Skip over main navigation
  • Log in
  • Basket: (0 items)
  • Pages
  • Alex’s Story
Child Bereavement UK
Call our Helpline 0800 02 888 40 Donate
Menu
  • Support & guidance
    • Find support
      • How we can support you
      • Helpline
      • Other support organisations near you
      • Bereavement support resources in other languages
      • ‎Participate in research
      • What are bereavement and grief?
      • For adults bereaved as children
    • Support for young people
      • Supporting bereaved children
      • Support for bereaved young people
      • Telling a child that someone has died
      • When someone is not expected to live
      • Sudden death - including accidents, suicide and homicide
      • When your partner dies - supporting your children
    • Death of a baby or child
      • When your baby dies
      • Grieving for a child of any age
      • Sudden death; including accidents, suicide and homicide
      • Supporting grieving adults
      • When a child is not expected to live
    • Films, books and resources
      • Short guidance films
      • Short animated films
      • Films about families' experiences
      • Young people's films
      • Books and resources
      • Information and guidance by topic
  • Resources for professionals
    • Resources and guidance
      • Films, books and resources
      • Schools / further education
      • Health and social care
      • Employers
    • Working with bereaved families
      • Supporting bereaved families
      • Supporting yourself and your colleagues
      • Supporting families pre-bereavement
      • Consultancy and supervision
  • Training
    • What we offer
      • Child Bereavement UK training
      • Bespoke training / workplace training
      • Consultancy and supervision
    • Bookings
      • Book training
      • Frequently asked questions
    • Testimonies
      • Professional case studies
  • Get involved
    • Ways to give
      • Make a donation
      • Leave a gift in your Will
      • Make a donation in memory
      • Payroll giving
    • Fundraise for us
      • Take on a challenge
      • Fundraising campaigns and activities
      • Organise your own fundraiser
      • Hear from our fundraisers
    • Other ways to support our work
      • Volunteer with us
      • Attend an event
      • Become a corporate partner
      • Volunteer at a festival
  • About us
    • About our work
      • About Child Bereavement UK
      • Our impact
      • Our people and patrons
      • UK death and bereavement statistics
    • News and stories
      • Case studies
      • Blogs
      • Press releases
      • Newsletters
    • Films
      • Short guidance films
      • Short animated films
      • Bereaved families' experiences
      • Young people's films
    • Get in touch / work with us
      • Contact us
      • Vacancies
      • Volunteer with us
  • Shop
  • Admin
    • Log in
    • Pages
    • Alex’s Story
  • Basket: (0 items)
  1. FAQs

For 18-25-year-olds

These books and resources may be helpful for young people aged 18-25 who have been bereaved. 

For further help in finding resources, email [email protected] or call our Helpline on 0800 02 888 40.

Please note: Inclusion on this list does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement by Child Bereavement UK, as we are aware that whether a book is helpful or not is subjective and as such is a decision that can only be made by the individual reader.

About death and grief

Expand

A Special Scar: The experiences of people bereaved by suicide

Alison Wertheimer

Written and researched by a bereaved sibling, this book covers the losses of siblings, parents, children and friends.

Buy from Amazon

Coping with grief when someone you love dies suddenly

This free booklet aims to help you understand emotions and feelings commonly suffered after a sudden death. It provides straightforward advice on how to cope and who can help you to recover.

Available to download from Sudden

From a Clear Blue Sky

Timothy Knatchbull

A powerful survivor’s account of the IRA bomb that killed the author’s 14-year-old twin brother, his grandparents and a family friend, published on the 30th anniversary of the atrocity.

Buy from Amazon

GriefWorks app

Julia Samuel 

Drawing on Child Bereavement UK’s Founder Patron Julia Samuel’s 30 years of experience as a leading grief therapist, the GriefWorks app was designed to effectively address the full range of emotions surrounding grief. The app pairs Julia’s advice with actionable practices and exercises, gently nudging you to record and examine your own thoughts and feelings. The app also offers more than 30 interactive tools including breathing visualisation exercises, guided meditations, daily gratitude check-ins, prompted evening reflections, and more.

Available on Apple Store and Google Play Store.£49.99 for 3 months. Get a 10% discount when using this link.

Help is at hand: A resource for people bereaved by suicide

Department of Health 

This free guide is for people who are affected by suicide or other sudden, traumatic death. It aims firstly to help people who are unexpectedly bereaved in this way. It also provides information for healthcare and other professionals who come into contact with bereaved people, to assist them in providing help and to suggest how they themselves may find support if they need it.

Download from the Department of Health

How to Get to Grips with Grief: 40 Ways to Manage the Unmanageable

James Withey

This book is for anyone who has lost someone. It may have been recently, or it may have been years ago, but still it stings like it was yesterday.In his twenty years supporting people with their own grief, as a counsellor and social care worker, he has helped others work through their despair and reconcile the injustice of grief. 
 
With his trademark humour and warmth, he provides forty ways to help you live with and manage your grief no matter what stage you're at. It provides comfort for when it all gets too much, ideas for when you feel at a loss for what to do and more than a laugh or two to balance out the sadness. 

Purchase from Amazon

It's Okay that you're Not Okay

Megan Devine

When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. "Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form," says Megan Devine. "It is a natural and sane response to loss." So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible? In It's OK That You're Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy.

Buy from Amazon

Michael Rosen's Sad Book

Michael Rosen

A very personal story that speaks to adults as well as children. The author describes feeling sad after the death of his son and what he does to try to cope with it.

Buy from Amazon

We Get It

Heather L. Servaty-Seib and David C. Fajgenbaum

A unique collection of 33 narrative by bereaved students and young adults in America, this book aims to help young adults who are grieving and provide guidance for those who seek to support them. It has been described as like having a group in a book.

Buy on Amazon

You Are Not Alone

Cariad Lloyd

In You Are Not Alone, Cariad shares all that she has learned from presenting her podcast, Griefcast. She reflects on her own grief, the grief of others, and the psychology and science behind how our society deals with death and loss. Funeral thoughts, therapy, coping with anniversaries, bad friends, good friends, birthdays, weddings, missing them, not missing them - this is grief in all its sad, surprising, awkward, tender and sometimes funny forms. 

You Are Not Alone is a road map for all of us: for anybody who has ever felt lost in grief, who would like to help someone they know through theirs, or who just wants to understand life a little better. 

Buy on Amazon

'You'll Get Over It': The Rage of Bereavement

Virginia Ironside

The death of a loved one is the most traumatic experience any of us face. No two people cope with it the same way: some cry while others remain dry-eyed; some discover growth through pain, others find arid wastes; some feel angry, others feel numb. Virginia Ironside deals with this complicated and sensitive issue with great frankness and insight, drawing on other's people's accounts as well as her own experiences.

Buy from Amazon

Published: 1st March, 2023

Updated: 7th March, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

When someone is not expected to live (pre bereavement)

Expand

With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well

Kathryn Mannix

Told through a series of beautifully crafted stories taken from nearly four decades of clinical practice, her book answers the most intimate questions about the process of dying with touching honesty and humanity. She makes a compelling case for the therapeutic power of approaching death not with trepidation but with openness, clarity and understanding.

Buy on Amazon

Published: 30th November, 2022

Updated: 7th March, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

When a parent has died

Expand

A Half Baked Idea

Olivia Potts

At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake, badly. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband. Afterwards, grief pushed Olivia into the kitchen. She came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Her cakes sank and her custard curdled. But she found comfort in jams and solace in pies, and what began as a distraction from grief became a way of building a life outside grief, a way of surviving, and making sense of her life without her mum. 

Buy from Amazon

Big Boys (Television Series)

Written by comedian Jack Rooke and loosely based on his own experiences, Big Boys tells the story of two mismatched boys who strike up an unlikely friendship when they're thrown together at university, following the death of one of their fathers.

Watch on Channel 4

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

From the indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, powerful, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Buy from Amazon

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers

Max Porter

He comes with a crackling of feathers and a smell of decay. He comes like the worst thing you could ever imagine, like something you should never have to imagine, he comes when you need him. He is a reminder, a companion, a harbinger, a scruffy homeless layabout, a friend. He is Crow.  

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family becoming the mouthpiece for their sorrow, an echo of what cannot be said. Slowly, as the months pass, they become familiar with Crow and his odd companionship and almost imperceptibly, they begin to heal. 

Buy from Amazon

Rory’s Story

Anna Jacobs

Rory is an adolescent boy who is struggling with the loss of his mother. Confused and bullied at school, he attempts to run away and finally returns to face his feelings. This therapeutic story is a gritty, readable story that teenagers will relate to; it explores the teenage experience of loss and bereavement; it can be used to support young people who have experienced loss; it can help teenagers understand the needs of their peers when loss occurs; it has notes for discussion on the themes of each chapter.

This story can be used in conjunction with the practical workbook 'Supporting Teenagers through Grief & Loss'. This useful tool which will help teachers, therapists and carers to support and understand the needs of adolescents facing loss.

Buy from Amazon

Published: 16th November, 2022

Updated: 22nd February, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

When a sibling has died

Expand

A Manual for Heartache

Cathy Rentzenbrink

When Cathy was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart after an accident. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world again. She explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and how we can emerge from suffering forever changed, but filled with hope. It is a moving, warm and uplifting book that offers solidarity and comfort to anyone going through a painful time, whatever it might be. It's a book that will help to soothe an aching heart and assure its readers that they're not alone.

Buy from Amazon

Sisters and Brothers: Stories about the death of a sibling

Julie Bentley and Simon Anthony Blake

Sometimes those who have lost a sibling can feel like forgotten mourners. This book is a collection of short contributions discussing sibling loss. It tells the very individual story of 12 people’s individual experience of bereavement when facing the death of an adult sibling.

Buy from Amazon

The Last Act of Love: The Story of My Brother and His Sister

Cathy Rentzenbrink

The Last Act of Love is a book about Cathy Rentzenbrink’s own relationship with her brother, Matty. In 1990, when Matty was just weeks away from getting his GCSE results, he was in a hit and run accident and left in a permanent vegetative state. This book is the love that came before this event and what happens in the aftermath of tragedy.

