Welcome to The Milton Keynes Bereaved Parent Group

A confidential, understanding and safe place for support through your grief.

The group was established in 2009 by a small group of bereaved parents and health care professionals brought together through the loss of a child.

The aim of the group is to offer help and support to other parents who have been affected by the loss of a child. (Whatever the age of the child)

Grief is a very personal journey, our group welcomes people at any stage of that journey and offers a common understanding of knowing what it is like to lose a child. (Which is sometimes difficult for our friends and families to understand)

Our meetings are very informal, we talk, laugh and cry together, share stories of our children and support each other through the daily struggle of coping without our children. The overall aim is to help each other deal with the situation we all thought we would never have to face.

Any bereaved parent is welcome, you do not have to participate or stay, what we can guarantee though is a warm welcome and plenty of tea, coffee, tissues and support.

Our Meetings

Meetings are held every third Thursday of the month from 7.30pm – 9.30pm at Age UK, The Peartree Centre, 1 Chads Lane, Peartree Bridge, Milton Keynes MK6 3EB.

We come together every month to share stories about our children, talk about how we all deal with different situations as parents we never thought we would find ourselves in. The meetings are informal with little structure. We open a meeting with a poem, reading or just a thought which may capture what someone is thinking or experiencing.

• How do people deal with anniversaries, Christmas’s without their child, or that 21st birthday, or wedding day we will never experience?
• What do you say when someone politely asks, “How many children do you have?”
• What can you say when people tell you to move on and that you will just get over it as time passes?

We can’t proclaim to have all the answers to these and many other questions. What we do have is experience of losing a child, many of us have lived through the anniversaries and holidays alone and share how we cope, how we chose to mark special dates and prepare for the harder days ahead.

Many mums and dads have attended the monthly meetings, supporting each other and forming friendships built on that understanding even some of our closest friends and family don’t have if they have never experienced the loss of a child.

Some people come to the meeting and just listen to others, some parents come and find it a relief to be able to talk about their children and share memories with other people without them feeling uncomfortable or trying to change the subject to move the conversation along.