Grief is a natural experience, and is considered one of the most stressful life events a person can experience. 1 in 14 children under the age of 18 will experience the death of someone close to them. Every year, approximately 200 000 children are grieving the death of someone in their extended family or community. Grief doesn’t stay at home: it follows children throughout their life, and into the classroom with 1 grieving child in every other classroom in Canada. When grief impacts a community, support for grievers of all ages is important. Children’s grief is often misunderstood due to myths about grief. Our children’s grief and loss toolkit pulls together our original multi-media resources about grief into an easy-to-access format which provide helpful information about the grief experience, stories of childhood experiences of loss, and helpful strategies to move through grief. This toolkit has been curated by mental health professionals for other helpers, for individuals, and their networks as they navigate grief and loss together. They are free to download and use.

You can download the toolkit here.

What is a Toolkit?

Grief Stories strives to create a free, accessible, diverse, inclusive, on-demand resource, reducing barriers to accurate online information about grief, helping grievers and those who support them using innovative technology. Our toolkits curate our multimedia content into an easy-to-navigate format on different topics, all vetted by healthcare professionals with expertise in grief and loss.

Toolkits are a popular knowledge translation strategy for disseminating health and wellness information, to build awareness, inform, and change public and healthcare provider behaviour. By keeping our content and toolkits free to access, we help individuals feel confident in connecting with and supporting grievers in their life, while at the same time providing accurate information about grief to help grievers make sense of their experience, one story at a time so they feel less alone.

As a virtual organization, we envision a world connected and supported in grief through our free multimedia library of content. Grief Stories relies on donations to cover many operational costs, including content creation. Each donation we receive allows us to share even more stories, helping grief make sense. If you, or someone in your life has found one of the toolkits helpful, please consider making a suggested donation of $10.00.

For less than the price of a premium streaming service, you can help us share our stories even further with those who need them most – helping grief make sense, one story at a time.