Buy from Amazon

Published: 7th October, 2022

Updated: 13th March, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

When a friend has died

Expand

Boy Friends

Michael Pedersen

In 2018, poet and author Michael Pedersen lost a cherished friend to suicide, Scott Hutchison (from the band, Frightened Rabbit), soon after their collective voyage into the landscape of the Scottish Highlands. Just weeks later, Michael began to write to him. As he confronts the bewildering process of grief, what starts as a love letter to one magical, coruscating human soon becomes a paean to all the gorgeous male friendships that have transformed his life.

Buy on Amazon

Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death

Katy Wix

Delicacy is the memoir of comedian, actor and writer Katy Wix, focusing on twenty-one snapshots of a life - some staccato, raw and shocking, some expansive, meditative, and profound, underpinned with moments of startling humour that shatter the darkness - all beginning with a single memory. A memory of cake. It discusses the death of her friend and the grief she felt around that, as well as the bereavement of her parents.

Buy from Amazon

Published: 7th September, 2022

Updated: 7th March, 2023

Author:

Share this page
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
Back to top

Showing 10 of 5

Latest

  • Vitality 10,000

    Vitality 10,000

    London

  • Child Bereavement UK wins silver award in Charity Film Awards

    Child Bereavement UK has won a silver award at the Charity Film Awards 2023 for its short animated film Puddle Jumping.

  • President of National Association of Funeral Directors becomes advisor to Child Bereavement UK

    John Adams, President of the National Association of Funeral Directors (NAFD), has become Funeral Industry Advisor to Child Bereavement UK.

  • Women’s wellness event

    Women’s wellness event

    Soho House, London

Most read

  • Telling a child that someone has died

    It is important to tell a child of any age when someone important in their lives has died, and ideally this is done by someone who is closest to them.

  • Supporting bereaved children and young people

    Children and young people grieve just as much as adults but they show it in different ways. Find out how you can help them and more about child grieving.

  • Grieving for a child of any age

    The agony of losing a child of any age is unparalleled. There is no age or point in time that makes it any easier. No parent expects to face the death of their child and no grandparent expects to lose their grandchild.

  • When a grandparent dies - the impact on children and young people

    When a grandparent dies - the impact on children and young people

    The death of a grandparent is often a child or young person’s first encounter with the death of someone important. Parents have a great deal to manage when their own parent or carer dies. There is the grief associated with their own loss, but also the reactions and responses of their children to the death of a grandparent.

  • Children's understanding of death at different ages

    Babies and young children have no understanding of the concept of death yet, long before they are able to talk, babies are likely to react to upset and changes in their environment brought about by the absence of a significant person.

  • Child Bereavement UK training

    Child Bereavement UK designs and delivers training for professionals in health and social care, education, the emergency services and the voluntary and corporate sectors, equipping them to provide the best possible care to bereaved families.

  • Contact us

    Contact us

    Contact one of the Child Bereavement UK centres or get in touch with one of our departments.

  • When your baby dies

    When your baby dies

    When a baby lives only a short time or dies before birth due to miscarriage, stillbirth or a painful decision to end the pregnancy, people may assume that the loss is not important. This is simply not the case.

  • UK death & bereavement statistics

    UK death & bereavement statistics

    A parent of children under 18 dies every 22 minutes in the UK; around 23,600 a year. This equates to around 111 children being bereaved of a parent every day.

  • Sudden death - including accidents, suicide and homicide

    Sudden death - including accidents, suicide and homicide

    Bereavement can be devastating in any situation, but a sudden death brings additional layers of shock, horror or disbelief. We can help, find out more here.

Tag cloud

Child Bereavement UK Death of a baby Death of a parent Explaining death to children films Glasgow Information Sheet 2020 Nursery teacher parenting a bereaved child returning to school short film short guidance films Stillbirth Watford Young People's Advisory Group YPAG
Short guidance films

Short guidance films

Our short films are delivered by support practitioners and cover a range of topics on grief and bereavement, providing guidance on what can help. Read more

Published: 25th March, 2019

Updated: 1st December, 2021

Author: Robin Ngai

Books and resources

Books and resources

A list of books and resources relating to grief and bereavement and what may help. Read more

Published: 21st October, 2021

Updated: 30th November, 2021

Author: Harriet Hieatt-Smith

Others' experiences

Others' experiences

Some bereaved families find it helpful to read about other peoples’ experiences and how the support they have received has helped them. Read more

Published: 30th November, 2021

Updated: 1st December, 2021

Author: Emma Van Allan

Connect with us

Sign up to our newsletter and connect with us on social media to keep up to date with our latest news, activities and services. We'll never sell or swap your details with anybody else. You are free to change your mind at anytime.

Sign up to our newsletter
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Contact us
  • Work with us
  • Sitemap
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility

Registered in England and Wales: 1040419 and Scotland: SCO42910

Copyright 2023 Child Bereavement UK

Manage Cookie Preferences