen Hospice. The address is Evergreen Hospice, 12822 124th Ln NE, Kirkland, WA 98034

"When we have unresolved grief, we often live with overwhelming rage."
- Edith Eger: The Gift: 14 Lessons to Save Your Life

11/13/2025

Reminder: Our monthly Chapter meeting is tomorrow night, Thursday November 13th, at 7pm at Evergreen Hospice, 12822 NE 124th Lane NE, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come along and join us in person.

“Even with creative practices and rituals like this and all of the meetings with other bereaved parents and my grief counselor, the darkness grew darker. At about the 15-month mark, I had a counseling session with my grief therapist where I shared that I did not feel like I could go on."
— Shari O'Loughlin: Life from the Ashes: Finding Hope After Loss.

10/25/2025

Reminder: Our monthly TCF Coffee meeting is tomorrow, Saturday 25th of October at 10am in Starbucks, in QFC, at 11224 NE 124th St, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come and join us.

"What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead. Euripides said that."
- Joan Didion: Blue Nights: A Memoir

09/11/2025

Reminder: Our monthly Chapter meeting is tonight, Thursday September 11th, at 7pm at Evergreen Hospice, 12822 NE 124th Lane NE, Kirkland, WA 98034. Please come along and join us in person.

“When a child dies it makes us question everything we know about the world.”
- Amelia Ireland: The Seven O’Clock Club