HEALING THE GRIEVING HEART
The Compassionate Friends: Three Decades of Sharing and Caring
Host: Dr. Gloria Horsley
With guest: Pat Loder
October 20, 2005
G: Hello, I’m Dr. Gloria Horsley. Welcome to Healing the Grieving Heart. Today on our show, we’re going to talk about friends, a very special group of friends. Friends that share your burden of losing that wonderful child or sibling. Friends who truly understand the shock and horror of hearing the words, “They didn’t make it.” Friends who understand feelings of not wanting or thinking that you can live through such pain. Friends who have been there, will share their story and will hear your story over and over. Friends who will walk the path with you while understanding that each person’s grief is unique. The special friends I am speaking about are The Compassionate Friends. The group of people comprising the largest non profit self-help bereavement organization in the world, and the topic of our show today is The Compassionate Friends: Three Decades of Sharing and Caring, and I’m very pleased to have on my show today, Pat Loder, the Executive Director of The Compassionate Friends. This show is sponsored by the Library of Life, a not for profit organization that offers you the opportunity to celebrate your child or sibling’s life by creating a web site. It’s easy to use and very inexpensive. The first fourteen days are free and then for a one-time charge of $55, it will be on the web forever. I put up a wonderful website for my deceased son, Scott, and if I can do it, anyone can because I’m not really a techie person, but on it I’ve got photographs and my kids have logged in with wonderful treasured memories. It’s been 22 years and to retrieve their memories of their brother is really wonderful. Please feel free to go to my website to take a look at my Library of Life site. You can click on Library of Life and then you go into Scott’s website. My website is www.healingthegrievingheart.org. You can also see a celebration site for my granddaughter, Samantha, who we will be adopting from China or you can reach the Library of Life by going directly to www.libraryoflife.org. Again the topic of our show today is The Compassionate Friends: Three Decades of Sharing and Caring. And again Pat Loder is here as the Executive Director of Compassionate Friends. We were to have the Lawleys in from Coventry, England, but somehow we’ve had a glitch and Pat’s very kindly come in to talk about Compassionate Friends on the show and hopefully we’ll have the Lawleys on again. Pat, tell us how you got involved with The Compassionate Friends and thanks so much for coming onto the show.
P: Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here. I got involved with The Compassionate Friends shortly after the death of my two children. They were killed in 1991 when a racing design motorcycle broad sided the side of my car that the two children were sitting on. Stephanie was eight at the time, and she was flown to Children’s Hospital where she died the next day. Stephen was five and had just turned five that week, as a matter of fact, and he was never able to be resuscitated.
G: Well, we have a lot of people listening to the show that certainly know that pain, and I think that’s one of the things that The Compassionate Friends does. It’s been how long for you?
P: It has been fourteen-and-a-half years.
G: And twenty-two for me. And so I think that one of the things that we’re going to talk about today is how developing our stories and sharing our stories can be so helpful, particularly with people a little further along the path who will understand what we’ve been through or what you are going through at this time. I wanted you all to know, too, that Pat and I and Compassionate Friends have been working to do CDs of Healing the Grieving Heart and that I’m looking at some of them right now. They’re really beautiful in a beautiful package and you can hear Pat who was our first guest on Healing the Grieving Heart and then Harriett Schiff and Patrick Malone talking about grief in the workplace. Harriett Schiff did the bereaved parent. Heidi Horsley, my daughter, talked about adolescent grieving, and we have pregnancy and loss. So all these wonderful CDs. They are archived on The Compassionate Friends website and also you can listen to them on VoiceAmerica. But if you’re like me, it’s nice to have a CD that you can pop in your car when you’re going to listen to a special show that you want to hear. Well, Pat, we are going to talk today a little about the history of The Compassionate Friends, and I know you know the history and I wondered if we could talk a little bit about how it got started. I know the Lawleys started it in England with Simon Stephens. I believe he came over to the United States, Reverend Stephens.
P: He did come over to the United States. If we back up and we talk a little bit about the Lawleys, their son, Kenneth, was hit by a car when he was riding his bicycle to school one morning. He was taken to the hospital and in the same hospital on the same ward was another young man that was dying from cancer. Simon Stephens, who was the young hospital chaplain at that time at the hospital saw that both parents were grieving the imminent death of the two children and first Kenneth died and then the other young man died. He brought the two parents together and he found that bringing them together and the fact that they could talk about their grief, that shared experience, even though one died from an illness, the other died very suddenly from an accident, he saw that bringing them together could help them so much more than he could help them as a young priest. And so that was the first part of The Compassionate Friends in England. They got together, formed a meeting in which they invited one other bereaved parent, and it was just a very, very informal gathering. A kitchen table kind of gathering of these families where they had tea.
