BEDFORD, Ky. — With the sound of rushing water nearby, Kelly Stewart Parrish sat on a bench dedicated to her daughter, Kaytryn. 

"I do come here just to hear the water, say a little prayer, think about maybe what could have been," she said. 

Kelly Stewart Parrish sits on a bench dedicated to her daughter Kaytryn, who died in 2012. Parrish and her husband Mark created the Camberwell Grief Sanctuary in Bedford to help others heal. (Spectrum News 1/Erin Kelly)

Kaytryn, a Murray State freshman, died in 2012 following a car crash, at just 19.

"She was the type of person that when she walked into the room, people noticed," said Parrish. "She loved to love people. She loved nature. She loved beauty in any capacity."

Parrish has struggled to find a way to describe the magnitude of the loss. 

"It was just obliterating," she said. "I didn’t get out of bed. I didn’t care to eat or sleep or talk to anybody. I didn’t want to get better. I just wanted to close my eyes and not wake up.”

Parrish and her husband Mark searched for a safe place where they could sit with their broken hearts, she said.

“When you feel that vulnerable, you know, you don’t want to go to a coffee shop and cry," she said. "You don’t want to go out to dinner with people who don’t know your story and be worried the whole time that you’re just going to break down.”

Last year, they transformed a 19-acre property in Bedford into the Camberwell Grief Sanctuary. 

"Camberwell is the name of a butterfly and butterflies have always been a connection that we’ve had with Kaytryn,” said Parrish. 

Anyone who is grieving is welcome. 

Kelly and Mark Parrish with their daughter Kaytryn (left), who died in 2012. (Kelly Stewart Parrish)

There’s a lodge for group activities, a garden and walking trails along the Little Kentucky River and plans for a rustic chapel, a therapy cottage and a memorial garden. 

On a Saturday morning in July, Jennifer Heil was teaching a trauma-sensitive yoga class in the pavilion. 

"If it feels okay and comfortable for you and safe, you can close your eyes, so we’re going to start with some breathing exercises," she told the class. 

Heil lost her 20-year-old son Ethan Hennies in a car crash in 2018. 

"This place, I think is just amazing," she told Spectrum News 1. "To be out in nature is healing all in itself, but when you have grief and trauma on top of that, it’s even more significant, because we are all out here to heal ourselves and there’s only so much that you can do alone." 

For Parrish, the sanctuary is a way to take all the love she and her husband still feel for Kaytryn and share it with others who need it.

"For us, that was healing," she said. "It was transformative to know that we still have this hope and this love for our child and we can find a way to put that back to the world, to make someone else’s heartbreak a little bit more manageable."  

Those who grieve can plant a tree or dedicate a bench in honor of a loved one, which helps support the nonprofit. 

You can learn about upcoming events here.