Research on youth grief typically focuses on the grieving child. However, in 2019, two Danish researchers took a different approach. They interviewed ten young women who supported their teenage best friends through grief after a parent’s death. The aim was to understand the experience from the friends’ perspective. Their responses were tender, honest, and exhausting… and they contained important lessons for anyone involved in raising or teaching young people who may someday be in a position to support a grieving friend.
This exploration walks through the whole study in plain language:
· The four things that keep friendships alive… and how grief disrupts every one of them.
Twelve themes from the interviews, pulled from the young women’s own words.
Why the researchers suspect grief is contagious between best friends.
The fear that kept caring friends silent… and the misunderstanding underneath it.
Who the helpers leaned on when the helping got heavy.
The maze, the twists, dead ends, and the five words that made it all worth it.
We show how well The Heartside Project aligns with the researchers’ own conclusions and advice… including where our mission does and doesn’t fit the study. By the end, you’ll learn enough from these ten friendships to recognize the eleventh when it shows up at your own kitchen table.
The full exploration is below, print-safe and ready for your reading chair.
After our launch period, the Research… Explored section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the PDFs themselves.)
→ The Research: Grief and Best Friendship Among Adolescent Girls (link to publisher’s page)
→ The Research Explored: Being and Staying (PDF) :
What do you think is the hardest part of supporting a grieving friend? What helped most when you were the one grieving? How would you counsel a child/teen in your life who wanted to support a hurting friend?
Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!
Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...
Jepper