Here’s the thing: there’s just no getting around grief. You have to deal with it.
You can’t put it on the back burner because it insistently makes its painful presence known. “Pay attention to me!” it calls out, with every tear, every sad thought, with every pang of the heart.
So how do we deal with it? The answer is simpler than we might think. It’s just not very palatable.
We deal with grief by allowing ourselves to feel it. By crying when we have to. By thinking of our loved one. By remembering. I know, it’s painful. Been there. Still there. And I’ll remain there as long as I have to. Because grief operates on its own timetable.
Of course, after a while, we worry our friends and family are getting tired of our grief. Maybe that’s unfounded. Maybe they don’t feel that way at all.
Or maybe they do. Maybe they just don’t understand how grief works. Maybe they haven’t yet suffered a deep loss of their own. Maybe they don’t know how to respond. All those things can be true.
And what’s also true is grief is a walk we take alone. Our own personal journey. No one can share our own brand of grief.
That, my friends, is the thought behind the Guided Journal through Grief I wrote. Because I know that “dealing” with grief is really “feeling” it. Reminiscing. Crying. And also laughing as we remember the happy times.
Each page of the journal has an activity, an idea or a prompt. Respond to the prompt by writing, drawing, or even making a mini-collage. And in that way, page by page, we remember our loved ones and we work with our grief. We do that so that our grief doesn’t control us. It’s a part of us and always will be (as is our loved one) but in time it won’t have the power over our daily lives that it does if we try to tamp it down or push it away.
Or if we try to avoid it because we think our loved ones are tired of hearing it. This is a safe place to get those feelings out. To feel them.
Customers who have used the journal say good things about it. 
Customers who have given the journal alone as a gift or as part of our larger bereavement gift say it is appreciated. And everyone appreciates its low price.
If you’d like to learn more you can find the journal here on this site at the grief tab or at my Etsy shop, where it’s gotten 5 star reviews.
And if you’d like someone to find this gift under the tree, there’s still time to make Santa’s sleigh. But hurry!
Brilliant way to help clear the fogginess that sometimes surrounds grief – sometimes you need some direction
This is such a brilliant idea and it comes at the perfect time.The holidays are so hard on people dealing with grief. Thank you for creating this offering.