The Glimmer Library
A Glimmer of Hope when you don’t know where to start
Welcome to the Glimmer Library, a carefully curated collection of gentle, practical guides created to support the adults around children and young people experiencing grief, loss, or the possibility of loss.
When something hard happens, it’s common to feel unsure where to turn or what to say. The Glimmer Library exists to meet you right there, offering clarity, reassurance, and real-world guidance, without overwhelm.
All Glimmer Guides are developed and overseen by Fresh Minds Education. They are substantial, expert led, and rigorous, grounded in lived experience, evidence-informed practice, and specialist expertise in bereavement and loss. They are written in plain English, designed for real life, and intended to sit alongside, not replace, professional and statutory support.
Where appropriate, guides are available in versions for different ages, recognising that children and young people understand and experience grief in different ways as they grow.
Below, you’ll find four parts of the Glimmer Library. Each section supports a different set of experiences, helping you find what feels most relevant right now.
View our Glimmer Libraries
Bereavement & Grief Library
This section focuses on grief after a death. Here you’ll find guidance for when someone has died, is dying, or when families and communities are navigating life after a loss. It includes support for parents, carers, and professionals helping children and young people through bereavement, whether the death was expected, sudden, traumatic, or complex. The Bereavement & Grief Library explores themes such as:
- Death and dying
- Life after a death
- Sudden, traumatic, or unexpected loss
- Suicide and complex grief
- Supporting families, peers, schools, and communities after a death
These guides help adults understand what grief can look like at different ages, offer practical ways to talk and respond, and reassure you that there is no single ‘right’ way to grieve.
Find here
loss & Grief Library
Not all grief begins with a death.
The Loss & Grief Library supports families and professionals navigating experiences of ongoing, anticipatory, and non-finite grief, the kind of grief that comes with uncertainty, change, and loss over time.
This includes situations such as:
- Serious illness or diagnosis
- Living with uncertainty and waiting
- Disability and life-changing conditions
- Changes in family life or relationships
- Grief connected to identity, recognition, or belonging
These guides help adults make sense of feelings that can be confusing or hard to name and offer reassurance that grief can exist even when there has not been a clear ending. They also support adults to stay present and responsive to children while living with their own uncertainty.
Pet Bereavement Library
For many children, young people and adults, the death of a pet is a deeply felt and meaningful loss.
The Pet Bereavement Library recognises the importance of these bonds and offers guidance to help adults support children and young people when a pet or service animal dies.
This section includes age-appropriate guidance for both children and young people.
These guides help adults explain death in gentle, honest ways, validate the depth of a child’s feelings, and support healthy expressions of grief, without minimising or dismissing the loss.
Living well through grief library
Caring for children and young people through grief often means carrying a great deal yourself.
This part of the Glimmer Library focuses on you, recognising that how you are supported matters, and that looking after yourself is not an extra, but part of the work of caring.
Living Well Through Grief offers guidance to help parents, carers, and professionals:
- Notice the impact grief and stress may be having on them
- Find steadiness while supporting others
- Understand emotional, physical, and nervous system responses
- Take small, realistic steps toward care and restoration
These guides sit alongside the rest of the Glimmer Library, gently reminding you that supporting children and young people does not mean doing it alone or at the expense of your own wellbeing.
