September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

I do not have a child with cancer, nor have I lost a child to cancer. Yet childhood cancer has had a profound impact on my life. For the past five years, I have had the privilege of building and facilitating the Healing Hearts Bereavement Support Group for MIB Agents, spending an hour each week with parents who have lost a child to osteosarcoma, a rare pediatric cancer that begins in the bone. Too many children are dying from this disease, yet because it is rare, many people have never heard of it, and research remains critically underfunded.

I am often asked how I do this work. How do I provide emotional, spiritual, and practical support to bereaved parents, week after week. People ask, “Isn’t it incredibly hard and depressing?” Of course, it is heartbreaking. But it has also been an extraordinary opportunity to build community, connection, and support among people who share an experience few others can fully understand.

These parents have taught me what it means to live with the loss of a child. I have witnessed the courage and resilience it takes to wake up each day carrying that absence. If they can live it, I can sit beside them. I can bear witness to their pain, listen to stories about their children, and honor the love that does not end with death.

My role is not to take away their grief. I help them understand it, find language for feelings that can seem impossible to articulate, and make space for everything that comes with loss rather than avoiding, numbing, or isolating from it. Most importantly, I support their continued connection with their children.

As I reflect on my fifth annual Healing Hearts Retreat at the FACTOR Conference, I find myself thinking about how this work began.

Five years ago, my dear friend, Jeny Dawson of Zen Soul Balance, called me. She was providing a sound healing session for a nonprofit supporting child with cancer and said, “I think they need you.” I laughed and asked, “Do they know they need me?” Soon afterward, I was introduced to MIB Agents and invited to facilitate its grief retreat in San Diego.

Held at the conclusion of the annual FACTOR Conference, the three-hour retreat brings together bereaved parents of Osteo Angels within the MIB community. It offers something extraordinarily rare: the chance to sit with others who understand the entire journey, from diagnosis, treatment, surgeries, limb loss, hope, and disappointment to hearing there is nothing more that can be done and, ultimately, living with the unimaginable loss of a child. As a facilitator, it is my honor to create a warm, nurturing, and safe environment where parents can be vulnerable. There are tears and laughter. There is heartbreak and pride. There are stories, memories, and love. Above all, there is room for truth: the truth these parents live every day, even when others may not know how to hear it.

I have learned so much from every person who has joined our weekly group and attended the Healing Hearts Retreat. I share some of those lessons here because grieving parents should not have to carry the additional burden of teaching the rest of us how to support them.

One of the most painful things parents tell me is that people disappear after child loss. Friends and family stop calling. Invitations fade. People stop mentioning their child’s name or acknowledging that life has changed forever. The world continues moving while grieving parents can feel left behind, isolated in a loss that does not have an expiration date.

There is no “getting over” the death of a child. There is learning how to carry the loss and how to continue living while carrying it.

So, what can we do as a supportive community?

Say their child’s name. Share a memory. Tell them what you loved about their child and what you miss. Acknowledging their child affirms that their life mattered and continues to matter.  Give parents’ permission to talk about their child. The silence can be deafening.

Remember birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, and other milestones. Every day without their child carries loss, but these dates can be especially difficult and isolating.

Avoid platitude. There are no magic words that can make this better, and you do not need to find them.

Most importantly, do not disappear because you are uncomfortable or afraid of saying the wrong thing. Listen without trying to fix something. Sit beside them in discomfort. Let them talk, cry, remember, laugh, or simply be quiet. Remind them through your presence: You are not alone. I am still here.

We can do better for grieving families. We can learn what we do not know. We can become more comfortable with acknowledging grief rather than turning away from it. And we can continue showing up long after the casseroles, sympathy cards, and condolences have stopped.

During Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, I hope we also remember the families whose lives remain forever changed by childhood cancer, and the children whose lives and legacies continue through everyone who loves them.

If this post has touched your heart, I invite you to consider donating to MIB Agents, a nonprofit Making It Better for children and families affected by osteosarcoma.

Donation link: https://give-usa.keela.co/embed/YAipuSaWxHPJP7RCJ

I leave you with the words of Shannon L. Edwards:

“Grief truly is a profound tether, weaving memories of what we lost into the fabric of who we are today and who we will become. It is a shared human experience that transforms pain into a quiet, enduring testament of love. Grief becomes the thread that stitches our past to our future.”