Few Understand What It’s Like to Be a Widowed Parent. But We Do.

A Message from Gregg Newson, Incoming Board Chair, Hummingbird Centre for Hope

It’s been said that ours is the club that no one joins willingly. When someone becomes a widowed parent, their world is turned upside down. It is a harrowing and isolating experience that simply cannot be fully understood by anyone outside of this community. While there are a multitude of organizations out there who provide a range of support services to the bereaved, only one focuses exclusively on the specific challenges faced by younger widows with children. There is simply no other organization like the Hummingbird Centre for Hope, which for ten years has offered peer-based support programming that focuses on equipping widowed parents with the knowledge, skills, and sense of community that they need to successfully navigate this incredibly complex and emotionally taxing time in their lives.

Every day, I am reminded of the incredible impact that Hummingbird has had on my own family. Nearly nine years ago, my two boys, who were three years old and eight months old at the time, lost the most important person in their lives when my wife Mary died of cancer at the age of twenty-nine. Hummingbird — more specifically its Executive Director and lead program facilitator, Marny — was there to reassure me that as sorrowful and frightening as this stage of my life was, I would get through it (one day at a time), my kids would be OK, and over time, things would get easier. I learned invaluable lessons from Marny and my peers — other widowed parents facing the same daily struggles as me — and through the connections I made, I found hope and the inner strength I needed to push on. Over time, I felt more confident in how I was helping my children manage the various stages of their grieving processes. I felt reassured knowing I was not the only one with these constant worries and concerns. Most of all, I learned that in order for my kids to be happy again, I needed to take care of myself and find that happiness again for myself.

Nine years later, my children are thriving, and even though they lost their mother at such a young age, they have maintained a special connection with her that will always be with them, and that’s all I could ever hope for. While they continue to grieve her loss in different ways at different stages of their lives, they have nurtured what I believe is a healthy relationship with their grief, and I believe a lot of that has to do with the effect that Hummingbird had on me.

I have shared my story with other widowed parents over the years, with the hope that it helps them as they embark on their grief journeys. For the past couple of years I have been a volunteer spousal loss program support facilitator with both Bereaved Families of Ontario and Hummingbird — co-facilitating the monthly “Widowed Dads” group for the latter — and have been on Hummingbird’s Board of Directors since 2022. Volunteering is an incredibly rewarding experience, and I feel I owe it to Mary to contribute whatever skills and abilities I have to help this organization to continue to fulfill its important mission.

As incoming Board Chair, I’m excited to lead our incredible team through the next stage of Hummingbird’s evolution. With the relatively recent addition of virtual support programs, we have broadened our reach and can now offer service across Canada, the United States, and beyond. While we have steadily grown and accomplished a lot in the past ten years, there is still so much more we can do. We are still a small organization, and too few widowed parents know we are out there. We need to expand our outreach efforts and strengthen our partnerships with other nonprofits and community organizations and across the sector and beyond. We need to educate and build greater awareness about the value of peer-based support and reduce the societal stigma that deters the bereaved from seeking out support. We need to target specific groups within the widowed parent community, such as widowed dads, who, for a variety of reasons, are far less likely to seek out bereavement support services and are greatly under-represented among our member base. We need to advocate for widowed parents and inform our institutions, communities and workplaces about the financial, logistical emotional barriers faced by widowed parents and how they can help. It’s a big job for a small team, but with the support of our volunteers, Board and members, there is limitless potential to what we can accomplish.

Hummingbird is where it is today because of two incredible people. Outgoing Board Chair and Hummingbird co-founder Beth Bailey has shown incredible leadership and unwavering dedication to this important cause over the past ten years. Marny Williams-Balodis, Executive Director and Hummingbird’s other co-founder, continues to be the driving force behind everything we do. I want to thank the rest of the board for having confidence in me, and I look forward to working with all of you.

Gregg Newson

Gregg Newson is Board Chair at the Hummingbird Centre for Hope. To learn more about our organization, make a donation, get involved, or access our services, please visit our website.