But then just before 11:00 pm, an email came into my inbox that made all those administrative details worthwhile. A Help Texts subscriber who lost her dad a few months ago, took the time to share how our text messages have helped her, but also how they are helping her mom.

"When I first signed up after my father’s death, I was a little reluctant to add my mother to the subscription," she said. "But then there was one day, about 2 weeks ago when she and I were talking on the phone and she was sharing some things that other people in her neighborhood were saying to her about her grief process, and that is when I asked her if she would like some guidance from Help Texts. It was really the perfect timing. The messages you've been sending my mom have been extremely helpful and she calls me to let me know when she gets one of your texts. Her last text was especially relevant as she's getting ready to go to her high school reunion where she will be with other classmates who knew my father. She is preparing herself to share the story of my father’s death with them, and your messages are helping. Thank you so much."

Talk about the perfect balm after a long day. These stories fuel me and my team, and remind us that text messages - such a seemingly small thing - can make a very big difference.

This is the gap that EAPs and health systems quietly inherit. Employees come back to work but aren’t really back because they struggle with presenteeism and absenteeism. Grieving people may start to cycle through the Emergency Department with somatic complaints that turn out to be grief. Employers and health systems tend to provide bereavement support in the form of a packet, a phone number to call, or a time-limited support group, and they call it a robust grief benefit. The people who actually use those services are the ones who are already inclined to seek help. Everyone else?…well, they fall through the cracks.

So what do we do for the people who won’t call the number, attend a support group, or reach out for support? There is a surprisingly good answer, and it has been hiding in plain sight for years.

In the 1970s, a psychiatrist named Jerome Motto started writing letters to patients who had refused follow-up care after a suicide attempt.⁽¹⁾ The letters were short. They didn’t ask for anything. They just let the reader know that he was thinking of them and hoped they were doing okay. He kept sending them consistently, for years.

The result was a measurable reduction in suicides, demonstrated in a randomized trial. The intervention was called Caring Contacts. This intervention has been studied repeatedly and adapted from letters to text messages to modernize the approach.⁽²⁾ The mechanism remained simple, brief, consistent, non-demanding contact, sustained over time via text message. This approach helped people feel cared for and less alone in a way that substantially improved outcomes. Caring Contacts doesn't involve any assessment, treatment plan, or dosage. And yet it works.

There is a growing body of research suggesting that the brain treats small signals of being thought of as genuinely meaningful. These small signals (in our case, text messages) can provide us with a boost of dopamine, making us feel more connected and motivated to engage in behavior change.^(5-7)

Texting works well because it is a medium that people already use. It doesn’t require a grieving person to schedule, drive, log in, or talk on demand, all of which are things that are really challenging when you're grieving. A text shows up, gets read in under a minute, and asks nothing in return. For someone who would never sign up for a support group, that low bar is the entire point.

Bereavement is one of the most predictable event-trigger scenarios where we happen to know the exact moment that risk emerges and for roughly how long the risk remains. The infrastructure to reach and support these people during this major life event already exists in their pocket.

Help Texts is built on this premise. Subscribers receive twice-weekly text messages for as long as they need it, written by grief experts and tailored to their specific loss—who died, how, when, and what role the subscriber played in their life. The messages acknowledge the dates that matter: birthdays, anniversaries, and the death-anniversary, arguably one of the heaviest grief days. A clinical team reviews inbound replies daily and intervenes when someone is in distress, and will provide warm handoffs to crisis lines.

86% of Help Texts subscribers stay enrolled for a full year.⁽³⁾ And 95% of people who receive our service say that they felt supported in their grief. ^(3-4) The program also reaches populations that most bereavement services have a hard time engaging with—men, adults over 65, and those living in rural areas.^(3-4) Other data suggests that text messages outperform traditional bereavement services when it comes to accessibility, availability, length of service, and effectiveness.⁽⁷⁾ None of this is because text messaging is magic. It is because the mechanism is sound and the delivery removes the friction that causes most grief support to go unused.

Most grief benefits are built around a model that people won’t use. Many grieving employees are not going to go back to work and call their EAP's 1-800 number and ask to speak with a counselor. A surviving widower whose wife died is probably not going to drive to a grief group held in a church basement once a month. The utilization rates on these offerings tell the story, and most benefits leaders already know it.

Adding text-based grief support is about providing a lightweight solution that is designed to reach more people and cover the long tail that most services fall short of being able to provide. It is the difference between offering a standard grief benefit (one that looks good on paper, but most won't use) versus providing a service that actually gets used in a sustained way.

