Mission
The mission
of The Compassionate Friends is to assist families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive.
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Seven Principles
The Compassionate Friends was established based upon seven principles. The principles are reviewed and minor wording chages have been made from time to time, but they continue to stand the test of time.
- TCF offers friendship, understanding, and hope to bereaved parents, sbilings, and grandparents.
- TCF believes that bereaved parents, siblings, and grandparents can help each other toward a positive resolution of grief.
- TCF reaches out across society's barriers to all bereaved parents, siblings, and grandparents.
- TCF understands that every members has individual needs and rights.
- TCF reaches out to the bereaved primarily through our community of local chapters.
- TCF chapters belong to their members.
- TCF chapters are coordinated nationally to extend help to each other, and to bereaved parents, siblings, and grandparents everywhere.
The Compassionate Friends Credo
We need not walk alone. We are The Compassionate Friends. We reach out to each other with love, with understanding, and with hope. The children we mourn have died at all ages and from many different causes, but our love for them unites us. Your pain becomes my pain, just as your hope becomes my hope. We come together from all walks of life, from many different circumstances. We are a unique family because we represent many races, creeds, and relationships. We are young, and we are old. Some of us are far along in our grief, but others still feel a grief so fresh and so intensely painful that they feel helpless and see no hope. Some of us have found our faith to be a source of strength, while some of us are struggling to find answers. Some of us are angry, filled with guilt or in deep depression, while others radiate an inner peace. But whatever pain we bring to this gathering of The Compassionate Friends, it is pain we will share, just as we share with each other our love for the children who have died. We are all seeking and struggling to build a future for ourselves, but we are committed to building a future together. We reach out to each other in love to share the pain as well as the joy, share the anger as well as the peace, share the faith as well as the doubts, and help each other to grieve as well as to grow. We Need Not Walk Alone.
We Are The Compassionate Friends. ©2007
Siblings Walking Together
(Formerly The Sibling Credo)
We are the surviving siblings of The Compassionate Friends.
We are brought together by the deaths of our brothers and sisters.
Open your hearts to us, but have patience with us.
Sometimes we will need the support of our friends.
At other times we need our families to be there.
Sometimes we must walk alone, taking our memories with us,
continuing to become the individuals we want to be.
We cannot be our dead brother or sister;
however, a special part of them lives on with us.
When our brothers and sisters died, our lives changed.
We are living a life very different from what we envisioned,
and we feel the responsibility to be strong even when we feel weak.
Yet we can go on because we understand better than many others
the value of family and the precious gift of life.
Our goal is not to be the forgotten mourners that we sometimes are,
but to walk together to face our tomorrows as surviving siblings of
The Compassionate Friends.
©The Compassionate Friends
2008 Fact Sheet