Checklist
The first week: what actually can't wait
Almost everything can wait. This is the short list of what can't, and the phrases that get you off the phone fast.
Resources
For the situation you're actually in - not grief in general. Curated, short, no platitudes.
The first days
Checklist
Scripts for the calls you're dreading
Word-for-word lines for telling people, cancelling their appointments, and ending conversations you don't have the strength for.
Checklist
Before the memorial
What actually needs deciding, what can be delegated, and the two things worth protecting for yourself on a day that belongs to everyone.
Read
Writing the eulogy
Three minutes, one true story, and permission to cry at the lectern. A shape for the hardest piece of writing you'll ever be asked to do in a week.
Checklist
Funeral planning: where to start
The funeral director handles more than you think. The five decisions that are actually yours, in the order they'll be asked.
Read
The funeral they expect vs the one you want
Tradition, family pressure, and what your person would have actually wanted. Whose day is it - and how to hold your ground gently.
The practical pile
Checklist
The paperwork nobody warns you about
Accounts, subscriptions, the phone plan, the mail. A checklist you can do in ten-minute pieces, because that's what you have.
Checklist
Their things: a pace, not a purge
Three boxes: keep, give, not yet. 'Not yet' is allowed to be the biggest box, for as long as it needs to be.
Read
Their accounts, their photos, the ambush memories
The apps don't know. How to soften the 'on this day' ambushes, and what can be done with their accounts - only when you're ready.
Read
Probate, in plain words
What it is, why it takes so long, what you can do meanwhile, and when to pay a professional to carry it. Not legal advice - a map of the territory.
Read
The insurance that shows up after a death
Life policies, funeral plans, employer benefits you didn't know existed. Where to look, what to say when you claim, and the deadlines that matter.
Checklist
The "if I die" handbook
The kindest document you'll ever write: everything your people would need, in one place. Build yours right here, section by section.
Checklist
The admin, mapped: week one to year one
Every task after a death, laid on a timeline - what's urgent, what waits, what's optional forever. The whole bureaucracy, one map.
Inside the grief
Listen
For 3 a.m.
A twelve-minute companion for the hour that doesn't end. Not a sleep meditation. Just someone staying up with you.
Nothing recorded, no voices - a low, synthesized hum, so 3 a.m. isn't silent.
Read
Grief lives in the body
Why your chest hurts, why food tastes like nothing, why you're exhausted after sleeping ten hours. It's not just you.
Read
The unsaid thing
Almost everyone is carrying a sentence they never got to say. On guilt, and what it's actually made of.
Read
When they visit in dreams - or won't
Some people dream of them constantly. Some wait years for one. Neither is a verdict on how much you loved them.
Read
The anger nobody warns you about
At the doctors, at the driver, at them for dying, at people whose lives just carried on. Anger is grief with its back up. It doesn't make you bad at this.
Read
Grief ambushes
Fine in the hard moments, flattened by a supermarket song. Why the wave comes from nowhere, and what to do in the four minutes it owns you.
Read
If you can't cry
Everyone around you is weeping and you feel like cardboard. Numbness is a nervous system protecting you, not proof you loved them less.
Read
Afraid of forgetting their voice
The sound of them saying your name is fading and it feels like losing them twice. What memory actually does, and how to keep what can be kept.
Read
Everyone else's ordinary day
The couple arguing about paint colors. The woman calling her mum. Envy of ordinary lives is one of grief's most honest, least confessed feelings.
Checklist
A pocket plan for the bad hour
Five steps small enough to do while crying. Write them down before you need them; bad hours are not the time to improvise.
Ritual
Letters they'll never read
Write to them anyway. What letters do that thinking can't, and why the not-being-answered is part of what helps.
The hard dates
Read
The first holidays: three plans and an exit strategy
Plan A is showing up. Plan B is showing up briefly. Plan C is not showing up. All three are complete plans.
Ritual
Marking a hard date without a script
Light something, cook their dish, walk their route, say their name out loud. Small rituals you can build a day around - or hide inside.
Ritual
A story a month
One story about them, written down, once a month. In a year you'll have twelve you might otherwise have lost.
Read
The milestone they're missing
Graduations, weddings, the new baby, the new house. How to stand in a happy day with a hole in it - without pretending the hole isn't there.
