80: How to Help Your Grieving Friend

This episode is more speaking to those around you to learn about grief and how they can help and support you on your grief journey.

Episode Pointers:

• I often think that our brains are trying so hard to comprehend our loss, that there is no extra room for all the things that used to be easy in the past. It’s hard to keep up on bills, it’s hard to remember anything, it’s hard to keep track of anything, it’s a major feat to get the energy to clean the house. You can help so much by doing physical things for them. It’s always a good idea to check in and see if this would be helpful for them. 
•  Remember that something you think is helpful might not be helpful for them, so communication is very important. By communicating with them, and also offering tangible ways of helping, you are letting them know you are serious about helping. 
• So many times people say, “Let me know if you need any help.” This is not helpful.
• First, a grieving person doesn’t really even have the capacity to think about and know of what ways could be helpful. 
• Second, they are in such a vulnerable place they don’t know how to reach out and ask for help when they need it.

When you offer ideas of ways you can happily help, it’s a win for them and a win for you. 

• It’s so easy to post on Facebook or a group chat, “Sending prayers for you and your family”, then mentally check that box and move on. I want to encourage you that if you think of them throughout your day, or if you are remembering them in prayer especially many months or years down the road, that you send them a text letting them know. 

They do not know you are thinking of them, and many times grief can feel so lonely. Those messages of remembrance and love can really mean a lot.

Physical Ways You Can Help:

1. Clean their house (Check with them first, there could be something left of their child’s that they do not want cleaned up or the memories wiped away).
2. Do grocery shopping.
3. Set up a meal train.
4. Set up babysitting for therapy, time together as husband and wife, time to go to the cemetery, time to be alone so they can grieve, for whatever they need.
5. Sit with them.
6. Include them in get togethers, even if they don’t come. (Don’t be offended. They might not be ready.)
7. Bring supper over, or meals for the freezer. 
8. Check in often with how they are doing.
9. Help financially with medical, or funeral costs. (Remember this can be very difficult for them to take because their child means more than any amount of money, and this money can feel horrible to get. I still believe it’s a good thing to send with no judgment of what they do with it.)

I would love to offer you my workshop called STOP TALKING, START FEELING in which it gives you tools to understand your emotions and your thoughts, along with guided meditations, and ways to process specifically the emotions of guilt and sadness that come with grief.

If you are interested in joining this workshop it’s only $27, and you can get it by going to www.meganhillukka.com/workshop

If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group:www.meganhillukka.com/community