The library
Everything here is written by Rachel, from five years of living with loss and 67,000 people telling her what it's really like. No stages, no fixes. Find the piece that sounds like your week.
Grief in daily life
Grief doesn't live in the big moments. It lives in grocery aisles, streaming queues, group chats and the specific brand of tea. Writing about grief where it actually finds you.
- The "continue watching" queue: grief in your streaming apps
- The family group chat after someone dies
- The tea, the takeaway, the specific brand: food grief
- Grief envy: watching friends complain about their alive parents
- What are grief triggers? Why random objects undo you
- Why the grocery store makes you cry after a loss
Questions you're afraid to ask
Is it normal to laugh again? Why do I feel nothing? Am I grieving wrong? Honest answers to the grief questions people are afraid to say out loud, from a community of 67,000 grievers.
What to say (and what not to)
What to say when someone dies, what to write in a sympathy card, how to support a grieving friend past the first month. From people who have been on the receiving end of every platitude.
The first year, and after
The first weeks, the year of firsts, the second year nobody warns you about. What living with loss actually looks like when the five stages turn out not to be rules.
Losing a parent young
Losing a parent in your 20s or 30s means grieving decades early, surrounded by friends who still have theirs. On milestones without them, needing their advice, and the time you thought you had.
The responsible one
Eldest daughter grief: planning the funeral, running the probate, parenting your siblings, protecting your surviving parent, and somehow also grieving. For the ones who hold it together.
- Eldest daughter grief: when you're the one holding it together
- When your family grieves differently than you do
- Helping a teenage sibling through grief
- The family reshuffles: new roles after a death
- Planning a funeral while your heart is broken
- Probate, paperwork and grief: the admin nobody warns you about
Grieving across distance
When the loss is in another country: grieving as an expat, funerals over video call, the visits that never happened, and what "home" means after a death eight time zones away.
Anniversaries, birthdays, holidays
The first Christmas, the death anniversary, their birthday, Mother's Day and Father's Day. How grievers actually get through the calendar's hardest dates, from a community that lives them every year.
Grief at work
Grief brain is real. Going back to work after a death, bereavement leave that ends too soon, crying at work, and what managers get wrong. Grief in the place that expects you to function.
Grief and travel
Travel after loss: the first holiday without them, returning to places you went together, travel guilt, solo trips while grieving, and why being somewhere new can hold what home can't.