Ritual
Their recipe, made badly
Cook the thing they always made. It won't taste right. Make it anyway - the point was never the food.
Ritual
A chair, a candle, a toast
Three small ways to bring them into the wedding, the birthday, the holiday table - so the day holds them instead of avoiding them.
Everyday life
Read
Going back to work while your life is on fire
What to tell your manager, what to tell your coworkers, and the one-line email you can send instead of either.
Ritual
The first hour
Waking up is the daily re-remembering. A small, repeatable first hour - kettle, window, one true sentence - to land in the day gently.
Read
Cooking for one, when it was always two
The table is the loneliest furniture in the house. Small, real ways to feed yourself when the point of dinner is gone.
The people around you
Read
What to say when people say the wrong thing
Scripts for 'everything happens for a reason,' 'at least,' and the other sentences you'll hear this month. You're allowed to protect yourself politely - or not politely.
Read
For the people who love someone grieving
Send this to your people. It says the things you don't have the energy to explain - show up, don't fix, keep showing up after month one.
Read
Grieving the same person differently
You're mourning together and completely alone at once. Why the people who share your loss can't always share your grief - and what helps.
Read
Telling the kids while you're breaking
Plain words are kinder than soft ones - 'died' beats 'went to sleep.' What children actually need to hear, at the ages they need it.
Read
Being the strong one
You planned the funeral, fielded the calls, held everyone upright. Somewhere in there is your grief, still waiting for its turn.
Read
What everyone expects vs what you actually need
Visitors when you want silence, silence when you want company, timelines you never agreed to. Sorting their script from your grief.
The shape of your loss
Read
When there was no goodbye
Sudden loss skips the ending and leaves you holding the unsaid part. On last conversations that didn't know they were last.
Read
When the goodbye took years
You grieved while they were alive, and then you grieved again. And if some of what you feel is relief - relief and grief can share a room.
Read
Grieving someone complicated
When the person who died also hurt you, grief and relief and anger arrive tangled together. You're allowed to feel all of it. Nobody gets to grade it.
Read
After suicide loss
The questions that loop, the guilt that lies to you, and the particular loneliness of this grief. Written slowly, for the people carrying it.
Read
A grief the world rushes past
There may be no photos, no funeral, no name anyone else says. The loss is real, the love is real, and you get to grieve at full size.
Finding support
Read
The kinds of grief support: a map
Friends, groups, therapy, retreats, crisis lines - what each is actually for, and how they stack. Most people need different ones at different times.
Read
Therapy for grief: the kinds, in plain words
Grief counselling, CBT, ACT, EMDR, prolonged-grief therapy - what the letters mean, what a session is like, and how to tell if it's helping.
Read
Therapy vs psychiatry
One talks, one can also prescribe. Who does what, when medication enters the conversation, and why seeing both at once is common and fine.
Read
Starting therapy for the first time
How to find someone, what the first session is actually like, what it costs, and the permission slip: shopping around isn't rude, it's the method.
Read
Day programs and hospital care
When grief tips into something that needs more than weekly appointments. What day-patient and inpatient care actually look like, without the fear.
Read
Grief books worth their weight
A short shelf, honestly annotated - the ones grieving people actually pass to each other, and what each is good for.
Read
Letting friends be the support they want to be
They keep saying "anything you need." Here's how to convert that into actual help - and which jobs friends are best and worst at.
Read
Grief groups, in person and online
A room of people who get it is its own medicine. How groups work, how to find one, and the ones that run right here.
Read
Facebook groups and internet strangers
At 2 a.m. a widows' group of forty thousand strangers can be a lifeline. What online communities do well, and how to use them without being swallowed.
Read
Crisis lines: what actually happens when you call
Who answers, what they ask, what they won't do. Demystified, so the number is easier to use on the night you need it.
Read
Grief retreats and grief trips
A week away with people who understand without explanation. What grief travel is, who it helps - and yes, the one we run.
Read
How to know what you need
Five questions to sort it: company or quiet, talking or doing, peer or professional, now or soon. A triage for your own grief.
Further along
Read
The second year
The casseroles stop, the check-ins thin out, and the world decides you're done. On the quieter, lonelier year nobody prepares you for.
Read
New joy, old love
Laughing again, loving again, wanting things again - and the guilt that shows up to check your ticket. Joy is not a betrayal. It never was.