Grief Work
“Time alone is not enough to heal the wounds of the heart.
There is work involved in grieving”
(Good Grief, Zita Annette Weber, 2001)
The grief journey for survivors is long and painful. It is also complicated by the suddenness and nature of your loved one’s death. Grief work is the psychological process of coping with a significant loss and means undertaking a range of activities or exercises that will help to manage the grief and decrease the likelihood of you developing complicated grief reactions or mental illnesses such as depression.
Below is a grief work workbook that you can download and print. It contains a number of grief work activities that you may like to try. Each of these is designed to help you explore your thoughts and feelings in a constructive way so that you can work your way through your grief journey. Please remember that grief is a very individual experience and you will react differently to each of these activities and find some more helpful than others. Also consider that even those activities that you find particularly painful or emotional will be of benefit to you in some way as your strong reaction is an indicator that work is required in that area. You may find that repeating an activity again and again over a period of time will work best for you.
Also, if you have any grief work activities that you have undertaken in your journey and would like to share them with other survivors we would love to hear from you.
Please Note: You do not have to undertake these activities in the order listed here as some activities will be more useful to you depending at which stage of the grief and recovery process you are at.
