Be gentle with this one. Do one step, put it down, come back tomorrow. You don’t have to finish it today and you don’t have to do it in order.
01
what your brain is saying
What are you telling yourself about why it ended?
Which parts of that are fact, and which are story?
a fact is something a camera could have recorded.
02
what you actually miss
Grief attaches itself to several different things at once, and they feel like one enormous thing. Separating them makes each one smaller.
- the person themselves
- the routine
- being someone’s person
- the future I’d already pictured
- not being alone
- who I got to be around them
Which of those is loudest today?
03
the edit
Early grief rewrites history. It keeps every good day and quietly deletes the rest. This step is not about making them a villain — it’s about getting the record straight.
What was genuinely hard about it?
What did you put up with that you shouldn’t have had to?
What will you want next time?
04
if the loop is running
If your head keeps running the same three sentences, that’s a spiral, and there’s a longer workbook for it — the spiral. For now, just write the loudest sentence and one truer one.
05
this week only
What do you need this week?
sleep, food, a walk, fewer notifications.
Who can you text? Name two people.
What’s yours again now that wasn’t?
- eat something today
- go outside once
- sleep at a normal time
- put the phone down at night
- tell one person how you actually are
Please read: this is a self-help worksheet, not therapy and not
medical care. It won't fix everything and it isn't meant to. If you're struggling
with your mental health, please talk to a doctor or a therapist — and keep doing
that alongside anything you do with me. If you are thinking about hurting yourself, please don't use a worksheet — contact a crisis line right now. In the US you can call or text 988. Elsewhere, your local emergency number.