Grief Navigator

The handbook,
section by section.

This page is a summary. The full text is the handbook itself — what follows is what each part covers, so you can tell whether it is worth your time before you spend any of it.

Both emotion wheels are free and on this site, and the support numbers are at the bottom of this page.

Before anything else

A note before you begin.

This is not a substitute for professional support. If you are struggling, a counsellor, psychologist, grief therapist or trusted mental health professional will always be the stronger option. This works best alongside that kind of support, not instead of it.

If you need to talk to someone right now, the numbers are at the bottom of this page, and if you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 000.

Free, on this site

The emotion wheels.

Two interactive wheels for naming what you are feeling, especially when English does not have the right word. Entries are kept on your own device and nowhere else, and both print.

Wheel of Emotion

Eight core emotions with nuance shades, named blends, and a borrowed-vocabulary outer ring. The place to start if you are coming to this fresh.

Open the wheel

Wheel of Emotion — Extended

The advanced version: expanded nuance shades, a full outer ring of borrowed vocabulary from several languages, and a wider blend dictionary.

Open the extended wheel

Contents

What each part covers.

01
A Note Before You Begin
What this is not: a replacement for a counsellor, a psychologist or a grief therapist. It works best beside that kind of help, and it says so before anything else.
02
Introduction
Why grief is harder to talk about than almost anything else we all go through, and what this handbook is trying to do about that.
03
Before Anything Else
It does not get easier. It changes shape, and you get stronger around it. The opening refuses the promise everybody else makes.
04
What We Mean by Loss
Death is loss. Loss is not only death — a relationship, a country, a body that worked differently, a future you had already furnished.
05
Anticipatory Grief
Grief that arrives before the loss does: a diagnosis, a parent disappearing into dementia, a city you know you are leaving. Real grief, and rarely given permission.
06
On Feeling It Out Loud
You are allowed to cry, yell, or lie on the floor. With an exercise for doing it deliberately and safely rather than waiting to be ambushed.
Exercise: Letting It Out, Safely
07
Grief in the Body
The exhaustion, the weight on the chest, the grief brain that loses words and car keys. The part nobody warns you about because it sounds like something else.
08
Grief and Physical Health — Practical Notes
What to actually do about sleep, eating, alcohol, movement and seeing your GP — not to fix the grief, but to keep the body you will need afterwards.
09
The Stages That Aren’t
The five stages were never a sequence and were never about the bereaved. Reframed one by one, with an exercise for the what-if spiral.
Exercise: The What-If Spiral
10
Anger at the Divine
The anger people are most ashamed of, named plainly. Skip it if it is not yours; it is here because for some people it is the whole thing.
11
Grief Triggers and the Long Tail
Being ambushed in a supermarket two years on. Anniversaries, secondary losses, and why the long tail is not a relapse.
12
More Than One at Once
Relief sitting beside devastation, love disguised as bargaining. Two exercises for naming what is actually there when it is several things.
Exercise: Naming What It Stirs · Exercise: Name What You’re Carrying
13
Words We Borrowed Because We Had To
The feeling has a name, just not in English. Saudade and its relatives, and why borrowing is not cheating.
14
For Neurodivergent Minds
Everything here applies to you; some of it applies harder. Time blindness, rejection sensitivity, executive collapse, and why "just calm down" advice so often misses.
15
On Distraction (It’s Not Cheating)
Sitting with a feeling is demanding, so what comes after matters. Distraction afterwards is not avoidance — with an exercise for doing it on purpose.
Exercise: Distraction Adjacent
16
Exercise: Permission Slip
Nobody is going to hand you permission, so you write it yourself. After a practice developed by Brené Brown.
17
Exercise: Letters
The unsent letter. It does not need a recipient to do its work.
18
Supporting Someone Who Is Grieving
For the person who picked this up for somebody else. What helps, what does not, what to say, and how long to keep showing up.
19
Tools
Both emotion wheels, on this site and free to use.
20
Further Reading
The works this handbook draws on directly, and where each one shows up in it.
21
If You Need More Support
Australian helplines, verified, with the crisis numbers first.

Further reading

What it draws on.

Part Three

Counsellor voices.

Part Three will be a collection of reflections from individual experienced grief counsellors, in their own words. A request-for-contribution template has been drafted and is being sent, starting with Phoebe Hutchison (PLP Solutions). This appendix will be replaced by the actual Part Three once contributions are received.

If you need more support

Someone to talk to, now.

This is not a substitute for professional support. Every number below is free to call from within Australia.

Numbers verified June 2026. If you are reading this at a later date, please confirm current numbers via healthdirect.gov.au/mental-health-helplines