G: It’s time for us to take a break now. When we come back, let’s talk a little bit about The Compassionate Friends in the United States. Please stay tuned for more of Pat Loder and your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. We’ll be talking more about The Compassionate Friends, the largest self-help group in the world and so please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Pat Loder, and we are talking about The Compassionate Friends sharing and caring and the history of Compassionate Friends and really also what it can do for you today. I wanted to first bring up an email that is from Carol from Maine. She is telling me:
I just put a celebration of my daughter, Cindy’s, wedding on the Library of Life celebration site. Everyone loved the pictures and we’ve had a lot of fun logging in their congrats. Great site. I can’t believe for only $55 it’s on for a lifetime. I love your show and thanks for having it on. Carol
G: Well, thanks, Carol. We love to get your emails and keep the emails coming. Pat, before break, we were talking a little bit about how Compassionate Friends got started with the Lawleys and Simon Stephens. One of the things I wanted to talk about was Simon Stephens’ life, this minister. I tried to get a hold of him. Right now he is in Russia. But he had quite the life. Could you mention a little bit about that because I think part of the reason Compassionate Friends could get started was because he had already had this kind of experience himself. He wasn’t just any minister who came together with parents whose children had died.
P: He actually experienced a great loss when he was approximately fifteen years old. He had convinced his parents that they needed to go to some sort of, I’m not sure if it was a parent-teacher conference or what exactly it was, but it was something at his school that he felt was very important that the entire family attend. So they all got into the car and they were on their way to this event at the school and a gasoline truck hit them. The driver of the truck was drunk at the time, and both of Simon’s parents were killed and both his brother and sister. Simon spent six months in the hospital himself recovering from the accident and went on to become a priest after that time, but he obviously has a very – he has a story himself.
G: And he wrote a book called Death Comes Home, right? I’m trying to get it right now. It’s out of print but I am trying to get it. I think one of the keys to The Compassionate Friends is just what Pat Loder talked about and that is sharing your story, that he was able to share his story. Would you say that’s one of the things we do at Compassionate Friends?
P: Oh, it is the most important thing that we do at a Compassionate Friends meeting. I’m one of those people that felt that I’m a very private person and to think of going someplace and telling strangers about my story, the worst thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life, and that telling strangers this story would ever help. But it did. I used to say to my husband, “Take me any place, don’t take me to there.” But what happened was that we would go and suddenly these people would talk about and share their stories. One person in particular, I can remember sitting at a TCF meeting and she talked about the videotape that never stopped going off in her head and she replayed the scene of her son’s drowning. And I thought, “Oh, my gosh, somebody else has a videotape that never goes off in their head?” Because over and over and over, I would replay the accident. I would replay what we did that day. It would go off over and over in my head from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to sleep at night. I just kept replaying it over and over. What could I have done differently? What possibly I could have done or who helped me or who didn’t help me? All of those things kept going off in my head, and I connected very much with that person when she talked about it because I thought, “Oh, my goodness, I’m not going crazy. This is a normal thing that happens to people that they re-live over and over this horrific experience.”
G: Exactly, and what you’re saying, the idea of normal, that grief is normal. I was interviewing Ben Sieff yesterday talking to him about his brother being murdered, and he talked about he actually got put in a mental hospital. I remember going to a therapist and talking to him trying to tell him my story, and he started talking to me about something had happened in my childhood. And that really wasn’t where it was at. We really do need to tell our current story over and over and resolve that.
P: Absolutely. It’s a horrific event that happened in our life and we need to tell the story. Sometimes I call it the head and heart thing. A head realizes that it happened but trying to convince our heart that our children have died is quite another thing. And so we have to retell that story and retell that story until it can become woven into our life.
G: Yes, and when we first tell it, it’s with such sorrow and hurt and pain, and then when we get together with other people in a group, we see them telling their story with a little less and a little less. Of course, our story always touches our heart but it becomes part of our life.
