Parents do a group activity during a workshop. (Photo : http://gongyi.qq.com)
They say that time brings healing.
For some, even with the passage of time, the healing has been slow.
One mother who lost her only son never went out for five long years. Her grieving heart chose to wallow in pain in solitude within the walls of her new home far from the maddening noise of the city.
When her child died, she left the city and decided to settle in a small town. She, however, brought all the pain with her.
Once in a while she would contemplate taking her own life but would think about her husband.
She probably didn’t want him to grieve for two persons.
This mother shares the same ordeal of other mothers who, after years of their child’s death, still lament their loss.
Beijing Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center empathizes with them and decided to do something about it.
Beginning 2013, the center, which has been helping women since 1988 in dealing with various issues concerning marriage and family, offers programs facilitated by a psychologist that would help them deal with their pain and, hopefully, restore the courage to continue living a happy and meaningful life.
The center also teamed up with Tencent Charity Foundation to launch an online fundraiser for the benefit of couples who lost their only child. The fundraising project will run from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3, 2015.
As of this writing, the site for the event has already received 34,683,936 hits.
A survey was conducted to determine the probable effects of losing a child. A total of 100 parents participated.
The result: sleep disorder (72 percent), decreased self-esteem (70 percent), long-term depression or LTD (64 percent), resentment (41 percent) and becoming suicidal (38 percent).
Tencent Charity Foundation was founded in 2007 by Tencent Holdings Ltd., one of the biggest Internet companies in the world. Some of the projects of the foundation focus on helping impoverished children, building schools and protecting the environment.
To make a donation, one can log on to http://gongyi.qq.com/ and see how a simple act of kindness can go a long way.
