What Does Grief Feel Like?

Children learn how to describe and understand their grief when someone dies.

This gentle, reassuring book shares the many ways people grieve when a loved one dies while validating children’s unique grief experiences. Open-ended questions throughout the book invite children to share what they are thinking, feeling, and going through.

What Does Grief Feel Like? is written from a child development perspective and uses developmentally appropriate language to discuss grief. There is no guidebook for how to support children through grief. However, there is this book to help you find the words, colours, shapes, and sizes to describe its complex and pervasive nature. In addition to the ideas and activities described in the story, What Does Grief Feel Like? provides activities and breathing exercises to help calm big emotions, and concrete and simple ways to help children express their grief. The author has spent over 16 years specialising in working with children and families experiencing grief and loss.

At the back of the book, a caregiver’s guide provides information on developmental stages, expressions, and behaviours of grief in children.

Download File

"Thoroughly child friendly in tone, style, organization and presentation, What Does Grief Feel Like? is deftly illustrated by Mike Malbrough and is unreservedly recommended."
- Children’s Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review