Grief is a powerful and emotional reaction to the loss of someone people care about. Since grief is such a strong feeling, people often struggle to know what to do when they experience it. Understanding grief can be a complicated task and can feel different for everyone. Grief can feel like many different emotions rolled all into one. These emotions can include sadness, yearning, confusion, guilt, regret, anger, and anxiety to name a few. Along with these emotions, grief can come in forms of stages including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. People will often go through some of these stages at some point after a loved one dies.

If it is really hard for you to imagine that this person is really gone or you find it hard to believe that it’s true, you’re experiencing denial. This is a normal feeling, as the person was in your life and now you’re living the same life without them. During this time, common emotions include confusion, anxiety, and sadness. Anger occurs when you start to feel angry because this person is not in your life anymore. You may start to feel angry toward them for leaving you, others that may have been a part of the process of death, or yourself for wishing you could have done more. This stage can be difficult to work through alone and it’s important to ask adults at your home or school for help. Telling people that you’re feeling angry is normal and part of the process of coping with grief.

Sometimes people start to try to figure out if there’s anything that you can do or change that could make the person who died come back. Sometimes you might ask to make a deal with a higher power to send the person back if you have good behavior, or try to think in magical ways. This happens when you start to really miss your loved one and wish you could see or talk to them. When this happens, it can help to write letters to them or even speak out loud to them as if they can hear you. You can write things about what happened at school or even tell them how much you miss them.

It is normal to feel really sad after someone dies. You might feel sad because you realize your loved one is gone and will never come back. Sadness is normal and sometimes you might cry when you think about this. If this happens most days, most of the time, it is important to tell an adult that you’re feeling like this so that an adult can talk about your loved one with you, comfort you when you’re feeling sad, and support you during this difficult time.

Grief is something that lasts a long time, but you will learn to grow around it. You will continue to think of your loved one and miss them, but you will grow and learn to live your life without them. You can do this by finding ways to honor their life, such as celebrating them in some way, drawing pictures that remind you of them, keeping an item of theirs with you, looking at pictures of them, telling funny stories or sharing happy memories, writing letters to them, visiting their resting place, or listening to their favorite songs. Everyone can come up with their own special ways to honor their loved ones when they pass away. When you get to this place, this is called acceptance. You understand that this person is gone and you try to get things back to normal as best as you can. The most important thing to remember is that every person feels grief differently and everyone copes with grief in their own way. It is always helpful to reach out to an adult you trust to ask for help or talk about the loss of a loved one.