In times of loss and grief, we turn to others for support—to family, friends, church, and community. Increasingly, that community is growing online,

as people in loss turn to websites for help and to share their expressions of grief. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are being used as memorials as people create groups to remember a loved one who has died. Numerous sites have been created to help people process their grief and work toward healing. Whether death or loss has affected you or someone you love hopefully the resources below will be a comfort or resource for you.

www.griefshare.org

Griefshare, a nondenominational Christian organization, has a network of weekly support groups for people grieving the death of a loved one. The groups, which can be found in the U.S., Canada, and ten other countries, work through a thirteen-week cycle of discussions and video presentations. The site features a support group finder, a daily email of resources and encouragement called “A Season of Grief,” and a help for the journey section that includes a six-week Bible study on the grieving process.

After Robert and Jeanne lost their daughter Morgan to suicide in 1996, they wanted to create a memorial to her life and to provide resources in her memory to people dealing with grief and other life-altering circumstances. So they founded Helpguide.com, a nonprofit, web-based resource, so that “people in stressful situations can find the information they need and feel less alone.” The site explores the complexity of grief—showing how people who respond to loss are affected by how the person died; their relationship with the deceased, and their personality, coping style, life experiences, and support network. This website also has information specific to grieving a suicide and the difference between grief and depression, two things that are often confused. Other topics covered are: how trauma affects the grieving process; coping with grief and loss; defining grief and identifying the stages of grief.

www.caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=404

This website is run by the National Center on Caregiving. According to the center, more than fifty million “informal and family caregivers” provide unpaid care to another adult who is ill or disabled. The grief and loss section covers grief from the perspective of a caregiver. Topics covered include anticipatory grief, sudden loss, the symptoms and stages of grief, and ethical issues involved in caring for someone who is dying.

www.hospicefoundation.org/ griefandloss

The Hospice Foundation of America helps “those who cope personally or professionally with terminal illness, death, and the process of grief and bereavement.” The organization’s website offers a variety of information on grief, end of life issues, care giving, and more. This site also features a “locate a hospice” search engine and an “ask an expert” area dealing with hospice and bereavement. Among the site’s helpful articles are: “An Introduction to Grieving,” “Shattering Eight Myths about Grief,” “A Year Is a Relative Thing,” “Facing Sudden Loss, Guilt, and Regret in Prolonged Illness,” “Helping a Child Deal with Death,” “Eight Myths about Children and Loss,” and “Reflections on Spiritual Problems in Sudden Loss.”

www.griefworksbc.com/about.asp www.youthspecialties.com/articles/

topics/counseling/grief.php

These are two excellent resources on grief and children. Griefworks, a Canadian website, explains that grief can be especially difficult for teens, who are already going through a challenging time of life: “Coping with a death and experiencing grief during this stage of development can cause further challenges in struggling with these questions because they are torn between wanting to be independent and needing support from their parents and family. Consequently, teens’ feelings about death and loss may be conflicting and very intense.” Some of the site’s resources include articles on dealing with the death of a brother or sister and on helping friends through the grieving process. An article that specifically addresses teen grief is worth a read. The website for Youth Specialties has resources to help parents and youth leaders respond to grieving teens.

www.helium.com

Helium.com is a social network site for writers, with peer-recommended articles on a variety of topics. Simply type in “grief ” to find links to 3,000 posts on grief and loss, all rated and ranked by the site’s users.

www.pbskids.org/itsmylife/emotions/ death

Created by PBSKids, this website features stories and letters from kids as well as articles on grief written for children. One of the great features of this site is a video of two kids talking about dealing with death. There’s also an interactive section, where kids can discuss to questions like: Have you ever experienced the death of someone you loved? What do you remember most? If you are a parent or teacher you can find information here for helping kids, too.

www.aboutourkids.org/

Here is another well-designed website that addresses children’s experience of grief, this time from a psychological perspective. To find the appropriate articles, search “grief ” from the homepage. The site offers detailed information on how children deal with grief, broken down by age groups. This site may be particularly useful if you are actually doing some pastoral counseling with a child who has had a death in her or his family.

www.grief-tourism.com

Grief tourism might sound like a weird or distasteful concept, but it refers to people who take pilgrimages to the sites or memorials of great tragedies, such as a Civil War battlefield, Ground Zero in New York, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., or the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. This website helps people take trips both to educate themselves and help their process of grief. o

heidi Griepp is manager of covenant internet Services and an avid Web wanderer.

january 2008 | 27