Yvonne Tulloch’s Message During the Service

Good evening. I’m Yvonne. Thank you for coming to this service. It marks an important moment in the life of AtaLoss and in bereavement support as a whole. Along with bereaved people, we have here leaders from all walks of life.  

And so we should, because bereavement affects us all sooner or later. It can be one of the greatest traumas of life, impacting in a range of ways - not just emotionally. But in the ‘death denying’ society we have all grown up in, understanding of its impact has largely been lost, leading to misunderstanding of the grief journey, and responses that can make matters worse. 

That was my experience when my husband died suddenly in 2008 leaving me widowed young with three uni-aged children. Society wasn’t well placed to help, and my life went into freefall. In a matter of months, I went from happy and high functioning, to low functioning, the loss of my job and home, and suicidal thoughts. This was no one’s fault. Even as a professional trained to take funerals, I didn’t understand myself what was going on for me.  

However, my situation was turned around by finding two informal support services – one specialising in helping those widowed young, and the other a general support group – The Bereavement Journey®. Together they helped me navigate the challenges I was facing and to rebuild my life.  

I didn’t need counselling – not many do; I just needed to be understood and helped with my crisis - to understand my own grief responses and to process what was going on for me. And I realised the difference that finding support can make when one is bereaved – both specialist for the circumstances, as well as community support – to find a healthy, new normal. 

And so AtaLoss was born – to help bereaved people find the support they need. It took quite a while to get my life back together again, but in 2016 we began, first with our signposting service, AtaLoss.org, to enable anyone who’s been bereaved to immediately find tailored help – helplines, and specialist and local support.  It took a year consulting with the CEOs of the main bereavement charities and researching to find the smaller informal services. And then, with training to support children and young people. 

And then we began to raise awareness of the impact of bereavement on society, through the media - and more recently in policy as the Secretariat to an All-Party Parliamentary Group.   

In the meantime, we adopted The Bereavement Journey®. We updated and re-filmed it, to help with past losses as well as present loss (because of the years that people have had to soldier on suppressing their grief). We began training churches to provide it for their communities.  And it was so effective it spread rapidly. In three years to now almost 670 locations across the UK. 

And today we’re launching a Bereavement Matters Season. We want everyone to know that supporting bereavement matters not just for individuals but for our society. Unsupported bereavement is leaving people unable to deal well with their loss.  And it is contributing significantly to a wide range of social problems - not least mental and physical ill-health. And as public conversations about death are now opening up, demand for grief support is burgeoning, for help with past as well as current loss. 

Over the past 10 years AtaLoss has therefore developed a three-tiered approach to bereavement support that can help the majority of bereaved people. A model that is cost-effective and scalable, and which we know can transform lives.   

We believe as we move into the next 10 years, that if we work together across the sectors for greater provision of bereavement support, this could contribute significantly to transforming society. 

So we ask for your help with two things - to: 

Get involved with Bereavement Matters Season - so that more grieving people can be supported - and for the nation to see and support the bereavement need. 

Also in helping us to sustain our future. We need sustainable funding to continue to develop our work over the next 10 years.

There’s a QR code in your order of service for you to find out more, and on the banners. Please consider how you can support our future, generously in the collection today and, more importantly, over the coming months.  

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.