Sound engineer Joe Barnett is so grateful to children’s bereavement service CHUMS he is prepared to walk on hot coals to help them.
He’s hoping to sign up for the social enterprise’s firewalk challenge which takes place on Wednesday, April 24.
Eighteen-year-old Joe – who works for Bedfordshire’s Novus Theatre Company – has already taken the CHUMS’ counselling course so he can support youngsters struggling to come to terms with the death of someone close.
He’s in a unique position to understand and empathise with their grief as he lost his father, grandfather and aunt within 15 months of each other.
Joe said: “I was 11, going on 12 and thought I was OK.” But he started self harming and over-eating and eventually joined a CHUMS group, even though his older siblings decided against it.
“My dad had been ill for two years but he always made a joke of it, so it took a while for me to realise something was wrong,” he recalled.
“But at least I have decent memories – my little brother and sister have none because they were too young.”
After their father died, Joe’s grandfather told him tearfully at breakfast the next morning: “Your Dad’s gone to heaven.”
Joe said: “I’d never seen him cry before – he was always such a jolly, happy man. It was surreal. I remember doing the washing up because I needed to do something.”
It took him three years to realise he needed help. “I tried to deal with a lot of stuff myself and always felt so alone,” he confessed.
“One of the things we did at CHUMS was write down all the little things we felt. It was such a relief to be with people who felt exactly the same.”
But there were still surprises. Joe said: “I met someone whose dad had been murdered and thought ‘Bloody hell, how do you cope with that?’”