By BETH CHAPMAN / Community Columnist

Many community services offered in Birmingham are available to the citizens of Shelby County and vice versa. Such is the case with the Community Grief Support Service (CGSS). Their logo is “A Place of Hope and Healing!”

It is a service you really never want to need, but it is vitally important to you when you do.

Grieving is difficult, dark, lonely and challenging. There is no way to go around it, so you must go through it. The help and support of others who understand the pain of grief is critical in doing so.

The CGSS is located in Homewood and offers individual, group and family counseling free of charge to those who need it. They offer group therapy for widowed persons of all ages, adults who have lost their children and general situations of loss as well.

Most groups are offered one day a week for 10 weeks and are facilitated by professionals who are assisted by volunteers who have gone through the program themselves.

It helps to hear from people who have travelled the road of grief. They can be helpful in telling you where all the potholes, curves and ditches of grief are and how you can avoid some of them.

While they can give you a head’s up on all the blind spots in the road, they can’t drive the road for you.

However, they can give you a map to guide you and make it much easier than if you had to travel it alone. Look at CGSS as a GPS for grief.

Grief is hard work, but necessary. Grief support is something we hope we will never need, but inevitably we all will. Grief knows no boundaries and it affects people of all races, religions and economic status.

If you or someone you know needs support going through grief, I highly recommend the folks at CGSS. They are professionals and caring individuals who themselves, have walked through the road from grief to recovery and are willing to help you do the same.

Coincidentally, Shelby County’s own District Attorney, Robby Owens is vice president of the non-profit organization’s board of directors.

To learn more about CGSS, visit Community griefsupport.org or call them at 870-8667.

Beth Chapman, Alabama’s secretary of state, is a Shelby County resident and writes a weekly column for the Shelby County Reporter. You can reach her at bethchapman@bellsouth.net.