Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.
Merriam-Webster, Inc.’s 2025 online dictionary
I was once told by an elementary school English teacher to never continue reading if I didn’t know the meaning of one word–get a dictionary, find the word, spell it, pronounce it, learn the word, review it again, and then continue reading. I always appreciate having an online dictionary readily available nowadays!
By Merriam-Webster, Inc.’s 2025 online dictionary definition, compassion is a noun that means sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. Alleviate is a transitive verb that means to relieve, or lessen; to make something (such as pain or suffering) more bearable.
My purpose in sharing the word lossent is to bring comfort to someone else who has lost a child; to earnestly say I know how you feel with the hope that a simple language label will somehow make it more bearable for them.
Something rather odd happened to me last week that snapped me out of ‘the zone’ I had been in for days bubbling over with ideas, imagining and brainstorming about creating a non-profit organization and what I imagined lossent.org to become. I know there are hundreds (thousands) of grief groups out there, and I was getting frustrated 1) because I don’t quite know what I’m doing other than following my passion blindly, and 2) I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel but I also wanted to create a deserving and dedicated forum for lossents.
Any ideas about what I knew could be a highly probable, positively welcomed, environment of tremendous social support were instantly realized when I came across the website of a 50-year-existing non-profit organization: The Compassionate Friends. Please visit: https://www.compassionatefriends.org/mission-statement/
It’s difficult to put the feelings I had when viewing this website into words (yes, even for me!) The first word to identify the emotion I felt reading through their full and fantastic site was humbling. I felt a bit insignificant, low-ranking, too-late-to-the-party, etc. How did I not know about this all these years? Had I heard about it and blocked it? What? Why? How? Are you kidding me? (That’s a deeper dive into my subconscious I’ll save for another day…)
Then the word deference caught my eye with the definition of respect and esteem due a superior or an elder.For the grand scheme of my non-profit dreams, I must joyfully, easily and earnestly defer to The Compassionate Friends. They have done it all–compiled the content, the resources, ideas, support, messages, events and money–necessary to create a beautiful circle of lossent love!
It is with great compassion that I shift my focus, lighten my self-imposed load, and strive to collaborate with others who are already doing such great works to honor lossents. Let’s get this word into the dictionary for future generations to know and use. I thank you and appreciate you for helping to spread the word!