Resources
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The manual nobody gives you after someone dies.
Everything here is written or chosen by people who have lost someone. Nothing is a course, nothing is a subscription, and none of it will tell you to move on.
A neuroscience grief workbook
What Your Brain Is Doing During Grief
Five things your grieving brain is doing, and what actually helps.
29 pages
The guide · pay what you want
What Your Brain Is Doing During Grief
Written by someone who lost his sister and his brother, and went looking for what was really happening inside his own head. Five mechanisms, what helps for each, and a page to write your own grief into.
The brain that keeps reaching· The body keeping score· The swing· There is no timeline· Carrying them· Six worksheets
Pay what you want, including nothing. Nobody in the first month of this should be deciding whether they can afford an explanation of their own head.
Also here
Guide
Free
What to Say, and What Not To
The six sentences people reach for that make it worse, and why. Written to be forwarded to the person who keeps saying them.
Read it
Worksheet
Free · PDF
Your Grief Body Map
Where it sits, what it feels like, when it shows up, what helps. One page, printable, free.
Download
Reading
10 sources
The Research Behind All of It
O'Connor on the predicting brain, Stroebe and Schut on the swing, Bonanno on trajectories, Klass on continuing bonds.
See the list
Writing
Free
Say It Out Loud
A small practice that helps many people. A prompt, a name, and one true sentence to start with.
Open it
For families
Free
When Nobody in the House Will Talk
Written after the author lost his brother to a silence that had nowhere to go. For families who are blaming each other instead of sitting together.
Read it
Season
Free
The First Winter Without Them
Dark evenings, the first Christmas, the dates that come round again. What the research says, and what tends to help.
Read it
Dates
Free
Plan the Day
Ideas and a plan for a birthday or an anniversary, for the day itself and the days around it.
Open it
Support
UK and beyond
Where to Get Real Help
Samaritans, Cruse, and how to tell the difference between grief doing its work and prolonged grief that needs a professional.
Find help
From the rooms
Words we needed.
Nobody wrote this page. It is built out of what bereaved people say actually helped, and what they wish had never been said. Light a candle beside a line and it grows.
When you first hear
Checking in later
When you say their name
To a parent who lost a child
Instead of offering to help
From people who lost
Anyone
A parent
A child
A partner
A sibling
What helped
…
What did not
…
This helped me
I wish they had not
Goes up at once, without your name on it. Nothing is taken down for being uncomfortable, only for being cruel.
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If you need to talk to someone now
In the UK, Samaritans are there day and night on 116 123, and Cruse Bereavement Support helps specifically with grief. Wherever you are, your doctor can point you toward local help.
If the weight has not lifted at all over a long stretch, if daily life has become impossible, or if you have had thoughts of not wanting to be here, please treat that as information, not weakness.