Healing Your Grieving Heart for Kids (eBook)

INTRODUCTION When I was a kid, one of my friends died. His name was Phil. We played on a baseball team together. Sometimes we went on long bike rides all over town. Then he got sick with a cancer called leukemia. He lived for a while, but then he died. I was very sad. I also had lots of questions. But nobody wanted to talk to me about the death! The grown-ups in my life thought they could protect me by not talking about it. Inside I felt lots of grief about the death.(Grief may be a word you haven't learned, but it just means the painful thoughts and feelings you have after someone you love dies.) The trouble was, I wasn't helped to let my grief out. I was confused and sad for a long, long time. Now I'm a grown-up with kids of my own. I became a grief counselor. I've helped lots of grieving kids over the years. They've taught me many important lessons. The most important lesson grieving children have taught me is that they need to mourn. Letting your grief out is called mourning. You need to mourn so you can start to feel better. If you don't mourn, your feelings will stay all bottled up inside like mine did. I wrote this book to help you mourn. The 100 ideas give you ways to think about and feel your grief. I'm sorry that someone you love has died. This is a very hard time for you. But I promise you this: If you let your grief out, and if you can find grown-ups who will help you with your mourning, you'll feel much better. And, over time, your life will be full of joy and happiness again. You are special. You are loved. And you are so alive. I know you can do this. Mourn well and live well. Go for it. -Alan D. Wolfelt 1. Learn that grief and mourning are different. Grief (rhymes with leaf) is what you think and feel inside when someone you love dies. When you're in grief, you're grieving (rhymes with leaving). Mourning (pronounced the same as morning) means letting those thoughts and feelings come out somehow. You need to mourn so you can start to feel better. If you keep everything inside you'll only feel worse. Write or draw your feelings about this: