Bereaved Fathers Find Support From One Another

This piece from The Boston Globe talks about a bereaved fathers group, and how meeting separately in a support group for men helped them in their grieving process.

Each man's story is as painful as the next. Members of Fathers Forever bear witness to one another's grief and to their progress. "It's just a place where you can go where your life experience as a father is normal," says Bigham, one of the four cofounders. "If you were at work and you said, 'I want to talk about my dead daughter,' people would turn to stone."

Fathers Forever grew out of a therapy group in Needham run by psychologist Linda Gudas. In 2004, with her guidance, the men broke off on their own. Membership grew by word of mouth and jumped when they invited an author to speak about men and healing. Today they have 40 men on the e-mail list; six to eight of them attend the monthly breakfasts on a regular basis. The group also has a website, www.fathers-forever.org.

The founders were initially dubious. Grief counseling had not worked for them; they felt it was largely by women, for women. But they soon began to feel the benefits of the group.