Connection Opportunities
Alive Alone offers different types of connection opportunities for bereaved parents with no surviving children. We offer, through the members only pages, listings of Alive Alone members who have opted in to facilitate finding a nearby member. Alive Alone sponsors workshops and sharing sessions at conferences by other organizations. We have a limited number of Zoom-based groups that provide peer-to-peer support for members of Alive Alone. An additional benefit for members at the Zoom tier, are a series of topical workshops held in the spring and fall.
Alive Alone offers an Open Zoom session on the 10th of each month. If the 10th falls on a weeknight, then it will be held at 8pm eastern. If the 10th falls on a Saturday or Sunday, then the session will start at 4pm eastern. All current members, including those on the free intro tier, will receive an invite via email approximately 5 days prior. There is no fixed topic, and there is no obligation to speak. One can simply join and listen.
We recognize that those members who are newly bereaved might not be comfortable in the larger Open Zoom sessions, and have started a Newly Bereaved Open Zoom on the 20th of each month. Members who have been bereaved for 3 years or less are added to the invite list. If the 20th falls on a weeknight, then it will be held at 8pm eastern. If the 20th falls on a Saturday or Sunday, then the session will start at 4pm eastern.
For more information on either of these sessions, please email info@alivealone.org
Individual Connection – Members Only Area
Alive Alone has a members only area where one might connect one on one with other bereaved parents that have similar aged children or have gone through similar experiences with their children. Access to the members only area requires the Basic + Online Access membership tier, or the Basic + Online Access + Zoom membership tier. Please email us for any questions on membership. In order to partially offset the cost of providing offline and online services to members, Alive Alone charges a nominal membership cost. Alive Alone does not have paid staff, only volunteers, in order to keep our costs low. We offer a free six-month trial membership with mailed newsletters and care note(s) during the 180-day period. Please note that there is no online access on the trial membership. We do hope that you will find our support helpful and decide to support the ongoing operations.
Care Notes
Alive Alone has members who volunteer to write personalized Care Notes that arrive near your child’s or children’s date of birth and date of death. These are handwritten notes from another grieving parent.
(Click on the Care Note image below to enlarge)
Conferences & Workshops
Alive Alone can help you by highlighting resources that might find useful with where you are at in your grief journey. We recommend attending an in-person conference, if at all possible, as it is enormously helpful simply being around other bereaved parents. We recognize that many of these include bereaved parents with other surviving children, and that that can be difficult for those of us with no surviving children. Alive Alone works with other bereaved parents and grief organizations to offer workshops and sharing sessions focused on our questions and needs. Please keep an eye on the Events page for upcoming events. Email the webmaster to get events added.
Special Events
Alive Alone appreciates the opportunity provided to now childless parents by Bereaved Parents USA. Each year special events, speakers, workshop presenters and seminars are provided for Alive Alone parents. Please consider this as an opportunity to meet others like ourselves as we are unable to sponsor a conference ourselves at this time.
www.bereavedparentsusa.org/
Occasionally we will offer other special events, which are announced on our Facebook page or via the Constant Contact email program.