P: And the remarkable thing about going to a TCF meeting, when we tell our story to a friend, for instance, they want so much for us to be better, to be normal, to be that person that we used to be. And we’re never going to be that person that we used to be. But when we go to a TCF meeting, we realize that we can tell our story and we can tell it and we can cry and we could laugh at a funny spot if we feel that there’s something that might be funny that our child has done, and we can share that and we can do it in such a way that it helps us to come to grips with our story. It’s so healing to be able to tell it without the fear that we’re going to get shut down, because we don’t get shut down there. Friends and family want us to move on and they think telling our story is something that we’re dwelling on. But we’re not dwelling on it. We need that to share.
G: That is true and right now I would like to talk a little bit about Simon Stephens coming to the United States and how he got here and he asked there to be a national organization of Compassionate Friends, is that right?
P: He did. Actually, Time magazine wrote a story about the Society of The Compassionate Friends, which is what it was originally called. They wrote a story about The Compassionate Friends and the help that was happening over in England. It was read by a family here in the United States, the Shamreys who experienced the death of their daughter, Gabrielle. She died in a car train accident. They invited Simon Stephens to come to the United States and talk about starting The Compassionate Friends here, and he did so.
G: Now how many chapters are there here now?
P: We have nearly 600 located in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. And there are Compassionate Friends present in an estimated 30 countries around the world.
G: Now how will our listeners get in touch with a group?
P: They can call toll free our national office at 877-969-0010 and we’re more than happy to put together a customized packet of material for that family. The staff will ask the person how the child died, if there are surviving children. Anything that they can help with any of the brochures that we have like if there are grandparents involved, whatever the case may be. Our staff will put a copy of the brochures into the packet of material and mail it to the family along with local chapter referral information as far as when the chapter meets or a contact person to contact about a local chapter.
G: That’s great. Well, we’re coming up for break now and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned to hear more on our show today and our topic is The Compassionate Friends: Three Decades of Caring and Sharing, and I have Pat Loder on, the Executive Director of The Compassionate Friends. This show is sponsored by the Library of Life, which is a wonderful non profit organization that offers you the opportunity to celebrate your child or sibling’s life by creating a website for them on Library of Life. We also have CDs of this show, Healing the Grieving Heart, that you can get by calling 877-969-0010 or getting in touch with The Compassionate Friends. You can go on their website or you can go on my website at www.healingthegrievingheart.com. Please stay tuned for more from Gloria Horsley and Pat Loder.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and my guest today is Pat Loder, Executive Director of The Compassionate Friends. We had a little glitch today because we were expecting the Lawleys to be on from Coventry, England, but we have a toll free number issue so we’ll have them on the show another day, and we’ve got Pat Loder on and Karl Snepp is on right now. Karl is on the Board of The Compassionate Friends and has been involved with the organization for a long time. Welcome to the show, Karl.
K: Thanks. Great to be here.
G: It’s great to have you on. Before we went to break, Pat and I were just talking about the history of The Compassionate Friends, covering it lightly. But we were also talking about what The Compassionate Friends can do for our listeners. I wondered if you want to talk a little bit about your history with The Compassionate Friends and about your child.
K: Well, Dave was 32 years old when he died of thyroid cancer in 1988. It was in June, actually the 31st of May, and we were pretty busy, Sue and I with some projects that Dave had wanted us to take care of and it wasn’t really until after Thanksgiving and Christmas that we just kind of collapsed and really felt the impact of his death. Sue knew about some group that was for bereaved parents and it was called The Compassionate Friends or something like that, she thought. And we lived in Pennsylvania at the time. We found a chapter that was very close to our home and they met twice a month and we went to that first meeting and I’ll never forget. It was in a lady’s house and we pulled around the corner and the cul de sac was filled with cars and we thought we’d come to the wrong place or something. We went into the house of the lady who was the chapter leader. There were 40 people there.
G: Oh, my goodness, that’s a large group, isn’t it, Pat.
P: Um, hm.
K: It was just overwhelming, and, of course, we left knowing that we had to come back.
G: How was it for you being a guy? Did you talk up or were you quiet?
K: I was quiet. I couldn’t talk, not because I didn’t want to, but when I opened my mouth to talk for about the first four or five months of meetings, I couldn’t. My voice just wouldn’t come out. I would start to cry and I couldn’t talk. So I listened and it was so valuable just to be there among all these people who, even though I wasn’t talking, knew what I was feeling and it didn’t bother me going to meetings. I know it does for some guys, but I was in the human resources area and meetings were the way you got things done, so I understood meetings and I looked forward to them.
