Phase 1: Afterglow waitlist demo preview landing page
A first look at Afterglow’s /start page: the waitlist, the free “What your brain is doing during grief” guide, and what we are building towards in Phase 2.
Afterglow is being built slowly and deliberately. Not because the idea is small, but because it is personal.
We are creating a place for people to remember someone they love, preserve the stories that made them who they were, and feel less alone in carrying their grief. Before opening the full experience, we wanted to make the project easier to understand, explore and shape with the people it is being built for.
That is why we created theafterglow.app/start: the first public landing page for Afterglow.
A place to begin
The /start page is where you can see what Afterglow is about, explore the early preview and join the waitlist if you would like to be part of what comes next. It is not a promise that everything is finished. It is an honest introduction to what we are building and an invitation to follow the journey while it takes shape.
Joining the waitlist is more than leaving an email address. It helps us understand whether this is something people genuinely need, what feels meaningful to them, and which parts of Afterglow should be built with the most care first.
A guide for the moments when you think something is wrong with you
We also created a free guide, What your brain is doing during grief. It is for the moments when grief makes you feel foggy, restless, exhausted, disconnected, unable to focus, or unlike yourself and you start wondering whether you are broken.
You are not broken. Grief can affect the mind and body in ways that feel frightening because the person you love is gone and your whole system is trying to make sense of a reality you did not choose. The guide explains some of that in ordinary language, without turning your grief into a diagnosis or a list of stages you are supposed to follow.
It also makes space for telling your story. Speaking or writing about a loss will not erase it, and it is not a replacement for professional support when that is needed. But giving an experience words can help you process what happened, make meaning, and feel less alone with it. Research into expressive-writing interventions in bereavement is still developing, but it supports the idea that carefully structured storytelling can be a useful form of support for some people.
Inside the download are 29 pages that name five things a grieving brain may be doing: still expecting the person to be there, carrying loss in the body, moving between grief and ordinary life, resisting a false timeline, and finding ways to carry someone forward. It includes six private writing exercises and ten published sources, but it is written in plain language rather than as a textbook.
You can download the guide from /start. Take what helps, leave what does not, and go at your own pace.
Why the guide is pay what you want
When we first made the guide, we planned to charge £10 for it. Then I came back to a simpler question: should someone who is trying to understand why grief has changed their mind, body and life be unable to access that support because money is tight?
The answer was no. The guide is now pay what you want. You can download it for free. If you are able to contribute, you can choose an amount that feels right; that support helps us keep building Afterglow. But there is no pressure to pay, and no difference in what you receive.
If you do choose to pay and later feel it was not helpful or simply change your mind, you can ask for a refund whenever you want. We would rather make this information accessible than make someone feel they have to earn the right to understand their own grief.
What Phase 2 is building towards
Phase 2 is the launch of the fuller Afterglow website: a desktop and mobile experience built around the shared sky, memorials, stories and connection.
The aim is for someone to be able to create a real star for a person they love: not just a symbol on a screen, but a memorial with their name, photographs, memories and contributions from the people who knew them. A sister may remember one story, a friend another, a partner another. Together, those memories can become a fuller picture of a life.
We are also building towards spaces for community, thoughtful replies, candles, resources and private ways to keep meaningful memories safe. The point is not to turn grief into something to scroll past. It is to create a place where someone’s person can still be spoken about, remembered and witnessed.
What you can explore now
The public preview gives you a sense of the visual world we are creating: the galaxy, the idea of stars as stories, and the quieter rituals that sit around remembrance. You can explore it, see how the project feels, and decide whether it is something you would want to return to when the next phase opens.
We do not believe technology can fix grief. But we do believe it can make more room for love, memory and human connection after loss.
This is the beginning. If Afterglow resonates with you, you can join the waitlist through /start and help us build the next phase with care.
Further reading
Writing about the disrupted self: a randomised controlled trial of an online expressive-writing intervention for bereaved people. This is emerging research, not a promise that writing works the same way for everyone.