Dear Compassionate Friends:

It is with great hope and joy that our chapter wishes to announce we will resume publication and distribution of our newsletter, beginning with our September issue.

Our Billings chapter of Compassionate Friends has been meeting regularly for some months, and carrying on some beloved traditions such as the butterfly release ceremony and the Rose Park brick memorial, but the pandemic upended all of our lives for over two years and forced our chapter to cancel regular meetings and other meaningful traditions we hope to resume in the future.

Our chapter has always felt that our newsletter is an important part of The Compassionate Friends outreach mission to grieving families who have suffered the loss of a child, sibling or grandchild, and we feel blessed to be able to offer it again.

Let me take a moment to introduce myself to those of you who don't know me. We lost our son Aaron Jesse in November 1989 to a recessive genetic kidney disease the day after his fifth birthday.

I had to step down from my volunteer work with Compassionate Friends, except for authoring this column, to focus on our surviving children when they became very busy with school and church activities, and then to care for my husband when he developed serious health issues. My husband went to live with Aaron in Heaven in October of 2018.

I am also a surviving sibling. My sister Heidi passed away from liver cancer in February 2020.

My children here on Earth are grown up now, busy with their own lives and I recently retired, so I am coming home to my Compassionate Friends family. I look forward to getting to know you and your children through your sharing and renewing old friendships.

The last two years have been exceptionally dark and isolating to those who grieve. We look forward to reaching out and lighting a candle with our Friends to push back the darkness and grief.

We need not walk alone. We are the Compassionate Friends.

In friendship,