GriefWork for Teens: Healing from Loss

Activities to help teenagers heal after experiencing a loss

Loss is a part of everyone’s life at some point. Each person reacts to a loss in a personal way. As well as the emotional response, loss also has physical, intellectual, behavioural, social and philosophical dimensions. Response to loss is varied and is influenced by beliefs and practices.

GriefWork for Teens is for facilitators helping grieving teenagers heal from their losses. The authors refer to the psychological process of coping with a significant loss as grief work. The range of behaviours, emotions and attitudes is huge. Throughout the book they use the terms normalise and New Normal to convey that everyone’s grief has a unique expression and is that particular person’s ‘normal.’

GriefWork for Teens contains fully reproducible activity and educational hand-outs and journaling pages which can be used in individual counselling sessions, educational settings and support groups. Each interactive activity has comments and suggestions on the back explaining the purpose of the activity and at least one way to use it. Read them prior to using the hand-out to get the most out of each one and to give you a ‘starter-idea.’ Although the hand-outs are written for use in groups, they may be adapted to use with individuals or as homework assignments.

Teenagers’ losses, no matter what, are important and often devastating to them. They represent the disappearance of something or someone cherished. The hand-outs in GriefWork for Teens will engage those who grieve any type of loss (not just death) and encourage them to identify, internalise and/or verbalise personal feelings while working through the grieving process

Five chapters guide clients through the grieving process:

• Getting in Touch
• Telling Your Story
• Self-Care
• Relationships
• A New Normal.

Age: 11-19

128 pages