Carrying a lossStep 1 of 9

Before you read on

Read this first. Some losses need a person and not a course. If you are thinking about ending your life, or about joining the person who died, tell somebody today and treat it as urgent. If the death was violent, sudden, by your own witnessing, or by suicide, or if images of it arrive without warning and will not stop, that goes to a clinician now rather than to a lesson, because this course does not do that work and will not attempt it. The same applies if you are not eating or sleeping, if you cannot keep yourself safe, or if you are drinking or using something to get through the day. This course is written for adults. A bereaved child needs different help, from someone who works with children.

Lesson 2 of 6

Fine on Tuesday, flattened on Wednesday

Almost everybody grieving says a version of this. That it comes and goes without warning. That they can be steady for four days and then be taken apart by a smell in a corridor.

People find this more frightening than the sadness, because it feels like there is no ground. If you were sad all the time you could at least call it a state. This is not a state. It arrives.

There is a shape underneath it, and it is not a staircase. It is a crossing back and forth.