Grief Glimmer Guides
A Glimmer of Hope when you don’t know where to start
When a child or young person is affected by grief, illness, loss, or the possibility of loss, many adults find themselves searching urgently for answers.
You may be asking:
What should I say?
How do I support them without making things worse?
What is normal?
Why does everything I find feel overwhelming or contradictory?
If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Take a breath.
Each Guide is thoughtfully structured to support understanding, reflection, and action. Guides typically:
- Explain the grief experience being lived, including non-finite and anticipatory grief
- Help adults recognise how grief may show up in children and young people at different ages
- Offer practical conversation starters and guidance for day-to-day support
- Share gentle strategies that strengthen safety, connection, and emotional expression
- Curate trusted additional resources and signposting where deeper support may be helpful
- Gently remind adults to care for themselves, recognising that how you are with a child is often the intervention
These Guides are not about having the perfect words. They are about helping you feel steadier, more informed, and less alone.
They are designed for moments when adults need clear, compassionate guidance without being overwhelmed. Each Guide brings together what is known, what is helpful, and what truly matters in real life, offering reassurance, understanding, and practical support at the point it is most needed.
Glimmer Grief Guides are gentle and accessible yet underpinned by strong professional foundations. They are intentionally written in plain English, recognising that clarity is essential when families and professionals navigate emotionally charged, time-pressured situations.
- Parents and carers supporting a child or young person
- Professionals who are a key carer in a child or young person’s life, including teachers, youth workers, practitioners, and volunteers
- Adults supporting families alongside statutory services, not instead of them
Each Guide is available in a child or young person version, where appropriate, to reflect age and developmental differences.
- Non-finite grief
- Anticipatory grief
- Ongoing and cumulative loss
- Grief without a clear defining moment
- Complex and layered grief experiences
This approach ensures the Guides remain relevant, inclusive, and grounded in real lives, rather than narrow definitions of bereavement.
Some Guides may act as crisis-informed resources, depending on the experience they address. All Guides are trauma-informed, compassionate, and carefully bound, supporting safe and responsible use.
Some Guides may act as crisis-informed resources, depending on the experience they address. All Guides are trauma-informed, compassionate, and carefully bound, supporting safe and responsible use.
A glimmer is not the absence of pain.
It is a moment of light, steadiness, connection,
or understanding that can exist alongside grief.
Sometimes, that glimmer is simply realising:
What I’m seeing makes sense
I’m allowed to talk about this
I don’t have to do this alone
View our Glimmer Guide Libraries
Find support for what’s happening right now.
The Glimmer Grief Guides Library is organised by grief experience, helping you quickly locate the most relevant support.
Find our complete library here
Experiences include:
- Illness and serious diagnosis
- Death and dying
- Sudden or traumatic loss
- Suicide and complex grief
- When a pet dies
- Grief in everyday life
- Around funerals and remembrance
Within each experience, Guides are available for children and young people at different developmental stages. Experiences are colour-coded, with patterned design used to distinguish age-appropriate versions, supporting intuitive and accessible navigation.
Guides are available as downloadable resources, with selected print versions.
Find out more here
BEREAVEMENT & GRIEF
support for Grief after a death
LOSS & GRIEF
support for the kind of grief that comes with uncertainty, change, and loss over time
PET BEREAVEMENT
support for Grief after the death of a pet
LIVING WELL THROUGH GREIF
Support for yourself
For many families, a Glimmer Grief Guide is enough.
If more support is needed, Fresh Minds Education also provides:
- Tier 2 support groups and community programmes
- Tier 2 Glimmer Boxes and creative grief resources
- Tier 3 services including Let’s GROW Together, counselling, and coaching
Each step is there if and when it is needed.
Fresh Minds Education is a charity. We cannot do this alone.
You can help by:
- Volunteering to support the creation of future Glimmer Grief Guides
- Recommending high-quality resources you have found helpful
- Proposing a Guide Title that you notice we haven’t got
- Donating to help keep the Guides free and accessible to families and communities
Every contribution helps create more moments of understanding, connection, and hope.