Caring Contacts teaches us that small, consistent care, delivered through a channel that meets people where they are, can change outcomes in a meaningful way. Help Texts is doing just that, providing consistent care for the long tail of grief.

To learn how Help Texts is being implemented by EAPs, health systems, hospices, and employers, visit helptexts.com or email info@helptexts.com.

Cited Sources:

1. Motto, J. A. (1976). Suicide Prevention for High-Risk Persons Who Refuse Treatment*. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 6(4), 223-230. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1943-278X.1976.tb00880.x
2. Hebert, L. E., Fruhbauerova, M., Evanson, A., Bogic, M., Petras, A., Shaw, J., Muller, C. J., Nelson, L., & Comtois, K. A. (2022). Caring Texts, a strength-based, suicide prevention trial in 5 native communities: Research design and methods. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 123, 106966. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2022.106966
3. Levesque, D. A., Lunardini, M. M., Payne, E. L., & Callison-Burch, V. (2023). Grief Coach, a text-based grief support intervention: acceptability among hospice family members. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 91(3), 1561-1589.
4. Levesque, D. A., Lunardini, M. M., Adams, S. N., Payne, E. L., & Neumann, B. G. (2024). Grief Coach: Feasibility and acceptability of a text message program for bereavement support among grievers in the United Kingdom. Death Studies, 49(4), 391-402.
5. Lam, C. (2013). The Efficacy of Text Messaging to Improve Social Connectedness and Team Attitude in Student Technical Communication Projects. Journal of Business and Technical Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651912468888
6. Suffoletto, B. (2016). Text message behavioral interventions: From here to where? Current Opinion in Psychology, 9, 16-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.09.012
7. Small, G. and Vorgan, G. (2008). iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, New York: HarperCollins.
8. Lunardini, M., Levesque, D. Comparing user satisfaction with grief-informed texts to other types of bereavement support in the United Kingdom. BMC Public Health (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-27605-9

On Monday, somewhere between Earth and the moon, four astronauts floating in zero gravity wrapped their arms around each other and cried.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen had just radioed to mission control with a request from the Artemis II crew: they wanted to name two craters on the moon. One, he said, would honor the late wife of mission commander Reid Wiseman — Carroll Wiseman, who died of cancer in 2020 at just 46 years old.

"We lost a loved one," Hansen said. "Her name was Carroll, the spouse of Reid, the mother of Katey and Ellie."

He described the crater as "a bright spot on the moon."

Then he called it Carroll.

There's something that stops you when you hear that. A woman who spent her life caring for newborns in the NICU, who left behind two daughters and a husband who calls single parenting both his greatest challenge and his most rewarding chapter — she now has her name written into the surface of the moon. Permanently. Luminously.

Most of us will never get to name a crater. But that impulse — to find a place in the world, or beyond it, to put someone's name — is one of the most deeply human things grief asks of us.

It's the urge to say: you were here. You still are.

Symbolic memorialization doesn't require a spacecraft. It just requires intention. Here are some ways grievers have found to honor the people they love in the landscape of the living world:

Plant something. A tree, a garden bed, a single rosebush. Watching something grow in someone's name can feel like a quiet, ongoing conversation.

Name a star. Star registries aren't scientifically official, but they're personally meaningful — and there's something beautiful about looking up and knowing where to find them.

Release something into nature. Biodegradable lanterns, flower petals on water, seeds into the wind. Rituals of release can hold both the grief and the love at once.

Mark a place that mattered. A bench in a favorite park, a small stone in a garden, a hand-painted rock left on a trail. Somewhere that says he was loved here.

Create a living tradition. Cook their recipe every year on their birthday. Walk their favorite trail each fall. Some memorials aren't places — they're moments that return.

Write their name somewhere beautiful. In sand at the shoreline. On a card tucked into a library book. At the top of a mountain. It doesn't have to last forever to matter.

Reid Wiseman broke the record for the farthest distance any human has ever traveled from Earth — and he did it carrying Carroll with him.

Grief travels. It goes wherever you go. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you find a way to leave a mark that says: I loved someone. She mattered. Look — her name is right there, bright against the dark.

You don't need the moon. You just need somewhere to put it.

If you're navigating grief and could use a little support along the way, Help Texts sends gentle, research-informed messages right to your phone — whenever you need them. Learn more at helptexts.com.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than one in five adults, and one in seven youth ages 6-17 in the United States, experience mental illness in a given year. Most of them won't get treatment.

We have awareness campaigns, celebrity conversations, and entire months dedicated to mental health. So why does the gap between struggle and support stay so wide?

