Exercises — Chapter 34: Grief, Loss, and Life Transitions

Part A: The Landscape of Loss

Exercise 1 — Mapping Your Losses

This exercise asks you to create a personal inventory of significant losses — not to dwell in each, but to acknowledge the full range of what you have navigated.

In the table below, list significant losses across different categories. A "significant loss" means one that produced meaningful grief or adjustment — regardless of whether it was formally recognized or named as a loss at the time.

After completing the table: 1. Are there losses you've listed that you've never acknowledged directly as losses? 2. Are there losses that you rated as "still active" that you haven't given explicit attention to? 3. What do the categories reveal about the kinds of loss that have shaped you most?

Exercise 2 — The Unacknowledged Loss

Many people carry grief for losses that have not been socially acknowledged — disenfranchised grief. Examples: a miscarriage or pregnancy loss; the death of a pet; the loss of a relationship that was not publicly known; the end of a friendship that mattered more than friendships are "supposed to" matter; the loss of a part of yourself that the world didn't recognize as a self.

Identify one loss in your life that was not given the social acknowledgment it deserved.

1. What was the loss?
2. What made it socially unacknowledged — was it invisible to others, socially stigmatized, or simply not the kind of loss that receives formal support?
3. What did the lack of acknowledgment add to the grief?
4. What would appropriate acknowledgment have looked like?
5. Write three sentences acknowledging this loss directly — speaking to yourself the way you would speak to a close friend who had experienced the same thing.

Part B: Grief Frameworks

Exercise 3 — Applying the Dual Process Model

The Dual Process Model proposes that healthy grief involves oscillation between loss orientation (facing the grief directly) and restoration orientation (engaging with the practical and future-oriented challenges of the changed life).

For a significant loss you've experienced (or are experiencing):

Loss-oriented activities (directly engaging with the grief): - Examples: crying, looking at photos, writing about the person/thing, talking about the loss, reading about grief - What loss-oriented activities have you engaged in? - What loss-oriented activities have you avoided?

Restoration-oriented activities (engaging with the changed life): - Examples: learning new skills the loss requires, building new routines, engaging with new relationships, moving toward the future - What restoration-oriented activities have you engaged in? - What restoration-oriented activities have you avoided?

Your natural balance: Do you lean toward loss orientation (immersed in grief, finding restoration difficult) or restoration orientation (functional and busy, avoiding the grief itself)?

What the imbalance suggests: If you're predominantly loss-oriented, what restoration-oriented activities might help? If you're predominantly restoration-oriented, what loss-oriented engagement might support deeper processing?

Exercise 4 — Worden's Four Tasks

Apply Worden's task-based framework to a loss you're currently navigating or one that feels unresolved.

Task 1 — Accepting the reality of the loss: Is the loss fully cognitively accepted? Or is there a part of you that still expects the person to call, the situation to reverse, the thing to return? Describe the current state of acceptance.

Task 2 — Working through the pain: Is the pain of this loss being engaged with, or primarily avoided? What avoidance strategies have you used? What would "working through the pain" look like, concretely, for this loss?

Task 3 — Adjusting to the changed world: What has this loss required you to adjust to? Practical adjustments (new responsibilities, new structures)? Identity adjustments (who are you without this role or relationship)? Meaning adjustments (what does the world mean now that includes this loss)?

Task 4 — Finding an enduring connection while moving forward: Rather than "letting go," the contemporary framework is transforming the relationship. How do you continue to carry the person, thing, or chapter that was lost? How does it remain present in your values, decisions, memories, or identity?

Exercise 5 — Continuing Bonds in Practice

The continuing bonds model proposes that maintaining an active inner relationship with what was lost is adaptive, not a failure of grief.

1. Think of someone you have lost (to death, relationship ending, or significant change). In what ways does this person continue to be present in your life? Consider: decisions you make with them in mind, values or phrases that came from them, ways you find yourself acting as they would have, conversations you have with them internally.

2. Is the continuing relationship with this person healthy and integrating — a source of comfort and orientation — or is it complicated by unresolved elements (guilt, unfinished conversations, ambivalence)?

3. If there are unresolved elements, what would you want to say to this person if you could? Write it, without censoring.

Part C: Processing Grief

Exercise 6 — Writing Through Loss

Research on expressive writing (Pennebaker) demonstrates that writing about emotional experiences produces psychological and physiological benefits — particularly when the writing addresses not only the facts of the experience but the feelings and their meaning.

For a significant loss, write for 15 uninterrupted minutes about: - What the loss was and what it meant to you - What you feel when you think about it - What you miss most - What you've learned or how you've changed - What the loss has cost you, and what, if anything, it has given you

There are no grammatical or organizational requirements. The exercise is for you.

After writing, answer: What emerged that you hadn't been consciously thinking about? What felt most important to say?

Exercise 7 — The Letter Unsent

Many grief experiences contain things that were not said — to the person who died, to the relationship that ended, to the version of yourself that is no longer. This exercise creates the space to say them.

