Relief in belonging

There is a particular kind of relief that occurs in peer bereavement spaces.

A relief in being able to speak openly – about the child or sibling who died, about their dying, about the moments surrounding their death – without feeling the need to minimise your grief or protect the person listening from it.

Outside those spaces, conversations about loss can often feel difficult to hold. People become uncomfortable. They move quickly towards reassurance. They search, with the best of intentions, for ways to make the grief feel less confronting – for something to say that might help it hurt a little less.

But within peer bereavement spaces, something different can happen. There can be relief in being alongside people who understand that when you lose a child or a sibling, love and loss don’t resolve – they continue together, always, for a lifetime. Less need to explain. Less fear of becoming too much.

Dying Matters Awareness Week

This week has been Dying Matters Awareness Week (4–10 May 2026) – a moment to open conversations about death, dying, grief, care, and loss that can be hard to hold at other times of the year. This year’s theme is Let’s Talk About Death and Dying.

As a charity supporting bereaved parents and siblings, SLOW‘s families tell us they feel an immediate sense of recognition when they first make contact. That is partly because the person at the other end of the conversation is, first and foremost, a bereaved parent or sibling themselves.

Not because people without lived experience cannot hold compassionate or thoughtful conversations about grief – many absolutely can. But there is something in a peer space that allows grief to arrive without too much preamble. Without the need to explain why it still hurts, or why it’s hard today, or why a date on the calendar can change the shape of everything.

Bringing Them With Us

That same understanding exists within our faciliation team too.

When we come together for reflection or supervision, I’m often struck by how we support one another while carrying our own lived experiences of loss alongside the grief work we do every day. There is an unspoken understanding that grief does not disappear simply because we are functioning professionally. We are all of us, bereaved parents or siblings all of the time.

For nine years I have been talking about my son Freddie, who died aged one, in SLOW groups – first joining conversations as a bereaved parent myself, and now as a parent facilitator. But in whatever space I’m in, I’m always Freddie’s Mum first.

Many of my colleagues will have heard me say that one of the most valued aspects of my work at SLOW is that “I can bring Freddie to work with me“.

What I mean by that is that I do not have to minimise myself or my grief in order to appear capable or professional. I can acknowledge hard days. I can say that it’s Freddie’s birthday. I can speak about him openly without people rushing to reassure me or move me somewhere emotionally tidier.

And more than that – it is precisely because I can bring Freddie to work with me that I am able to hold a role facilitating alongside other bereaved parents at all. My grief is not something I set aside in order to do this work. It is part of what makes it possible. Freddie is not separate from my professional self; he is woven into it, and it is because I bring Freddie that I am able to hold spaces for others.

There is space for him to still exist – in conversation, in memory, and in the ongoing shape of my life.

And that space does not begin at work. At home, we talk about Freddie too – with his younger brothers, who say he couldn’t stay to play with them. We talk about how he died, and why. About the adventures we will have for him. He is part of our family’s everyday life, spoken about openly, held with love and without apology.

Bringing him with us is not something that happens only in bereavement spaces. It is simply how we live.

Both diminished and capable, both heartbroken and present

During Dying Matters week I was talking with a team of bereavement professionals about what I think of as the duality of grief. The reality that we can be both grieving and functioning. Both diminished and capable. Both heartbroken and present.
After that conversation I kept thinking about a David Shrigley piece with words that read:

“I am somewhat diminished but I am still able to perform my duties.”

-David Shrigley, Artist

There is something painfully accurate in that for many bereaved people. Grief changes us. It alters our internal landscape in ways that affect energy, concentration, emotional capacity, identity, and the way we move through the world.
And yet – many grieving people continue to work, to support others, to care for families, to show up every day alongside that reality. Both things at once. Neither cancelling the other out.

The undeniable conflict and pain of this duality is always impossible to describe to others which is why there can be relief in peer spaces in not having to.

Recognition

Meaningful conversations about death and dying often begin with something much simpler, and much harder, than knowing what to say.

They begin with listening.

Not passive listening. Not listening while waiting for a pause to reassure, advise, or fix. But deeply listening – in a way that allows someone to speak honestly about the reality of what has happened, and as I mentioned above, without rushing them “somewhere emotionally tidier”.

Some open a conversation about how the person is carrying their grief. Others simply invite the person who died into the room – asking their name, their age, offering space to share who they were.

Questions and invitations like:

• “How are you carrying things today?”
• “Would you like to tell me more about your daughter”
• “What helps you feel connected to your brother?”
• “Is there any way I can support you better right now?”
  

These can open conversations gently, without forcing someone immediately into the most painful details of their grief. They communicate something important before a word of the answer is spoken: you don’t have to hide this here. You don’t have to protect me from it. You can share as much or as little as you need to.

To listen more deeply

At SLOW, conversations about death and dying are part of our everyday work and everyday lives. We speak openly about children and siblings who have died while also carrying our own ongoing relationships with grief alongside the families we support.

That openness does not make the conversations easy. They can still be raw, heartbreaking, and emotionally exposing.
But there is something profoundly human about spaces where death and dying can be spoken about honestly – where grief does not need to be edited in order to belong, and where people can bring the fullness of their love and loss into the room.
Not to be fixed. Not to be rescued. But to be deeply heard.

Perhaps part of talking more openly about death and dying is also learning how to stay present with grief – rather than a shape we find more comfortable. To let it be held, fully, without condition.

To listen more deeply.

To allow bereaved people to speak honestly about the people they love and miss. And to understand that grief does not need to disappear in order for life to continue alongside it.

Meaningful conversations about death and dying are rarely about having the perfect words.
More often, they begin through openness, presence, curiosity – and a willingness to stay.

Amber Dobinson-Evans is SLOW’s Lead Facilitator.