Awareness, when it actually works, is about shifting culture — the way we talk, the way we listen, and how we respond when someone we care about isn't okay. That's different from knowing mental health exists. Most people know it exists. What they don't always have is permission to take it seriously.

What is mental health awareness?

Mental health awareness is about understanding how to protect and support mental health, and actively working to reduce the stigma that keeps people from getting help. In practice, that means being able to recognize when someone is struggling (including yourself), knowing where to turn, and feeling like you can talk about whatever you're going through in the same way you'd talk about a physical injury: directly, without shame, and with some idea about what to do next.

Stigma is still the biggest problem

Even as mental health conversations become more visible, stigma keeps people from getting help. A lot of it is internal, the voice that says you should be able to handle this, that other people have it worse, that what you're feeling doesn't really qualify.

The research is clear: stigma is directly linked to lower rates of help-seeking. People who need care the most are often least likely to reach out. Negative self-perceptions, fear of discrimination, and internalized shame can worsen symptoms over time — meaning stigma doesn't just prevent treatment, it can actively make things worse.

Every honest conversation about mental health chips away at that. Not because talking cures depression, but because silence is where stigma grows.

What mental health actually affects

Mental health shapes nearly every dimension of daily life: how we relate to people, how we perform at work, how we handle stress, how we make decisions, and how physically healthy we are.

Depression increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Chronic stress and anxiety affect immune function, sleep, and cardiovascular health. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found direct links between depression and heightened cardiovascular risk. The mind and body aren't separate systems, and treating them that way is one of the reasons mental health gets underfunded and undertreated.

It affects communities too

Untreated mental health conditions contribute to higher rates of substance misuse, unemployment, domestic violence, and healthcare costs. Communities that take mental health seriously tend to have stronger support networks and lower rates of those downstream harms.

Mental health can affect anyone, but the risk isn't evenly distributed. People living in poverty, people who've faced racial discrimination, and those who've experienced significant adversity are more likely to struggle — and less likely to have access to support. Any conversation about awareness that doesn't acknowledge that is only telling part of the story.

Investing in mental health — through awareness, education, and real access to care — has the potential to reduce individual suffering and address broader inequalities.

Mental Health Awareness Month

Every May, Mental Health Awareness Month provides a focused opportunity to raise visibility and connect people with resources. It's been observed in the United States since 1949.

But does it actually work? The evidence says yes. A 2020 study in Psychiatric Quarterly found that education-based interventions — ones that directly challenged stigmatizing beliefs — meaningfully reduced mental illness stigma among college students.

The month is most useful as a starting point. The conversations it sparks should extend into June, July, and every other month. A few ways to engage that actually matter:

• Talk about your own experiences when you feel safe doing so. Firsthand accounts reduce stigma more reliably than statistics.
• Learn the warning signs of common mental health conditions in yourself and the people around you.
• Push back when you hear language that trivializes mental illness.
• Support policies that expand access to care, including mental health parity laws.

The access problem

Awareness without access only goes so far. A recent survey shows 42% of adults living with mental health conditions don't receive services because they can't afford them. More than 1 in 10 adults with a mental illness have no health insurance. As of late 2025, federal data shows that only about 27% of Americans' mental health needs are being met, and those numbers are growing, not shrinking.

Knowing help exists only matters if help is actually reachable. Advocacy for parity laws, expanded insurance coverage, and better-resourced communities is part of the same work as reducing stigma.

Getting support and getting involved

If you're struggling, you don't have to wait until it gets worse to reach out. One in five adults will experience a mental health condition this year, and many more will carry grief, burnout, or loss without ever putting a clinical label on it. Whatever you're carrying, there's support available.

A few places to start:

Help Texts offers ongoing text-based support for grief, pregnancy loss, pet loss, caregiver stress, and health and well-being, designed to meet you where you are, whatever you're going through.

NAMI runs a free helpline (1-800-950-6264), peer support groups, and education programs for individuals and families.

Mental Health America offers free, confidential mental health screenings online and connects people with local resources.

Crisis Text Line is available 24/7 — text HOME to 741741 to reach a trained counselor.

The Black Mental Health Alliance focuses on culturally relevant care and maintains a directory to help people find Black mental health providers.

The Trevor Project provides crisis support specifically for LGBTQ+ young people, including a 24/7 hotline, text, and chat options.

If you want to do more than seek support for yourself, NAMI and Mental Health America both have active advocacy programs, from contacting legislators to participating in local awareness campaigns.

What Grief Looks Like After Job Loss

Grief doesn’t only show up when we lose a person—it can surface anytime something meaningful is taken away. When a job ends, it can leave behind uncertainty, isolation, and a loss of routine. These feelings are common. And they are valid.

A Shift in Identity

Your job may have been part of how you saw yourself. Without it, you may start to wonder who you are now. That question can feel overwhelming—but it’s also part of the healing process.

Uncertainty About the Future

“What’s next?” is a question that can weigh heavily. Job loss can bring with it a fear of the unknown. It can feel like everything is up in the air—and that can be hard to sit with.

Frustration and Anger

You might feel frustrated at how things ended, or how little control you had in the process. That’s not just understandable—it’s normal. Naming those feelings is a step toward moving through them.

Disrupted Routine and Connection

Jobs provide structure. They give you a reason to get up, a list of things to do, and people to interact with. When that disappears, it can leave you feeling disconnected and out of sync.

Grief Doesn’t Follow a Timeline

Emotions after job loss don’t follow a schedule. You may feel okay one moment and overwhelmed the next. That’s part of it. And it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.

Some of the stages you might move through include:

• Shock or Numbness – “Did this really happen?”
• Anger or Frustration – “This isn’t fair.”
• Sadness or Emptiness – “What now?”
• Adjustment – “This is hard—but I’m figuring it out.”

You may move through these feelings more than once. That’s completely normal.

Quiet, Consistent Support Can Make a Difference

You don’t have to figure everything out at once. And you don’t have to do it alone. Help Texts is here to support you through the emotional and practical challenges of job loss—with quiet, private messages, delivered to your phone.

At Help Texts, we recognize that job loss is a kind of grief. And with the right kind of support, it’s possible to move through that grief and start to rebuild.

There are no apps to download, and no pressure to talk. Just real support, from experts in grief and transition, sent straight to you.

With Help Texts, you’ll receive messages that help you:

• Understand your grief
• Regain clarity and confidence
• Stay motivated when things feel uncertain
• Take small, steady steps forward

It’s support that meets you where you are—and moves at your pace.

Sign up for Help Texts for Health and Well-being and select "Job Loss" from the list of topics you'd like help with.

To support someone you love through job loss, send a gift

​

About Help Texts

Help Texts is the world's leading clinically sound, scalable, bereavement intervention. We deliver affordable, multilingual support globally via text message for all of life's toughest moments. With extraordinary acceptability (95%) and 6-month retention (90%) rates, Help Texts' light-weight solution makes it easy for employers, providers, payers, and others to improve health and community outcomes, while also realizing significant cost savings for those in their care.

Life can be hard. Getting support shouldn't have to be. 💙 Help Texts is proud to be delivering personalized, expert grief and mental health support in 59 countries and 28 languages. All year long.

When a beloved pet dies, the grief can be overwhelming and is often underestimated. As a veterinary professional, you’re not only caring for animals but also for the humans who love them. Help Texts for Pet Loss extends your care beyond the clinic by making it easy for you to deliver clinically sound grief support to bereaved pet owners, all year long.

With many years' experience supporting people after a human death, Help Texts partnered with palliative care veterinarians and grief experts to craft compassionate, evidence-based text messages to help pet owners navigate the emotional aftermath of loss. Whether the loss was sudden or expected, we personalize supportive text messages based on:

• Type of pet (dog, cat, bird, horse, etc.)
• Cause of death (illness, accident, euthanasia, etc.)
• Key dates (adoption anniversaries, birthdays, etc.)

We make it easy to support your valued clients with a full year of tailored grief support that they will always remember.

Benefits of Supporting Pet Owners After a Loss

Extend Compassionate Care Beyond the Clinic

Partnering with Help Texts allows your veterinary practice to offer expert, ongoing grief support to every pet owner after a loss. Our service complements your in-clinic care, eases the burden on your team, and ensures no grieving family feels forgotten.

Strengthen Client Relationships

Continue caring for pet owners even after their pet is gone; when they need support the most.

• Honor meaningful dates like adoption anniversaries and birthdays
• Help friends and family show up with supportive tips and reminders
• Build lifelong trust by showing continued compassion beyond the clinic

Reduce Operational Strain

Provide exceptional grief support without increasing your team’s workload.

• Ease emotional demands on staff without sacrificing client care
• Reduce turnover and stress-related burnout in emotionally heavy moments
• Offer consistent follow-up care without additional staffing

Build Community Trust

Your commitment to compassionate care sets you apart. Help Texts makes it visible.