Write a letter to one of the following: - A person you have lost to death - A relationship you have lost - A version of yourself you have grieved - A future that will not now occur

The letter should say: what you wish you had said, what you want them/it to know, what the loss has meant, and what you are carrying forward.

This letter does not need to be sent or shared. It is an act of completing something.

Part D: Life Transitions

Exercise 8 — Mapping the Neutral Zone

Bridges' Transition Model proposes that major life changes involve an internal transition: ending (letting go of the old), neutral zone (the in-between period of disorientation and potential), and new beginning (the emergence of the new).

Identify a major life transition you have been through or are currently navigating.

The ending: - What was ending (role, identity, relationship, chapter)? - What was the grief component — even if the change was chosen and welcome? - How completely did you let go of the old?

The neutral zone: - Was there a period of disorientation, uncertainty, or "who am I now?" - What was the hardest aspect of the neutral zone for you? - Did you try to rush through it, or were you able to tolerate the ambiguity?

The new beginning: - If you've reached it: how did it emerge? Was it forced or did it develop? - If you haven't reached it yet: what conditions might support it?

Exercise 9 — The Losses Inside Change

One of the chapter's central insights is that even welcome and chosen changes involve grief for what is ending. This exercise helps identify the losses embedded in transitions.

Choose a positive change you have made or are considering — a move, a career change, entering or leaving a relationship, a health change, a major commitment.

List the specific losses embedded in this change:

After completing the table: How might acknowledging these embedded losses change how you approach the transition?

Part E: Supporting Others in Grief

Exercise 10 — What Helps vs. What Doesn't

Review the chapter's lists of what helps and what doesn't help in grief support.

1. Think of a time when you were grieving and someone said or did something that genuinely helped. What was it? Why did it help?

2. Think of a time when you were grieving and someone said or did something that, despite their good intentions, didn't help — or made it worse. What was it? Why did it miss?

3. Think of a time when someone you cared about was grieving and you didn't know what to say or do. What did you do? In retrospect, what might have been more helpful?

4. What is most difficult for you personally in sitting with someone else's grief? (Examples: the discomfort of not being able to fix it; your own triggered grief; uncertainty about what to say; discomfort with emotional expression)

Exercise 11 — The Support Response

For each of the following statements from a grieving person, write two responses: one that is unhelpful (even if well-intentioned) and one that is more supportive.

"I don't think I'll ever feel normal again." Unhelpful response: __ Supportive response: __

"I'm so angry at them for dying and leaving me alone." Unhelpful response: __ Supportive response: __

"I should be over this by now. It's been a year." Unhelpful response: __ Supportive response: __

"I feel guilty for sometimes feeling relieved." Unhelpful response: __ Supportive response: __

"I still talk to them. I know that's probably crazy." Unhelpful response: __ Supportive response: __

Part F: Meaning and Growth

Exercise 12 — Meaning-Making After Loss

Robert Neimeyer's research on meaning reconstruction proposes that grief often challenges or shatters prior meaning frameworks — assumptions about the world, about the future, about one's identity — and that integration involves reconstructing meaning in a way that can encompass the loss.

For a significant loss:

1. What assumptions did this loss challenge? (Examples: "the world is safe and predictable"; "hard work is always rewarded"; "I know who I am"; "I have more time than I thought")

2. How has your understanding of the loss changed over time? What meaning have you been able to make of it, if any?

3. What has the loss contributed to who you are now? Not as a silver lining, but as an honest accounting of how the grief has shaped you.

Exercise 13 — Post-Traumatic Growth: An Honest Assessment

The chapter is careful to distinguish PTG from forced positivity. This exercise asks for an honest assessment of any growth that has emerged from a significant loss — not the growth that should be there, but the growth that actually is.

For a significant loss or trauma:

After completing this: Is there growth that you've been reluctant to claim because claiming it feels like it diminishes the grief? Is there growth that you've claimed that, on honest examination, isn't quite there yet?

Reflection Journal Prompts

Prompt 1 — The Loss You Haven't Named The chapter opens by noting that grief is the natural response to loss, not a problem to be solved. It also notes that we often fail to name what we are grieving. What is something you have been carrying that you have not fully named as loss? What becomes possible when you name it?

Prompt 2 — "Grief Is Love With Nowhere to Go" Dr. Reyes quotes this formulation. Consider someone or something significant you have lost. Does this reframe — grief as love without recipient — change how you hold the experience? Does it make it more bearable, or different, or does it not resonate for you?

Prompt 3 — The Neutral Zone The neutral zone — the in-between state after the ending but before the new beginning — is described as the most psychologically difficult and potentially most creative period of transition. Reflect on a period in your life that was a neutral zone. What was it like? What came from it?

Prompt 4 — What You Would Want to Be Said Imagine you are in acute grief. What would you want someone to say or do? Now turn it around: are you extending that same quality of presence to the people in your life who are grieving?

End of Chapter 34 Exercises