The Hummingbird Centre for Hope Information

In 2002, my husband Keith died after a 6 week battle with cancer. A week before my 31st birthday, I found myself a widow and only parent to my two children, ages 3 yrs and 3 months old. I embarked on a journey of young widowhood that I was completely unprepared for. Along my journey I realized there was a great need to build a community of widows and widowers who have children at home and that there was a great need to offer on-going support to young families who are working to rebuild their hopes and dreams after the death of their young spouse. In 2011 The Hummingbird Centre for HOPE was launched. Our mission is to provide continuing bereavement support to men and women after the death of their spouse or partner. A peer-to-peer environment of hope facilitates the rebuilding of a new sense of self as an only parent. The stress that is experienced by the surviving spouse is twofold. The first is the emotional devastation experienced by the death of a spouse. The second is the practical hardship that comes as a result of the loss. These worries can include having to take on new roles and responsibilities that were once the function of the other spouse; the reality that simple daily pressures and challenges now must be shouldered alone; and the responsibility of raising children as an only parent, all the while helping those children grieve the death of their parent. Often it is these practical stresses that become the hardest obstacles to overcome. Grieving the loss of a spouse or parent has no time table or stages that can be neatly followed. It takes time and patience for families to adjust to the dramatic lifestyle changes that occur. As a result, the needs of bereaved families are vast and on-going, and often continue much longer than our society assumes they will. The need for continuing, long- term support for young, only parents resulted in the founding of The Hummingbird Centre for Hope.