Course description

When someone dies, grief can touch every part of life: how you feel, how you sleep, how you think, and how you get through an ordinary day. This course explains grief in plain, warm language, without telling you how you should feel or how long it should take. It covers the practical side of a death in the UK as well as the emotional side, and it's for bereaved adults and for anyone supporting someone who is grieving.

There are 10 sections and 50 written lessons, and each one ends with a short, gentle exercise. You follow Anoma, a school business manager in Huntingdon, through the year after her husband died suddenly: registering his death, the funeral, going back to work, waves of grief in the supermarket, her son's first cricket match without his dad, the first birthday and festivals without him, and the personal grief plan she wrote before the first anniversary. Every section has a practice pack with a worksheet, example answers, a cheat sheet and printable tools, including a help contacts card, a gentle check-in, a waves log, two original diagrams, an after-a-death checklist, a grief calendar, a return to work planner, a supporter's card, a words for children guide, memory keeping ideas and a personal grief plan template.

What you'll learn

• Getting started: what grief, bereavement and mourning mean, why there's no right way or timetable, your safety net of urgent help, bereavement helplines and your GP, plain words about death, faith and culture, and a gentle check-in in your own words.
• How grief can show up: in your feelings, your body, your thinking and what you do, why it often comes in waves, and simple ways to notice what helps.
• Ways of understanding grief: the five stages and why grief rarely follows them in order, the dual process model, continuing bonds, growing around grief, and using any model kindly, as a lens rather than a rule.
• Different kinds of loss: sudden deaths and the coroner, bereavement by suicide, pregnancy, baby and child loss, losing a partner or a parent, and grieving a friend, a pet or a loss others may not see, with specialist support for each.
• Before and after a death: anticipatory grief, when someone is dying, the first days after a death in the UK, registering the death and Tell Us Once, funerals and help with funeral costs, and pacing the money and paperwork.
• Looking after yourself: sleep and eating, routine and small steps, movement and rest, alcohol and other ways of coping, and leaning on others.
• Special days and the year ahead: anniversaries, birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day, Christmas and other festivals, making a grief calendar, and rituals for remembering.
• Grief and work: time off after a death, parental bereavement leave, going back to work, the first weeks back, supporting a grieving colleague, and when work is still hard months later.
• Supporting someone who is grieving: what helps a grieving friend, what to say and what not to say, honest words for children and teenagers, funerals and school, and looking after yourself as a supporter.
• When grief is very hard, and your plan: prolonged grief and when to see your GP, the support available in each UK nation, keeping memories, and your own personal grief plan as a final project.

Who it's for

Adults who are grieving, whether the death was recent or some time ago, expected or sudden, and people supporting a grieving friend, relative, colleague or child. You don't need any previous knowledge, and the course doesn't assume any particular faith or belief.

What this course is, and isn't

This course is education and self-help. It isn't counselling, therapy or treatment, it gives general information rather than legal or financial advice, and it doesn't replace care from a GP, a bereavement counsellor or a mental health professional. It explains how to get bereavement support, including the Cruse helplines, and how to get help through your GP and NHS Talking Therapies, with the routes for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you feel you might harm yourself, or you can't keep yourself or someone else safe, call 999 or go to A&E now.

What will I learn?

• Describe how grief can show up in your feelings, body, thinking and behaviour, and why it often comes in waves
• Use ideas such as the five stages, the dual process model, continuing bonds and growing around grief as lenses, not rules
• Recognise how different losses, including sudden deaths, suicide and baby loss, can affect grief, and where to find specialist support
• Understand the main practical steps after a death in the UK, including registering the death, Tell Us Once and help with funeral costs
• Look after your sleep, eating, routine and wellbeing with small, realistic steps while you grieve
• Plan gently for anniversaries, birthdays and festivals with a grief calendar and your own rituals
• Know your rights to time off after a death, and plan a return to work that suits you
• Support a grieving friend, colleague, child or teenager with honest, kind words and practical help
• Recognise when grief may need more help, and know how to reach your GP, talking therapies and bereavement services in each UK nation
• Keep memories of the person who died and write your own personal grief plan for the months ahead

Frequently asked questions