G: Ah and then you became a leader at some point, you and your wife?
K: Sue and I a couple of years later became members of the steering committee of that chapter and then when we moved after I retired and we moved from Philadelphia to Tucson, Arizona, we got involved in the chapter there and were chapter leaders there for a couple of years and stayed on that steering committee and leadership for five years.
P: I think Karl brought up a really important point in that he said that he didn’t talk at the meetings at first and that’s really important to understand. You don’t have to go to a TCF meeting and talk. You’re not forced to talk but listening is so valuable to hear how other people have coped with their grief and you learn so much in just listening.
G: And you hear some of your story in their story, too. You kind of get a new insight. The other thing that Karl was talking about that really came up for me and I think both of you are so fabulous in this is the opportunity to serve.
K: Well, you don’t even realize you’re doing it. As you get a little farther along in your grief and you’ve been going to meetings. You come to a point where I think you sort of reflect on where you are now compared to where you were then and realize that you’re actually one of the people now who newcomers are listening to and saying, “Oh, I can get through this because look at them.”
G: We’ve made it and so can you.
K: It’s almost a passive thing.
P: It’s that transition. You don’t even know when it takes place.
K: That’s right.
G: Yeah, beautiful. I remember just standing in the receiving line after my son died a man came to me and said, “My son died.” And I don’t even know what he said beyond that, I’m sure he said other things, but all I did was look at him and think, “I may live.” So it’s so basic at the very beginning, isn’t it?
P: It is very basic.
G: So Karl the other thing I wanted to mention and Pat, too, is to talk about as the history of Compassionate Friends progressed, how they’ve moved into including siblings. At first, I believe it was just parents, but I know your daughter, Karl, has been very involved with moving Compassionate Friends in that direction. Am I right on that?
K: That’s right. Well, she was on the Board of Directors and was actually a President of the Board of Directors for a couple of years and was the first sibling to be in that role. And again, as Pat said about things happening gradually and you don’t even realize when they happen, this organization gradually came to more and more formally embrace siblings as equals with parents if you don’t mind that term. So many times, siblings, especially younger ones, are just overlooked and you hear all these tales from kids, teens particularly, saying, “I didn’t know what to do about my parents. If I brought anything up, they would cry, and so I kind of avoided it and people would ask me how my parents were doing and not give any thought to how I’m doing.” We realize that now throughout the organization.
G: There are some wonderful sibling things going on. Pat can you talk about what’s going on with the siblings at the national conference or do you have any idea about how many siblings groups there are or what are your thoughts on that?
P: At our national conference, we offer a whole track of workshops specifically for the siblings. As Karl says, it has been an evolution for the organization that we realize that a death of a child, it doesn’t happen to just the parents, this is a trauma for the entire family so the siblings are brought in and we offer an entire track for the siblings. We offer a track for grandparents at our national conference. We also offer a couple of workshops for the grandparents and we also offer workshops for friends and family who accompany people to our national conference so that they know how they can best help a grieving person.
G: The conference is wonderful and it’s in Dearborn, Michigan, this year. Do you have any idea what the dates are?
P: The dates for the conference will be July 14 through the 16th with a pre-conference professional’s day on the 13th.
G: That’s great and I would highly recommend that people come to this. You know, I’ve been interested because my daughter, Heidi, works with siblings a lot, and one of the things that I have been very interested in is how the parents say, “Well, I think they’re just coming to have fun and see Dearborn and see the museum and all that.” But, you know what, if that’s how you get your siblings there, your children there, it’s well worth it because those siblings getting together, sharing that loss, it’s an incredible thing. It’s so powerful and they really are able to talk about their losses in a beautiful way.
P: And they do it while they’re doing these other activities. Yes, they may come, and some of them will talk about not wanting to attend the conference. They don’t think that’s something for them. But they make lasting friendships at these conferences and having the opportunity, no pressure involved, but they participate in some of the programs and some of the workshops and are able to share their grief experiences at their own pace and their own way and their own time, and it really helps them tremendously.
G: Karl, have you had any experiences with the teens or with the siblings there at the conference?
K: Just as an outsider, not being a teen. The thing that I’ve noticed and I noticed early on when we would be going to conferences and Karen would be there also even though she was certainly an adult, that the camaraderie among the siblings spans a lot of years of age. There would be 30 year olds and 15 year olds who ordinarily wouldn’t give each other the time of day who had something in common and they bond pretty well at those conferences.
