When someone is grieving, there's no perfect thing to say. What actually helps is showing up, listening without trying to fix it, and admitting you can't take away their pain. Most women come alone to these groups of twelve strangers.
Chapters
The perfect words don't exist. There's no sentence that magically heals grief, but a listening ear and just a caring response and being able to hear someone's story and just simply respond, "I'm sorry you went through that. I can't fix it. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but I'm sorry that happened to you, and that sounds hard." So yeah, we want to make sure our volunteers are understanding the the space that they're in, the privilege that it is, and the responsibility that it is as well. You said it, the privilege that it is even to just be able to be in the presence of the participants there.
When the women are coming, are they coming by themselves? Do they bring children? Do they bring loved ones? What does that look like?
For the most part, women come on their own. Occasionally some of them might know each other from over the years, but most of the time we bring in a group of 12 strangers, and it goes from there.