Pat Peake and Mary Casey started this support group in 2000. Pat had recently lost her husband from cancer and found that the emotional support that she was offered in the community was ineffectual and didn’t meet her needs. She felt that the 1:1 counselling was unhelpful, as the other person (counsellor) had not lost her partner so how could she hope to know what Pat was feeling. She did look for other help but there was nothing available at that time. Pat had also had cancer at the same time as her husband and also felt a sense of guilt that she was the survivor. He was her soul mate and to this day she still misses him every day.

Maryis an Oncology Lead Nurse and has to deal with death quite frequently in her job. She knew her patients and their families very well while under her care and then they died ..... There was no follow up and after the death certificate was given to the families they were left to try and get on with their lives. This seemed to Mary to “leave an unfinished chapter”. How could the caring and support for the family stop because the patient has died?

This is why and how the idea of “Healing Hearts” was conceived. Death is a fact of life and without death there is no life.

The aim of the group is to enable successful grieving to occur. The group is informal and is run on a voluntary basis. It offers support to everyone that attends and is there to help people to cope with what is happening to them at that time. The common trend in the group is that people that attend have all suffered the death of a loved one and bereavement. The group offers help and assistance to each other and people are encouraged to exchange telephone numbers so that they can contact each other between meetings if they want to.

The meetings are held every 4 to 5 weeks in Redbridge. Many people attend the groups for a while and then leave with an open invitation to return if they want to at any time. However, support groups are not for everyone, it is an individual choice and one that each person needs to make for themselves.

Death is an important part of life. Although it is a painful experience, it is something that no one can avoid. Although grief is always the penalty for loving someone it can also give us the opportunity to move on with greater insight and understanding once the grief has started to resolve.