G: It’s again the idea of we’ve made it and so can you. They see some people who are further out with the loss and who had siblings die when they were younger maybe 14 and now they’re 17 or 18 and people can talk to them about how it is with their parents and that kind of thing. So we’ve come from this organization from five people in Coventry, England, having tea together then coming to the United States with Simon Stephens and Time magazine and then Harriett Schiff was on Donahue, she was telling me. She’s on our CDs that we’re selling of Healing the Grieving Heart, and she talks about how she was on the Donahue show and it got it going. So we’ve come from that. We have regional conferences, too, isn’t that right, Pat?
P: Yes, we do. Absolutely. Regional conferences are held around the United States. Actually, we have a regional conference this weekend in Door County, Wisconsin.
G: And how would people find out about those?
P: They can visit the national website at www.compassionatefriends.org and we have a listing of all of the regional conferences, national conference, if there’s an international conference going on, we have that on our website. So visit the website often and you can find any listing under the conference listings.
G: Well, we’ve certainly become a cyber world. Here we are talking to a show that is archived on The Compassionate Friends website as well as the VoiceAmerica website and it can be picked up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all over the world so that people can hear others talk about how basically we’ve made it and so can you and dealing with these profound losses in our life. Karl, you logged in to my website, didn’t you, for the Library of Life?
K: Yes.
G: For what? My grandchild from China?
K: I sure did.
G: Yes, the Library of Life is sponsoring the show today and I know Pat logged in, too, and you guys left little messages which was great. I think that the Library of Life is a great site for our teens, too, to be able to set up websites or anyone in your family to be able to set up websites for your family members. You can play music. You can have pictures. People can make comments. It’s a wonderful site. So hopefully you will go to the Library of Life. You can also pick it up off my website, www.healingthegrievingheart.com and log into the Library of Life and then log into Celebration. It’s very easy to create these websites so I highly recommend it.
K: There’s also opportunities to make a memorial website like you did for Scott.
G: Now are you going to make one for Dave?
K: I’m not sure. I have to talk to Dave about it.
G: The amazing thing about doing this website is that I am not a techie and I was able to put it up. You can put the website up in like ten minutes. It’s pretty amazing and then you are able to change things on it and move things around. It’s just a wonderful kind of thing. It’s a non profit organization that’s doing it and it’s free for 14 days and then it’s only $55 after that to keep it on the web for a lifetime. The other thing I wanted to talk about and Karl you haven’t seen them yet but Pat has. But we’ve produced CDs of this show. All the proceeds go to The Compassionate Friends. It’s a wonderful set of ten CDs and we hope that you will go to The Compassionate Friends website and order those CDs or you can call 877-969-0010 to order CDs of the show.
K: That’s toll free.
G: That’s right. It’s a toll free number and we have a special introductory price of $45 for them now so we hope that you will order them. The regular price will be $60 so I hope you’ll order those CDs because if you’re like me, I love to pop the CD in my car.
K: And that’s for how many shows?
G: Ten shows. And all the proceeds go to The Compassionate Friends. They’ll be wonderful for you to give. I got ten of them myself and I’ve already given them all away so I’ve got to get another set of ten. But people are really appreciating them. They’re really lovely and they have my son’s picture on the front and on all the CDs, and I’m hoping with our next set we’ll put the people who are on the show’s kids on the CDs. So it’s time for our final break and I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley, and please stay tuned to hear more about The Compassionate Friends with Pat Loder and Karl, thank you so much for being on the show. You’re a real sweetheart. Tell everybody hello. Tell Karen hello. Thanks for coming on.
K: It’s my pleasure.
G: This show is sponsored again by the Library of Life. Celebrate your child or sibling’s life by creating a website and please stay tuned to hear more from Pat Loder and your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. Pat, when we come back from break, is there anything that you think we’ve missed or any comments you want to make to our listeners? Please stay tuned for more.
Welcome back to Healing the Grieving Heart. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley. My guest today is Pat Loder, Executive Director of The Compassionate Friends. We’re discussing the founding of The Compassionate Friends and the history as well as what Compassionate Friends can do for you and what is going on in the United States and in the world with Compassionate Friends today. Pat, welcome back to the show, and I wanted to ask you about how many chapters are there and worldwide and I know it’s a hard number to get a grip on because this is a volunteer organization and there are only how many paid employees?
