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How To Help A Friend Grieve – How can you help a grieving friend when you live far away? 10 tips to help you provide long-distance grief support.
How can you help a friend in need when you don’t live nearby? This is one of the most common questions we hear from friends and relatives of the bereaved. Even if you live far away, you can be there for someone in pain. !
How To Help A Friend Grieve
Whether you know someone facing loss or want to be prepared when someone you love suddenly needs your support – here are some good ground rules & tips. !
Ways To Support Someone Who Is Grieving
If you’re grieving and want some help educating friends and family about the best ways to support you, these guidelines apply to you.
Avoid deceptions and let them be sad. Sadness is healthy. It is a natural response to loss, hardship and death. It’s hard to know what to do when your friends hurt you. Telling them not to be sad or that their person doesn’t want them to be sad only tells your friend that they can’t be honest with you about how they feel. You can cheer someone up by giving them advice or asking them to look on the bright side. It won’t work.
Let them be sad and let them know you are there. Don’t try to fix the unfixable. Stick with the truth: it hurts. i love you I am here.
Take an active part in online memorials. If you’re invited to an online memory, don’t sneak into the invitation. Create a playlist for the event or help host a virtual memorial brunch or happy hour for your grieving friend. Take some of the memory planning for your friend (if you can and if they want help). Share messages about a missing person in a quick video or voice recording.
Sympathy & Condolence Messages For Friends Or Family
Start connecting conversations. Your job as a support person isn’t to cheer someone up or fix their pain, it’s to help them feel heard and seen. Opening up honest conversations about grief and loss can feel intimidating. That’s right. Be the friend who gives your friend space to talk about what they’re going through, even if it’s challenging. Invite them for a video coffee or tea date. Schedule regular phone or video chats. Ask what their loss or their grief means to them in life. Be sensitive, pay attention to how your questions land, and always let your mourner lead.
Ask without jumping to fix anything for them. See what happens when you create space for things to feel as bad as they are.
Some ideas: meal delivery services and gift cards to local restaurants they like, bottled water and other healthy drinks, teas (or something else you know they enjoy), healthy prepackaged, single-serving foods (eg granola bars, dry fruits and nuts, snack crackers), low-maintenance houseplants, easy self-care kit (eg face wipes and under-eye gel pads, lotion, lip balm, cozy socks, favorite treats/snacks, etc.). Creation will be. Draw from what you know about your friend.
Send small gifts too. Grief is lonely and very lonely. Small gifts and handwritten letters or cards are tangible ways to show your love and let your friend know you’re thinking of them without pressuring them to do anything. Creation will be. Draw from what you know about your friend and your personal relationship.
Grief And Loss
Don’t assume your support job is done after one send. Don’t expect an answer—it may be light years beyond their power or capability. What matters is that you thought about them and achieved them.
Provide firm and firm support. Don’t say, “Call me if you need anything,” because your friend won’t call. When someone dies, everyday life goes awry for family members. Even if you’re not around, there are ways to ease the burden of your friend’s “normal life activities.” Offer to do practical things that free up space and time for them to process and feel their own loss. Example: “I can’t make this pain go away for you, but I can help ease your burden a little. If I could spare a minute for you, I’d be happy to do a virtual story time for your kids a few nights a week. Would that work for you?”
Team up with a mutual friend nearby. Reach out to local mutual friends and work together to come up with specific, concrete ways to support your grieving person/family. Some ideas: Find a schedule of who can cook (or pick up) dinner on certain nights. Pick up prescriptions, deliver mail, rake leaves, or dump snow. Find out who can park the pickup overnight before recycling. Be specific. Be reliable.
Remember the big dates. Set calendar reminders for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays and send a text or note to your friend on those dates. Let them know you’re thinking of them, you haven’t forgotten them or the person they lost, you know these dates are still important, and you remember. A note or text lets your bereaved person know you’re thinking of them without pressuring them to do anything.
Ways To Help A Friend Grieving The Death Of A Dog
Beyond that, let your grieving person be guided by what they do or don’t want to do, including not responding to your message. What matters is that you remember and achieve.
Stick around. Funerals and memorial services do not mark the end of grief. They represent the beginning. Now the way you show your friends matters. Follow-up — asking how they’re doing 6 months now, 2 years from now, and so on — is critical. Grief doesn’t end, but support can quickly dwindle in the months and years after a loss. Set calendar reminders to keep in touch on important dates. Check in on any average, normal weekday or weekend and offer a listening ear. Send care packages, letters and small gifts. These are all powerful forms of love and connection.
Extra credit: For a deeper understanding of grief and how to truly support those in pain (and take better care of yourself), read my book It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay, available wherever you buy books. Read this book to gain a deeper understanding of what your grieving person is going through (emotionally, mentally, physically), why our standard ideas about grief and support are neither accurate nor helpful, and how to truly help others. Take good care of yourself.
Be sure to share this post friends. A community effort is needed to help people become better at providing support. Most people want to help, but don’t know how. By sharing this post (and others from the RIG archives), we’re helping everyone become better at giving the love and support they want.
Bible Verses About Grief — Bible Verses To Help Cope With Loss
It’s hard to see people you love in pain. How do you support someone when you don’t live near them? These tips are for you. Need some help educating friends and family about the best ways to support you over the long haul? We got you. Click to tweet
It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay is not your typical loss book. It’s a new way to look at grief and love. It is now available to order. You can download a free sample episode now by subscribing here. Reader Contacts Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Comment * Name * Email * Website Current ye@r * Leave this field blank I may undermine your faith in this article when I tell you; I don’t know how to write about this topic. Although I have a lot to say about the question of what to say to someone who is grieving, I am conflicted about it.
On the one hand, I know there are no “right” or “right” words to say to someone who is grieving. Many who have experienced grief will tell you; It’s often not what you’re about
And many times, the best thing you can do is shut up and listen. Knowing this, I am wary of getting caught up in a debate about finding the right words when I know there are no “right words.”
How To Help A Grieving Friend {the Not So Helpful & The Helpful}
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cut me to the core and live rent-free inside my head for years.
Either way – when supporting grief, words can heal and connect, but they can also create barriers and hurt. This is true because there are concerns about
Having the right words sometimes prevents people from offering their support. Because, like it or not, inappropriate, inappropriate, or hurtful comments can occasionally create conflict and division.
So, I think we cannot ignore the question of what to say
Person Gives Best Advice For Mourning
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