Saint Alphonsus Share Support Group

Proud of our bereavement community and partnerships to provide the best care possible for families. Thank you KBOI for the opportunity.

IdahoNews Townhall: Support through miscarriage, stillbirth BOISE, Idaho — In Idaho, approximately one in every 200 births results in a stillbirth, amounting to more than 100 stillbirths each year, according to data from

Support Group option for families parenting after a loss.

PSI's Parenting After Loss online support group is led by trained peer facilitators and is for parents who have experienced pregnancy loss and also have living children. Whether you had older children before the loss, or have had a “rainbow” baby since the loss, parenting after a pregnancy loss can bring up so many complex feelings. You may feel pressure to enjoy every moment of being a parent, yet you also still grieve the baby you lost. Bereaved parents need a space to talk about their specific experiences and complicated emotions. You are not alone, and we welcome you to join us.

View the schedule and register at bit.ly/FindSupportGroup 💙

We see your heartbreak. We see your love. We are here for you. We will continue to listen to your stories, support you, and give you resources.

It has been an honor to support and work with each family who has experienced a loss over the last 18 years. However, our program will be pausing the monthly Share online support group offering for 2025. We encourage families to use additional resources such as the National Share Support groups (https://nationalshare.org/online-support/) or Postpartum International (https://www.postpartum.net/get-help/.) The Family Center also offers 1:1 counseling if needed. Call 208-367-7380 for more details.

*The annual Angel Garden Ceremony will still occur for any family impacted by a loss. Save the date for Saturday May 17th, 2025 at 11:00am.

Send a message to learn more

Making Room for The Empty Chairs This Holiday Season Acknowledging the absences that we all live with

The beautiful tree is up at the 2024 Festival of Trees. Thank you Little Joys Remembrance Foundation

The Boise tree is up! ❤️💚

The Emotional Muscles of Grief Theory (Cacciatore, 2010) posits that grief is not something that diminishes over time but instead remains constant, like a weight we carry. Over time, by engaging with and being present with the grief—what can be thought of as "lifting the weight" daily—individuals build the emotional strength, or "muscles," required to carry it. Here are the ideas that underpin my theory:

1. Grief as a constant: The grief itself need not shrink or disappear. The intensity of the loss and its emotional impact, especially when catastrophic, may remain unchanged over time, and it may never end.

2. Emotional growth through willing engagement: Rather than avoiding grief, actively engaging with grief—acknowledging it, feeling it, and working with it— this builds emotional/psychological muscles and develops an individual's capacity to bear the very heavy weight.

3. Strengthened capacity to cope: Over time, the person builds self-trust around grief and its corresponding emotions, gaining the emotional strength to navigate life with the persistent presence of grief. This does not mean the grief is smaller, or lighter, or less significant but that the person becomes better able to carry its weight. This takes a lot of time and work, and there may be periods that feel more strenuously difficult. No, this is not just linear. There are stops and starts, and there are places and times that additional weight gets thrown on top of us and it feels like rebuilding again (and sometimes it is like this!).

4. Acceptance (of our feelings of grief) without erasure: The theory emphasizes the importance of accepting grief (not necessarily the loss, specifically) as an ongoing part of a new life, a new self. It is not something to be "fixed" or managed or eliminated but rather it can be integrated into one’s being. And it can be, one day, an unstoppable force for good in the world.

I proposed this theory as a response to our grief-avoidant cultural attitudes that often focus on "moving on" or "letting go." Instead, it advocates for honoring grief as a natural and enduring expression of love and loss, fostering strength and resilience through sustained connection to the emotional experience.

In my own experience of this theory, one second at a time, by being with my grief & lifting its weight every day, little by little, I built emotional muscles. These muscles grew, and grew; the grief did not diminish, nor did I need it to diminish. I was growing strong enough to trust myself with all the emotions of grief. I was understanding that her death utterly deconstructed me and that grief was now rebuilding me. No, I didn't want it or sign up for it. Yet, here I was.

And also, at times I had to drop the weight and rest, and that is all part of building the muscles. Growing muscles need times of rest to build. And, even the strongest athletes need times of rest and respite.

Of course, it helps to have others to care for us as we learn to carry the heavy weight of their absence, perhaps some helping to 'spot' us or help us carry the weight when we are weary. Love and compassion and support go a long, long way...

Grief is heavy & we can carry what is heavy.

But we can never learn to carry that which we refuse to lift.

(For more information about the emotional muscles of grief, you can read my blog from 2008, 2010 (and forward from there) as well as more in depth discussion in my book Bearing the Unbearable: Love, loss, and the heartbreaking path of grief and on my website).

(Artistic rendition of this theory provided by a smart bot!)

Want to help a grieving friend? Let them be sad.⁣ Really. ⁣Sadness is a natural response to loss, hardship, and death. It just is.⁣
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And it's hard to know what to do when your friends are hurting. It sucks to see someone you love in pain. The thing is, you can’t cheer someone up by telling them to look on the bright side, or by giving them advice. It just doesn’t work.⁣⁣
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The trick is to lean into your helplessness in the face of your friend’s pain. Your job, honestly, is to feel awkward and stay there anyway. Just hang right out with their pain.⁣⁣
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When things are dark, it's ok to be dark. Really. Not every corner needs the bright light of encouragement. In a similar vein, don't encourage someone to have for good things that happened to them in the past or good things that still exist. ⁣
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Example: We recently we saw someone respond to grieving person's comment about their sadness by telling them to shove down all the "bad feelings" and think about the good things they still have in their life. ⁣
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NO! ⁣
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First of all, just say no to unsolicited advice. When someone talks to you about how hard this is, notice your impulse to jump in with a solution, and then DON'T DO IT. Most of the time people are simply looking for acknowledgment about how awful this situation is. ⁣
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Second, good things and horrible things occupy the same space; they don't cancel each other out.⁣ Sadness is healthy. Telling someone to look on the bright side or appreciate what they still have just tells them you're not someone they can talk with about their pain. ⁣
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Instead, mirror their reality back to them. When they say, "This sucks," say, "Yes, it does." It may seem too simple, but it's amazing how much that simple acknowledgement helps.⁣ It is an unfathomable relief to have a friend who will sit with you and let you feel exactly how you feel.⁣
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For more tips on how to give the support you intend, visit https://refugeingrief.com/
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This year's Christmas tree theme is "Heart Full" ❤️

Because of those that donated toward the FB fundraiser and a very generous donor, we are able to move forward with our Festival of Trees tradition.

Registration is now open at:
https://www.littlejoysremembrancefoundation.org/festivaloftrees.html

Our local Oct. online support group is cancelled for 10/1. If you are in need of support before our next group in November, here's a link to the national groups:

Online Support - Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support Online Support Monthly Zoom Support Meeting Please join us on Zoom for support group on the third Monday of the month at 11am CST. You do not need to pre-register. Due to the sensitive nature of these groups, please do not have children/babies with you while on Zoom. Topic: Support Group Time: Feb 1...