P: We have six paid employees, but in our office, we have chartered through the United States a national organization. We have nearly 600 chapters here in the United States and a couple in Puerto Rico. And worldwide, we’re in approximately 30 countries around the world so it’s a very, very large organization. The tremendous amount of help that the organization gives. We hear all the time, “TCF saved my life. TCF saved my life.” And I have to say, that’s what happened to me, that I was able to go to meetings, listen to other bereaved parents and normalize my grief.
G: If some of our listening audience are listening to Healing the Grieving Heart, however, they don’t have a chapter in their area and they want to start one, how would they do it?
P: They can call toll free our number, 877-969-0010, and talk with our chapter services coordinator and she can help through the process of chartering a chapter if anybody is interested in chartering one.
G: So if you’re hearing the show and it’s not in your area and you would really like to start one, you’d get a lot of support. There are training programs now for chapter leaders, isn’t that right?
P: We do. We have chapter leader training programs. We hold three different programs throughout the United States during the year and we also hold chapter leader training during our national conference so that the modules are also available during workshop times at our national conference but the training programs are invaluable for our leadership to attend those weekends.
G: So it’s pretty amazing that this organization has come so far in how many years? What year did it start?
P: Well, it was actually back in 1969 in England that it started but in the United States we became actually incorporated in 1978.
G: So, since 1978 it’s really come of age in that the organization gives a lot of support and a lot of structure on how to help people set up these groups for people. It’s really a marvelous organization. The other thing I wanted to say is this is really an organization where if you donate to The Compassionate Friends, it is very low key and it does go directly to helping chapters and supports them and to helping the organization because it doesn’t go for sure to overhead because, as I said, it’s a large organization with six paid employees, which is quite amazing, and the opportunity to volunteer and the opportunity to serve are incredible in the organization.
P: When you figure that we have that many employees and last year alone we had nearly 64,000 telephone calls, letters, emails, all of those sorts of things received in the national office, that’s a tremendous amount of response that we deal with with such a small staff.
G: It’s amazing. No one has asked me to do this, but they do have a site for donation on The Compassionate Friends website and it is a very worthy cause to donate to. Pat, we’re going to talk just a little bit, we don’t have too much time, about Compassionate Friends as far as sometimes we hear some negative things about the person who went once who didn’t ever go again and that kind of thing. Do you have any thoughts on that?
P: We try to tell people that they should try at least three meetings. A self-help group meeting is perhaps not for everyone. We realize that. But when you go to your first meeting, it is such an intense experience. First off, you have to be very brave to walk through the door the first time.
G: And often you have to have a friend take you, by the way. I thought Karl was great when he and Sue just went. But I had somebody take me along, shepherd me in.
P: Absolutely. What you find is a lot of times as Karl said, you can’t speak for several meetings and you hear all of these other stories and trying to process all of that, people go, “Oh, I could never, never go back there.” But if you try it the second time or the third time, we say try it three times because you begin to get the understanding you’re not as overwhelmed. That first meeting—going there the first time, admitting that your child has died, having to articulate that your child has died and that’s the reason why you are there, and then sitting through a meeting can be really, really difficult that first time through. So going again does help to help you make that determination if those meetings are for you.
G: Well, Pat, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciated your pinch-hitting since we had some problems with the Lawleys from England. Hopefully, we’ll get them on another day because they’re sort of the founding family of The Compassionate Friends. So thanks a lot for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. It’s time to close the show. It was great. This show has been brought to you by the Library of Life. You can go to www.libraryoflife.org and create a memorial or a celebration website for your child, and you can go to my web site at www.healingthegrievingheart.org and you can log in to the Library of Life and you can see my son, Scott’s website or my granddaughter, Samantha, who we are adopting from China. We’d love to have you come and be part of our family and join in on that website. Next week, we’re going to hear the topic Children Killed by Drunk Drivers with Glynn Birch of Orlando, Florida. Glynn is the National President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and he’s the first male to hold that position. Glynn will discuss with our listeners the challenges of children who have been killed by drunk drivers. Please visit my website at www.healingthegrievingheart.org or email me at gchorsley@aol.com. This show is archived on www.Health.VoiceAmerica.com as well as www.thecompassionatefriends.com website. This is Dr. Gloria Horsley. Please stay tuned again next Thursday at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time or 12:00 Eastern, for more of Healing the Grieving Heart, a show of hope and renewal and support. Remember, others have been there before you and made it. You, too, can have a hand to walk this journey. Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Dr. Gloria Horsley.
