Community Grief Coalition

09/19/2026

Loving our coalition’s and opportunities to help build a community grief support system. Awesome presentation Chaplain Lisa DeCandia. 👏🫶

09/19/2026

SAVE THE DATE calendar 🗓️ - Saturday, 24 October 2026. 🫶

Join The Compassionate Friends for our Virtual Fall Retreat on October 24 - a day created especially for bereaved parents, grandparents, and siblings, to gather, learn, reflect, and find support from wherever you are.

One of our featured keynote presenters, Erin Nelson, will share:
"Nurturing Hope and Comfort after the Death of Your Child"

And that's just one part of this special day.

With three keynote speakers and 14 workshops, the Virtual Fall Retreat offers opportunities to explore grief, gain new insights, connect with others and discover resources that can support you.

Best of all, there is NO registration fee.

For more information and to register, visit: https://cvent.me/8AVd35

09/17/2026

HAPPENING Next Friday -
25 September 2026. FREE community and event. 🩵💜💚

September 25th, Doors open at 4:00PM. See you there! Fayetteville VA NC Coastal Health Care SystemCommunity Blueprint Greater Ft BraggSteven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone, North CarolinaVeterans Bridge HomeCumberland County Veteran's CouncilBehavioral Health Professionals Association - BHPA - Fayetteville, NC

09/15/2026

💜 Bereavement Support 💜

Join us this Thursday for Walking Through Grief, a virtual peer support group that explores what grief is and how to be intentional while charting a course for healing. You can join Liberty Hospice Family Support Counselor Nicole Kirk every third Thursday of the month on Microsoft Teams or by calling in toll free.

💻 Join on Microsoft Teams:
URL: https://buff.ly/3klVizP
Meeting ID: 235213329432
Passcode: TMqERw

☎️ Join by phone (audio only):
Call: 1-252-316-2338
Access Code: 60040664 #

For more information, contact Nicole Kirk at 910-221-6986 or [email protected].

To find a virtual or in-person peer support group near you, please visit the link in the comments.

09/12/2026

The holidays and other meaningful occasions have a way of bringing memories close. A familiar song, fragrance, object, tradition, place, or gathering can suddenly touch something within us—sometimes warmly and sometimes painfully.

We often call these experiences “grief triggers” or “grief ambushes.” While they can certainly feel sudden, that language may also leave us treating our memories like enemies and bracing ourselves against the season. What if we could meet those moments with a little less fear and a little more curiosity, understanding, permission, and grace?

**When Memories Come Home** is a free, faith-based, interactive writing workshop for anyone carrying grief related to a loss of any kind. You will be invited to define your loss for yourself. It does not need to be recent, and no one else will determine whether it is significant enough to grieve.

During our time together, we will:

• Explore how ordinary objects and sensory experiences can open doors to memory
• Learn about emotion bursts and why grief sometimes rises unexpectedly
• Participate in gentle guided-writing and reflection activities
• Consider how to care for ourselves during holidays and other meaningful moments
• Make room for the ways God may meet us through memory, healing, and grace

No writing experience is necessary. Journals, pens, and workshop materials will be provided. Sharing will always be voluntary, and anything you prefer to hold privately may remain in the pages of your journal.

The workshop will be facilitated by **Chaplain Lisa DeCandia**, an ordained minister, community chaplain, grief educator, and founder and director of the Community Grief Coalition. Lisa brings more than a decade of experience providing bereavement support and grief education in hospice, healthcare, faith-community, and community settings.

📅 Tuesday, September 22, 2026
🕘 9:00–11:30 a.m.
📍 1764 Bingham Drive, Building 3, Fayetteville, NC
💛 Free to attend

Hosted by Rivers of Living Water Community Connect Pastor Carolyn DeJesus in partnership with the Community Grief Coalition.

For more information, call Chaplain Lisa DeCandia at **910-584-1036** or email **[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])**.

You do not have to arrive with the right words. You are simply invited to come as you are and make room for whatever you carry.

“He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”
—Psalm 147:3 NLT

09/08/2026

As a chaplain, I often find myself returning to the images Scripture gives us for understanding grief.

Sometimes, in grief, we find ourselves searching for a purpose for what we have suffered—some meaning that might quiet our questions and help us sleep at night.

We hope that perhaps our greatest tragedies and deepest fears contain a silver lining. That something extraordinary might grow from them. That if we can assign enough meaning to what happened, maybe our hearts will finally be able to make peace with it.

I understand that longing. There is something within us that wants to gather the broken pieces and discover that none of them have been wasted.

In the faith community, we sometimes connect this hope to the words of Isaiah—that God gives us “beauty for ashes.” But when we look more closely at the world behind those words, I think we find an even more tender promise.

Ashes were worn upon the body as a visible expression of sorrow. They rested on the head and told the story of someone who was grieving. God’s promise was not that the ashes themselves would somehow become beautiful. It was that He would come near to the mourner.

Isaiah describes God gently lifting the ashes and placing a garland where they had rested, pouring out the oil of joy upon a body that had carried sorrow, and wrapping the weary in a garment of praise.

And I think about what that tenderness might look like in the bodies of those who grieve today.

It is the parent whose arms still ache to hold the child who is no longer here. The child—whether young or fully grown—whose hand still reaches for the phone before remembering there will be no answer. The sibling who has lost not only a brother or sister, but someone who carried the same childhood memories and knew the language of the family from the inside. The spouse or partner whose body still turns toward the other side of the bed, reaching in the darkness for the person who had become their “other half.”

Grief lives in the body this way—in the sleepless nights, the heaviness in the chest, the exhaustion that rest does not seem to touch, and the momentary reaching for someone before the heart remembers again.

Perhaps this is part of what makes Isaiah’s words so tender. God does not stand at a distance and tell the mourner to find something beautiful in what happened. He comes near to the body that has carried the ashes. He tends to the head bowed beneath sorrow, the hands left empty, the arms that ache, and the shoulders carrying a weight no one else can fully see.

He does not ask us to call the loss good. He does not require us to find a purpose beautiful enough to make us glad it happened. His promise of beauty is not an explanation for the loss. It is the promise of His presence and His tender care for the person who must now learn to live while carrying it.

And then, in time, those who have been cared for by God may find themselves helping to rebuild places that have also known devastation—not because the destruction was necessary, but because it was never given the final word.

Perhaps healing is not finding a meaning great enough to make the loss okay.

Perhaps healing is slowly discovering that even when the loss can never be made okay, we can still be held. We can still be tended. Beauty can still be placed upon us—and, with great tenderness, life can begin growing around the places that will always bear the marks of what we have loved and lost.

08/30/2026

support.

Find Hope & Healing After Loss
GriefShare is a caring support group where you’ll find comfort, community, and biblical guidance as you navigate grief.
Join us for an 11-week program starting September 9. Register now at hpchurch.org/griefshare

08/23/2026

Remembering, Honoring, & Supporting 8.31.2026. 💜

This International Overdose Awareness Day, we remember, we support and we take action.

Every life lost to overdose leaves a lasting impact on families, friends and communities. Join us Monday, Aug. 31, from 5–8 p.m. at Fayetteville State University – Rudolph Jones Student Center for an evening focused on remembrance, hope and connection.

The event will feature:
• “Say Their Names” Memorial Reflection
• Resource Connection Fair
• Candlelight Vigil
• Education and distribution of Naloxone Rescue Kits

Whether you’re honoring someone you’ve lost, supporting someone who is grieving or looking for resources, there is a place for you at this event.

Together, we can help reduce stigma, raise awareness and connect our community with resources that save lives.

Time to Remember. Time to Act.