Coping with the Emotional Impact of Loss and Bereavement
The death of someone close to you can be emotionally devastating, as can that of a celebrity you are a fan of. You might find you experience a range of physical and emotional symptoms as you come to terms with your loss.
Loss comes to different people in a hundred different ways. There’s no ‘wrong’ way to feel during these times. Some celebrate the accomplishments of the person who has passed. Others are incredibly sad. Some are completely numb for days. Others feel helpless, and seek out something positive to do in honour of the person who passed on.
Whatever you’re feeling: You aren’t alone. We have listed some websites that can help at the point of loss. When you feel you are ready to move on and start to deal with bereavement we can offer a 'coping with bereavement' workshop.
Websites Offering Support:
At a Loss
helps you find appropriate and local bereavement support via their signposting website.
Child Bereavement UK
supports families and educates professionals when a baby or child dies or is dying, or when a child is facing bereavement.
Grief Encounter
support bereaved children and their families to help alleviate the pain caused by the death of someone close. The services are free.
Hope Again
is the youth website of Cruse Bereavement Care. It provides somewhere to turn to when someone dies. Here you will find information about our services, a listening ear from other young people, and advice for anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one. It is a safe place, where young people who are facing grief can share their stories with others.
Little Parachutes
is a website that sells picture books which tackle the difficult subjects of bereavement loss. Grieving children may find comfort or answers to challenging question in the pages of these books.
Moodjuice Self-help Guide
provides a great self help guide for you to view and print.
NHS
offers some useful insights into bereavement.
Winston’s Wish
offer practical support and guidance to bereaved children, their families and professionals.
Books on this subject:
Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies
Drawing upon extensive interviews and assessments of school-age children who have lost a parent to death, this book offers a richly textured portrait of the mourning process in children. The volume presents major findings from the Harvard Child Bereavement Study and places them in the context of previous research, providing insights on both the wide range of normal variation in children’s experience of grief and the factors that put bereaved children at risk.
Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief Paperback
David Kessler – the world’s foremost expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving – journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning.
David has spent decades teaching about end of life, trauma and grief. And yet his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a devastating loss?
In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares his hard-earned wisdom and offers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain, how to move forward in a way that honours our loved ones and ultimately transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience.
An inspiring must-read for anyone struggling to figure out how to live after loss.
Grieving for the Sibling You Lost
will help you understand your own unique coping style. You’ll also find effective exercises based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you work through negative thoughts, and learn the importance of creating meaning out of loss and suffering. Most importantly, you’ll learn when and how to ask for help from parents, friends, or teachers.
If you’ve lost a sibling, the pain can feel unbearable, but there are ways you can start to heal.
It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand
In 2009, on a beautiful sunny day, Megan Devine witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner Matt. “All my professional experience as a therapist felt meaningless,” she writes. “Grief literature is loaded with well-intended advice that can actually worsen and extend someone’s pain. We just don’t know how to handle loss in our culture.” Megan has dedicated herself to helping people find a new way to deal with loss that honors our experience without trying to “solve” grief.
With It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan reveals a path for navigating grief and loss not by trying to escape it, but by learning to live inside of it with more grace and strength. Through stories, research, life tips, and mindfulness-based practices, she offers a unique guide through an experience we all must face. Here she debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life, replacing it with the skills and tools to help us experience and witness the pain of loss in ourselves and others–so we may meet our grief knowing it to be a natural step in the greater journey of love.
On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages
One of the most important psychological studies of the late twentieth century,OnDeath and Dyinggrew out of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous interdisciplinary seminar on death, life and transition. In this remarkable book, Dr. Kubler-Ross first explores the now-famous stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Through sample interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve that patient, and the patient’s family, bringing hope to all who are involved. This new edition will include an introduction by Dr. Ira Byock, a prominent palliative care physican and the author of Dying Well.
Sibling Bereavement
The effect of losing a brother or sister can result in severe emotional trauma for a child. The author of this text believes there is no “right” way for parents to behave towards surviving children – each family, each death, each survivor is different. The book allows victims of sibling bereavement to tell their own stories and share their own conclusions about the experience, seeking to provide enlightenment on this emotional subject.
Water Bugs and Dragonfiles
uses the analogy of the waterbugs’ short life under water as human’s time on earth and their emergence as dragonflies into the bright sunlit world above the water as human’s life after death. It is designed to provide adults with the opportunity to talk about death as being part of the life cycle, which can be a reassuring way of explaining death to children.