Supporting you in knowing what you can do next after a loss, to providing tools for healing and finding happiness
The death of someone close to you can be emotionally and physically draining, and possibly debiliatating. Different people handle grief differently and finding your way through this is important as you still have a life to live, and a hole to fill. We have listed some websites that can help with the loss and your missing of your loved one.
Please see specific sections for loss of your child or helping your child with dealing with bereavement, being widowed young and death of your parent.
Websites Offering Support:
The Bereavement Trust
is a National Freephone Helpline, operating every evening of the year, without exception. Helplines available in English, Chinese and Asian languages.
NHS
offers some useful insights into bereavement.
Moodjuice Self-help Guide
provides a great self help guide for you to view and print.
GrabLife
provides activity support weekends and ongoing peer support for bereaved young adults (18-30), helping them identify signs of grief and embrace the future.
Due to the challenge of college or a new career, or the fact that they’re away from family support networks with friends enjoying their 20s, young adults tend to receive little understanding and support when they are bereaved. They can feel isolated as they grieve or alternatively suppress their feelings, assuming the death has had little or no affect. AtaLoss.org is therefore providing activity support weekends, specially designed for 18-30 year olds who have suffered bereavement at any time in their life, whether or not there is current emotional pain.
Funeral Services Guide
aims to be the only online resource that you’ll ever need when handling your, or your loved one’s final affairs, covering everything from coping emotionally, to step-by-step guides on handling practicalities with minimal stress.
Cruse
is there to support you after the death of someone close.
Care for the Family
Losing a brother or sister early in life is something no one expects – it changes everything. The gap they leave is huge.
This unique event is for anyone in their 20s and 30s living with loss after the death of a sibling.
At a Loss
helps you find appropriate and local bereavement support via their signposting website.
Books on this subject:
What Doesn’t Kill Us: A guide to overcoming adversity and moving forward
People confronted by tragedy, horror and adversity emerge as wiser, more mature and more fulfilled people. Research shows that this number is somewhere between 30-90% of people. Relationships become stronger. Perspectives on life change. Inner strengths are found. Even if sadness persists, trauma and tragedy can make us stronger.
Stephen Joseph has a long history of experience working with survivors of trauma and sufferers of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Stephen challenges the concept that trauma and its aftermath – often labeled as PTSD – devastate and destroy the lives. His studies have shown that a wide range of traumatic events – from separation, bereavement, illness and assault to natural disasters, accidents and terrorism – can act as catalysts for changing one’s perspective, positive change, strengthening relationships and revealing inner strengths.
This book looks at a six step process that we can all use to manage our emotions and navigate adversity to find new meaning, purpose and direction in our lives.
Seven Choices
This book maps the complete grieving and change process and provides a way to respond to change by identifying seven positive choices that lead to a “new normal.” These positive choices bring healing and stability and show how to avoid getting stuck in mourning, anger, bitterness and sadness.
An inspiring and profoundly moving book, Seven Choices offers hope, comfort, and advice to those who are experiencing change and loss. Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld guides the reader through the often confusing range of emotions and issues that occur during the process of finding equilibrium after change and loss.
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.
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.
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.