Supporting a grieving young person is rarely about having the right words or the perfect response. More often, it begins with listening, curiosity, and a willingness to learn.
The resources in this section are for educators, counsellors, programmers, organizers, parents, or anyone who support, care for, teach, and work with Indigenous, Black, and racialized youth and young adults. They are not intended as rules or best practices, but as invitations to think differently about grief, and to consider how these ideas might take shape in your own relationships and settings.
While these insights may be particularly relevant in grief-related contexts, they extend beyond them and have implications for a wide range of care practices across healthcare, counselling and psychology, education, and in community.Support
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Slow Down
Many young people experience pressure to keep going, keep producing, and keep performing, even while grieving. Slowing down means creating space for grief to unfold on its own terms, rather than according to the timelines and expectations of the systems around us.Feel the feelings
Many young people are taught that some emotions are acceptable while others should be hidden or controlled. Supporting grief means making space for the full range of emotions, recognizing that sadness, anger, joy, laughter, and love can coexist, and that these feelings can reveal what matters, what has been lost, and what young people hope can change.Connect to lands and waters
Many Indigenous, Black, and racialized young people described lands and waters as places of comfort, grounding, and connection in grief. Supporting grief can include making space for relationships with the places people call home, the places they come from, and the lands and waters that help them feel held, connected, and restored.Connect to each other
Many young people experience grief in isolation, feeling they must carry it alone. Building community means creating opportunities to grieve, create, gather, and simply be together, recognizing that care and healing often emerge through shared experiences and relationships.Revisit grief with tenderness
Returning to grief does not mean becoming consumed by it. Instead, grief can become a practice of remembering, reconnecting, restoring, and reimagining. Supporting young people means recognizing that grief can continue to teach, reveal, and make new possibilities over time.Reduce harm instead of promising safety
Many young people do not experience institutional spaces as equally safe. Rather than assuming safety, consider how harm is experienced differently and how spaces can be reorganized through accountability, care, collective responsibility, and attention to relationships.One-pager, resources, links to local support, and much more