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Seventeen things to say instead of “I’m sorry for your loss”
Real sentences you can send today. What to say to a parent whose child died, what to avoid, and why the wrong words land the way they do.
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Gold September, when your child didn’t make it
Childhood Cancer Awareness Month is built on survivors. For the families whose child died, it can be the loneliest month of the year. You’re allowed to scroll past all of it.
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Why the ribbon is gold
Parents chose it. Not a committee, not a brand agency — a group of mothers and fathers in 1997 who wanted a color that meant something. Here’s what it means.
Living Undefeated
Honest writing about childhood cancer, grief, and finding a way to be useful again. From a family who has been there.
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How to support a family whose child has cancer
What a family living at the hospital actually needs, from people who spent four years there. Practical, not food.
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Helping a grieving child at school
For the teacher, the coach, the counselor. What a grieving child needs in a classroom, and what grief is often mistaken for.
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The casserole-to-actual-help ratio
Wildly off in this country. What actually helps a grieving family — and why the best thing anybody did turned out not to be a thing at all.
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The first Halloween
The costume in the closet. The porch light. The neighbor's question. What to do with the first Halloween after your child died — including nothing at all.
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The friend who disappeared
Why friends go quiet after a child dies — it is almost never what you think — and the words to use if you are the one who disappeared eight months ago.
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Grief Is Not a Mental Illness
Grief is not a disorder. What normal grief looks like, what prolonged grief disorder actually means, and the signs clinicians say are worth taking to someone.
More DetailsBefore you give to anyone
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We wrote down the checklist we use. Before we send a dollar anywhere, we run the organization through CharityWatch, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Candid. It is one page, and it works on any charity — including this one.
Read the checklist — freeOn the site, right now. Nothing to fill in and no email needed.
Start here — free, no sign-up
Guide one · 7 pages
A Reason to Get Up
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, and what that book can and cannot do for you after somebody dies. Who Frankl actually was, what he actually argued, and the famous quote that is not his.
Download the guide — freePDF, 7 pages. Nothing to fill in, no email, no ask attached to it.
Three more, if you want them
These are the books we read and the things we did after we lost Austin. Not advice and not therapy — an honest account of what helped us, and what the research actually says about each of it. Every statistic in them carries a source and a year.
Guide two · 9 pages
The Circling
The Power of Now, and what is actually happening when you cannot stop going over it. Includes the part no grief guide prints: meditation is not risk-free, and who should be careful.
Guide three · 11 pages
Give It Away
Why doing something for somebody else, expecting nothing back, appears to do something for you. With a verified list of places that will take you this week, and the ones that will ask you to wait a year.
Guide four · 16 pages
The First Year
The practical one. What actually has to be done, what the months afterward really look like, and fifty things that might help — each one labeled for whether there is evidence behind it.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the US. You do not have to be in immediate danger to use it.
Crisis Text Line. Text HOME to 741741.
Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.
If there is an immediate danger to life, call 911.
