This Would Never Have Happened without RC
The biggest gift RC has given me was after my twenty-year-old son died in a tragic accident in 2008. My first thoughts were that it couldn’t be possible to heal from such a big hurt as that. And yet I knew that there was nothing else to do but feel the enormity of the loss.
I had to cry and cry and rage and cry for a very long time. The healing of the hurt didn’t have a rigid timeline. My Co-Counsellors understood that and supported me in the process.
At the same time, I also attended a non-RC support group for bereaved parents. It was good to be with people who shared the same kind of loss, but I also became aware of how terrible my culture is at dealing with death. Many of the parents in the group thought that they needed to stop crying so much—or a doctor had said that they needed to stop crying, that their grief was “pathological.”
When I think of my son now, it is with a smile on my face for all the beautiful memories of who he was and how much we loved each other. The things that I learned, grieving fully, have made my life even bigger and richer. This would never have happened without RC.
Vernon, British Columbia, Canada
(Present Time 205, October 2021)