Julia Samuel’s Grief Works App

Grief Works is an app including guided advice from psychotherapist, author and grief expert Julia Samuel. The app gently takes you, step by step, on a journey to help you understand and cope with your grief.  It helps users reach an understanding of what might be a ‘normal’ and understandable experience of grief, as well explaining the signs that might mean you would benefit from reaching out for more support.

Julia Samuel writes

As children we learn how to grieve by observing the adults around us. My parents had both suffered significant losses (both of my mother’s parents and her two siblings had died) by the time they were 25 years old. Yet these people and those losses were never talked about. For me, it meant I became more interested in what was going on beneath the surface than what was being discussed externally. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, it is the abiding influence that has led me to be a psychotherapist who specialises in grief for over thirty years.

It led me to work for twenty-five years in the NHS supporting families when a child or baby dies. It is what inspired me to help establish and launch Child Bereavement UK and work as it’s Founder Patron twenty-eight years ago.

I saw that the ignorance and stigma around death and dying meant that when people were bereaved, they didn’t know how to support themselves or what to do. Those decades of work with bereaved clients brought immense learning. I wrote my book Grief Works: Stories of life, death and surviving because I wanted to take that knowledge out of my therapy room and into the hands of everyone who could benefit from it.

Working with Cruse

As a therapist I have always valued the immense contribution that Cruse makes in the support of bereaved families. In particular, the thousands of volunteers who give of themselves with such heart to support the bereaved. I am delighted to now be in partnership with Cruse. I think there is a natural alliance between Cruse and the Grief Works app. They both respond to the fact that grief can be overwhelming and understand the importance of not having to deal with it alone. We all want to reach more people in a way that suits them whether that’s in person, online or through an app.

The numbers of people who need support who cannot access it for many different reasons far outweighs the support that is available. The Grief Works app is a structured programme of actionable steps that interactively guides people through their grief, to create their own healing journey.

What’s included

Grief is not a passive process, it is an active one, it takes work, hard work. In the app I have included topics and practices that I have found to be most helpful to the bereaved through my many years working as a grief counsellor. Everything can be found in one place because I  know that having the capacity to find what you need when you are grieving is a challenge. It includes:

• 28 sessions to lead someone through their grief
• 30+ tools to support them i.e visualisations, meditations, sleep stories and sounds, stories, Hiit sessions, yoga
• Journal
• Gratitude diary
• Daily nudges and reminders to support them in their grief process

Both Cruse and the Grief Works app aim to extend the best possible support to people who are suffering. The app can be used in many different ways. I see it as an extension of the work of Cruse which could profoundly help those who need it most. The reviews of how it has helped users online is extraordinary: 93% of users say the tools help them feel better immediately. On a daily basis we receive notes from users who say they are finally able to function again in life, thanks to the support given through the app.

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