Our chapter’s story
Compassionate Friends of Tampa Bay Area, Chapter #2407, began with one grieving mother who didn’t want any other parent to be alone.
“This shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
My son Patrick died in 2011. In my first meetings with grieving parents, I couldn’t say a word. At one meeting, I watched a newly bereaved mother who had driven 45 minutes sit alone while no one asked her a single question. I knew then that I wanted to start a chapter where no one would ever be left alone.
To be chartered, a new chapter has to show the community needs it. So I went from business to business asking people to sign. When the words wouldn’t come, my husband, David, finished my sentences. He also wrote the letter that helped our chapter begin. In 2012, Compassionate Friends of Tampa Bay Area was born.
Debbie Rivera, Chapter Leader
The Compassionate Friends
The Compassionate Friends began in England in 1969, when a hospital chaplain brought together two families whose children had died. Sitting around a kitchen table, the parents realized that they could help each other in a way no one else could, and that there must be more support for families like theirs.
Today The Compassionate Friends has hundreds of chapters across the United States and around the world, all built on that same simple truth: we need not walk alone. Our chapter is one of them, a nonprofit chapter of the national organization.
What we do together
- Monthly meetings at Brandon Regional Library on the first Thursday
- Virtual meetings by Zoom on the third Thursday
- A welcome for every new family: a bracelet, a hope rock and a welcome box
- Our newsletter, remembering every child on their birthday and angel date
- The Annual Candle Lighting, held with families around the world each December
- The Walk to Remember, open to our whole community
- A craft group, 5K walks and a lending library of grief books
- Volunteer-run, with every dollar raised here in Tampa Bay
No parent should have to walk this road alone.