Loss & Humanity: The Silent Struggle of People like Me and You

A lot of times, when we get people reaching out for help through the non-profit, the requests are desperate. It's not often someone who is managing, but could use help, rather it's people who are drowning in their grief, or know someone who is.

The requests we get from people all across the province, are desperate pleas for support, guidance, direction, advice, funding, or sometimes just a person to hear their story.

It's these quiet exchanges on a website chat that serve as our most powerful reinforcements for our committment to our cause. No one should have to get to a point of desperation. Getting help shouldn't involve a complicated, extended search.

Experience and healing from grief shouldn't be an impossible challenge of jumping through hoops or tediously filtering search results. It should be as common as knowing you should go to your doctor if you're sick.

Help should be available everywhere, not only through specific counselling offices or through non-profits. That's why we work so hard.

Grief is not always loud. It doesn’t always announce itself in tears or words. More often, it shows up in quiet ways that outsiders might never notice.

It’s the senior who used to be the life of the community centre but now quietly stays home, no longer finding joy in the things that once filled their days.

It’s the parent who returns to work after the funeral, pushing through tasks with a brave face, only to collapse into silence each night when no one is watching.

It’s the teenager who laughs with friends at school, but avoids going home because the empty chair at the dinner table feels unbearable.

Grief is as human as birth, life, and the hearts that beat within us. It is raw, messy, and complicated, but it is 100% natural. Grief care shouldn't be impressive, it shouldn't be uncommon, it shouldn't be special. Grief care should be as boring and commonplace as medical care or grocery stores, meeting a basic human need for support. Loss is unavoidable, to experience loss is to be human. We need to normalize and humanize our response to loss.

This is the human impact of grief—it seeps into the smallest corners of daily life, quietly altering how people see themselves and the world around them. And because it doesn’t always look dramatic, it is often overlooked. Many will never say, “I need help,” because they don’t want to burden others or they believe they should just “be strong.”

But the truth is, unresolved grief doesn’t disappear. It lingers. It compounds. And over time, it can turn into isolation, depression, family breakdowns, or even addiction. What begins as silence can end up shaping a life in ways no one sees until it is too late.

This is why Lean on Me exists—to hear what others might miss, to see what others might overlook. We believe in creating safe spaces for people to speak the words they’ve held in, or to simply sit with someone who understands. Sometimes, the most powerful gift is being witnessed.

When you support our work, you are not just funding therapy sessions or training programs. You are reaching into that silence and offering connection. You are telling the parent, the senior, the teenager: You are not alone. Your grief matters. We see you.

Grief does not have to remain a quiet burden. With compassion, with presence, and with the right support, it can transform. It can become a story of resilience, of love carried forward, of community holding one another up.

Your support makes this possible. And together, we can ensure that no one in Alberta carries the quiet weight of grief alone. If you haven't, please consider donating to our cause.

Our work isn't complicated, in fact it's quite simple: some people need a little extra support working through their grief - we make sure they have it

Yours,

Jes Knoop

Founder