Description

Grief Support Kit-

Grief can come in many forms and for different reasons. Everyone, from all walks of life and across cultures, experiences loss and grief at some point. Mourning doesn’t come only from dealing with your own death or the death of a loved one. Mourning can also come as a result of an illness, the end of a close relationship, or even the end of a project or dream. Grief can similarly come from a perceived or real change in your life. For example, moving to a new city, school, or job, transitioning into a new age group, or staying in isolation because of a pandemic. In other words, there’s no written-in-stone list of “valid” reasons to grieve. What matters is how you feel. And there are no right or wrong feelings regarding a loss.

Here are some emotions when you are experiencing grief:

Shock. Intense and sometimes paralyzing surprise at the loss.

Denial. Disbelief and the need to look for evidence to confirm the loss.

Anger and frustration. A mix between acknowledgment that some things have changed and anger toward this change.

Depression. Lack of energy and intense sadness.

Testing. Experimenting with the new situation to discover what it actually means in your life.

Decision. A rising optimism about learning how to manage the new situation.

Integration. Acceptance of the new reality, reflection on what you learned, and stepping out in the world as a renewed person.

Everyone mourns differently. You could go through many intense emotions, or you could seemingly not react at all. Both responses are valid and not uncommon. How much time you spend navigating the stages of grief also varies from person to person. It might take you hours, months, or longer to process a loss and heal from it. You might not experience all these stages of grief or in the order listed above. You could go back and forth from one stage to another. You may even skip all these emotions and process your loss differently altogether. The stages of grief are supposed to serve you as a reference, not as a rule.

As You navigate through these stages, we have created and collected some tools and items to give you some comfort along the way.