Supporting a friend or loved one through grief can feel daunting. It’s a path fraught with emotions, yet we tread it because of the deep connections we share. This guide offers practical advice, helping you navigate the delicate task of providing comfort to someone mourning a loss.
If someone is struggling to cope and can’t afford private counselling, they can receive free grief counselling from Cruse. Also read on how to cope with companion animals die.
The Five Stages of Grief
You might have heard of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, the journey through these stages is not the same for everyone.
- Denial: This is often the brain’s way of softening immediate shock. Someone might carry on as if nothing’s changed.
- Anger: Frustration can surface, sometimes directed at others or at life itself.
- Bargaining: A person might dwell on “if only” scenarios, wishing to undo their loss.
- Depression: This stage might bring long periods of sadness and withdrawal.
- Acceptance: Eventually, there may come a sense of understanding or reconciliation with the loss.
While these stages can offer a framework, remember that not everyone will experience all of them, or in this order.
Grief can manifest in various ways. Emotionally, it might bring sadness, anger, or relief. Physically, it can lead to fatigue or even aches. Behaviourally, it might cause someone to withdraw or act in uncharacteristic ways. Imagine a colleague suddenly avoiding social gatherings they once enjoyed, or a family member struggling to find joy in hobbies.
How to Offer Support
One of the most powerful ways to support someone is to simply be there. Listen actively. This means giving your full attention, nodding, and offering gentle affirmations. You don’t need to provide solutions. Sometimes, just saying “I’m here for you” is enough.
Actions can speak louder than words. Help out with day-to-day tasks. Could you bring over a meal, or perhaps run some errands? Consider offering to help with funeral arrangements, a task that might feel overwhelming for someone in the throes of grief.
Self-care often slips down the priority list for those grieving. Gently encourage your friend to take a short walk, enjoy a good meal, or take a moment for meditation. Offer to join them. Remember, self-care is crucial for you, the supporter, too.
What to Avoid
Phrases like “I know how you feel” seldom help. They can seem dismissive. Instead, offer specific condolences like, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I’m here with you.”
Grief has no timeline. It’s essential to honour that. Encourage patience—not only in the person grieving but also in yourself. Healing happens differently for everyone.
Books to Help People Who Are Grieving
Love and Grief is an easy-to-read illustrated guide, to remind us that each grief journey is different. Know the necessary changes you must make, and also know what you cannot control,. The author (a certified grief counsellor) lost her husband at a young age, so has travelled the same journey as the reader.
Grieving Room is by an ordained minister and grief educator. Only when her own sister died from cancer did she realised what grieving people don’t need, and what they do. Room for imperfect goodbyes and room for a changing faith, room for regret and to rage at the world. Room for hard holidays and to never ‘get over it’. In a world that wants to rush towards ‘closure and healing’, this book gives permission to let loss linger.
Grieving the Death of a Father is a book that looks at unique ways to cope, when losing someone close to us. After the physical loss of a father, there are slower processes to go through, as a natural response in a world where (most) people have their fathers live a long time. But if you’ve lost a father at a younger age than most, you likely have to live through sadness, guilt, memories and the reality of growing up with the man who likely protected you from harm.
Make no mistake about it. The death of a father causes a very significant wound. Some of us tend the wound, some of us ignore it. But the wound is not that our father died and by his death our world is forever changed. No, the world is that the world around us acknowledged the death for one very brief moment, then skipped merrily on its way.
The author (a former funeral director) and a member of the Association for Death Education and Counselling also wrote the accompanying book Grieving the Death of a Mother.
Losing a mother early in life is a difficult transition, as no matter what the status of the relationship (good or not), this is likely the first person you turn to, when going through difficult times. And if she is no longer there, you may find it harder to cope than most, when needing a sympathetic ear to listen. Of course if you have lost both parents early in life, the hardship emotional pain is doubled.
Losing a mother deprives you of a chief cheerleader. A friend once told me ‘I lost the one person who would love me, no matter what happened in my life. I always knew my mother would be there for me’. Many grievers are left burdened with unfinished business, apologies that were never verbalised, unexpressed appreciations and unspoken affections.
My friend Carl captured the feelings of many when he said ‘I still needed her. I wasn’t finished growing up yet’. Some mothers serves as the glue that held a fragile family together. Make no mistake. The death of a mother can be one of life’s toughest experiences.
Although I am 54 years old, I am not all ‘grown up’. Just once more I would like to hear ‘Oh, I am so glad you called. I was just thinking about you. Did you have something good to eat today?’
Grieving the Death of a Friend is a book for grief that often is as painful (if not more so, if you don’t have a close family).
A Simple Exploration of Grief for Children
Bird is Dead includes gentle words and images to make death an approachable subject, with illustrations by a therapist-turned-artist.In a simple but warm way, this picture book of collaged birds can help discussions with children about what happens when someone (or an animal dies), how to understand feelings of grief and how people experience loss differently, when something tragic happens.
Bird is dead. Yesterday he was alive. How do the other birds know? On your back + feet up = dead. Some of the birds cry a little. And that’s alright. Crying together can be nice. When it’s time to give Bird a funeral, they reminisce about him, and then have tea with worms (or cake, if you don’t like worms).
