When overwhelmed with grief it is useful to have some activites that might help with helping distress.
A selection of resources are listed below.
For adults who have been bereaved
Helix Centre: Echoes & Anchors
A self-guided PDF toolkit offers step-by-step practical activities across four themes:
Stories - suggestions for collecting and preserving memories. Activities include sending postcards to friends and family asking them to share a memory (a template is provided), setting up a WhatsApp group for people to contribute stories and photos over time (with a suggested opening message).
Sounds - using music to feel close. Activities include building a playlist of songs they loved, choosing one song to play at a set time each week as a small ritual, and using a provided ChatGPT prompt to find new music in a similar style.
Spaces - revisiting meaningful places. Activities include returning to a single place that mattered to you both, planning a walk through several meaningful locations.
Tastes - using food and smell as memory anchors such as choosing one familiar food or drink as a daily check-in, cooking a meal they loved as a repeatable ritual, and creating a personal recipe book.
Resources for bereaved children and young people
Grief Encounter: An activity workbook for children
An activity workbook for bereaved children, primarily focused on the death of a parent or sibling. It guides children and the adults supporting them through the weeks and months following a death, with exercises designed to help children name difficult emotions.
Activities are aimed at ages 5–13 but can be adapted for younger children, teenagers, and young adults.
The book is available to order for bereaved families and professionals.
Grief Encounter: Memory activities guide for children and families
Grief Encounter's guide to celebrating memories offers practical ideas that adults can use with bereaved children at home.
These include making a memory box filled with objects connected to the person who died; creating a memory jar where family members add written memories on slips of paper to be read at any time; planning a special day to mark their memory by visiting a meaningful place, cooking their favourite food, or listening to their music; and planting bulbs with written memories placed in the soil.
Child Bereavement UK: Activity booklets for children
Child Bereavement UK provides illustrated activity booklets, designed to be dowloaded and worked through by a child and a trusted adult together.
The booklets use gentle drawing and writing prompts to help a child remember and talk about the person they have lost - recalling what they looked like, things they did together, favourite foods, music and places, and the ways the child sees themselves in that person.
Child Bereavement UK bookletsApart of Me: Grief support on-line game for young people
An app for young people aged 11+ who have lost a loved one, or have someone close with a terminal illness.
Using a game format, it guides users through grief with storytelling, calming activities, and real-world prompts. Co-designed with young people by a child psychologist.