Healing Your Grieving Heart for Kids: 100 Practical Ideas

by Alan D. Wolfelt

With sensitivity and insight, this series offers suggestions for healing activities that can help survivors learn to express their grief and mourn naturally. Acknowledging that death is a painful, ongoing part of life, they explain how people need to slow down, turn inward, embrace their feelings of loss, and seek and accept support when a loved one dies. Each book, geared for mourning adults, teens, or children, provides ideas and action-oriented tips that teach the basic principles of grief and healing. These ideas and activities are aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void so that the living can begin their lives again. Included in the books for teens and kids are age-appropriate activities that teach younger people that their thoughts are not only normal but necessary.

Genres: Grief

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very helpful guide to practical things that kids, or anyone really, can do to cope while grieving. There is a huge assortment of ideas, so if one thing doesn't help, the odds are that they will be able to find something that does. For my secular peeps (oh heyyy! that's me, too!), there are only two tips out of the 100 that are overtly religious - one suggests attending a church service, and one suggests praying. And, you know, if these things help a grieving little kid, then I say let them do what they need to do. One other has a mention of heaven, but in a "Do you believe in heaven?" way, encouraging them to think about their ideas while they contemplate the night sky.

Grief sucks, and these basic reminders will help not just kids, but adults who are bereft and hurting. Sometimes when we are mourning, we need those reminders: Be gentle with yourself. Not everyone around you is going to understand. Feed your body nourishing things. Drink water. Sleep more if you need to. Get a counselor to help if you need to. Talk to someone if you are thinking about hurting yourself or someone else. Get outside for a few minutes. Move your body, even when you don't feel like doing it. It's okay to laugh. It's okay to have mixed feelings about the death or the person who died.

I like this a lot. It is in small sections that are easy to process even when you have griefbrain (it's a thing. I swear). Go get it.