A Grief Therapist’s Experience with Aftercare

Lynn has spent more than 30 years working in the grief space. She’s a therapist, an author, and someone who has helped countless families navigate the emotional side of loss. If anyone understands grief, it’s her.

But when her own father passed away, she was surprised at what made the biggest difference for her:

It wasn’t grief counseling.

It was Service-Based Aftercare.

We’ve worked with Lynn on our grief resources, so our team was happy to help with the next steps: closing accounts, claiming benefits, making notifications, understanding what needed to happen and when.

Lynn later shared that this practical help made a bigger difference than she expected. Even as a grief professional, she found that removing the logistical burden created space for her to actually process the loss.

When families are overwhelmed with paperwork, responsibilities, and unfamiliar systems, it becomes much harder to focus on grieving.

Helping them navigate those steps doesn’t replace emotional support. But it removes a major source of stress during one of the most difficult periods of their lives.

The Problem With Generic Aftercare

Lynn had another experience after the service that caught her attention.

Like many families today, she received automated text messages that were meant to provide grief support from her funeral home’s Aftercare Program. One of the first messages introduced the “stages of grief.”

As a grief therapist, she was disturbed that this is what was being shared with every family.

The stages of grief are one of the most widely known ideas about loss, but they are also one of the most misunderstood.

The concept originally came from psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969. Her research focused on people who had been diagnosed with terminal illness and how they processed the news that they were dying. From that research came the well-known emotions of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Over time, those observations were widely adopted as the “five stages of grief.”

But even Kübler-Ross later clarified that they were never meant to be rigid stages that people move through in order.

Grief does not follow a straight path.

People may feel relief, sadness, anger, gratitude, or confusion at different times and often on the same day. Someone who loses a loved one after a long illness may feel relief that suffering has ended. Someone who loses a loved one suddenly may experience shock or disbelief.

Every loss carries its own emotional landscape.

When grief is presented as a checklist of stages people are supposed to move through, it can unintentionally create pressure. Someone might begin to wonder if they are grieving the “right way” or worry that something is wrong if their emotions don’t match the expected pattern.

The reality is that grief is personal and nonlinear. The goal isn’t to push people through stages, but to give them space and support as they move through it in their own way.

Rethinking Aftercare

There’s an issue with how aftercare is often handled.

Too frequently, aftercare gets set up and then forgotten. A few automated messages. A general resource. Content that’s meant to be helpful, but is built to apply to everyone at once.

The problem is, when everything is generalized, it rarely lands in a meaningful way.

Most of these programs aren’t even created in-house. They’re outsourced, pre-written, and distributed at scale. Which means the experience families receive is often the same, regardless of what they’re actually going through.

And when that happens, aftercare starts to feel less like support and more like a checkbox.

All of the responsibility is still on the family. They’re still the ones interpreting the information, figuring out what applies to them, and taking action on their own.

That’s the gap.

Aftercare should reflect the same level of care, thought, and standards that go into every other part of the care you provide. Not just something that exists so you can say you have it, but something that actually helps.

Your aftercare is one of the last touchpoints you have with families, which means families will remember you by your aftercare.

When aftercare is done well, it doesn’t feel generic.

It feels deeply personal.