• Show clients and the community that your care doesn’t end at goodbye
• Differentiate your practice with grief support that goes beyond industry norms
• Strengthen your role as a trusted partner in the full life of every pet

Your Compassion, Extended

As veterinary professionals, you chose this field because you care deeply about animals and the people who love them. Help Texts for Pet Loss is an extension of that same compassion you show every day in your practice.

When you partner with Help Texts, you're not just offering a service - you're ensuring that the care and understanding you provide in those final moments continues long after families leave your clinic. You're acknowledging that pet loss deserves the same thoughtful support we offer for any significant grief, and making sure no one has to navigate that journey alone.

Ready to extend your compassionate care beyond the clinic? Contact us today to learn how Help Texts for Pet Loss. Because the love between pets and their families doesn't end when life does, and neither should your support.

About Help Texts

Help Texts is the world's leading clinically sound, scalable, bereavement intervention. We deliver affordable, multilingual support globally via text message for all of life's toughest moments. With extraordinary acceptability (95%) and 6-month retention (90%) rates, Help Texts' light-weight solution makes it easy for employers, providers, payers, and others to improve health and community outcomes, while also realizing significant cost savings for those in their care.

Life can be hard. Getting support shouldn't have to be. 💙 Help Texts is proud to be delivering personalized, expert grief and mental health support in 59 countries and 28 languages. All year long.

Losing a sibling can be challenging beyond words.

While we often think of primary caregivers as essential to child development and attachment, sibling relationships can also foster meaningful core belief and values for us. Sibling relationships can be complex, strong, and create lasting memories. For siblings close in age, there’s a connection in developmental milestones and similarities. When there is distance in sibling ages, there’s opportunity for familial roles and caregiving to be present. And when non-direct sibling relationships (e.g., friends, cousins, classmates) are created throughout our lifetime, bonds are formed through experiences, laughs, hardships, and connections.

When a sibling dies, it's not just the physical separation. It's also the removal of daily moments. The calls, texts, laughs, and reassurances go away. It’s the conversations that only your sibling would understand, that are lost. For adults, losing a sibling means losing a retirement buddy, support taking care of aging parents, and the ability to recall and share childhood memories. For children and adolescents, losing a sibling young can create losing a playmate and someone to read stories and share childhood with. Losing a sibling at a young age also means growing older without having someone to share in the big moments.

If you're grieving the loss of a sibling, know that all moments, big and small, can bring forth a range of grief reactions and responses. Grief can often feel controlling and overpowering, but help is out there, and it is you who's in control. Do your best to seek support that resonates for you, and can help you get those the unspeakable moments.

Dr. Jillian Blueford can be reached for collaboration, consultation, and clinician supervision (Colorado), at jillianmblueford@gmail.com or https://www.jillianblueford.com/

This contribution is dedicated to my aunt Inez and uncle Andre, who have grieved a major sibling loss with lots of love and grace.

Increasingly, people are turning to text-based support for help.

Two services, Crisis Text Line and Help Texts, both deliver support to your phone. But they do very different things. Understanding which service is right for you depends on what you're facing right now.

Crisis Text Line: Immediate Support for Acute Crisis

Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741) provides free, 24/7 crisis intervention. When you text them, a trained volunteer responds within minutes to help you through an immediate crisis.

What Crisis Text Line does:

Crisis Text Line provides a real-time conversation with a trained crisis counselor. It helps with suicidal thoughts, self-harm urges, panic attacks, loneliness, and acute mental health crises, and can connect you to local emergency resources if needed. It's completely free and anonymous, no sign-up required, and available anytime, day or night.

Who it's for:

Crisis Text Line is designed for moments when you need someone now. If you're having suicidal thoughts or are in acute distress, Crisis Text Line provides immediate human connection when you need it most.

The model:

Volunteer crisis counselors who are trained in active listening and de-escalation techniques provide support via text. These are one-time, brief conversations to get you through your immediate crisis.

Help Texts: Ongoing Support to Prevent Crisis

Help Texts takes a different approach. Instead of crisis intervention, it provides ongoing, personalized support to help people avoid reaching a point of crisis in the first place.

What Help Texts does:

Help Texts sends expert-written text messages twice weekly for as long as you need support. Messages provide practical coping tools, validation, and evidence-based care and are written by world-leading grief and mental health experts.

Who it's for:

Help Texts provides consistent support over time for grief, caregiving, burnout, pregnancy loss, pet loss, healthy aging, depression, job loss, and more.

The model:

Every text is written by world-leading experts and personalized to your specific situation: losing a parent to Alzheimer's is different from losing a child to suicide, and the support you receive reflects that.

You can also invite friends and family members who want to help to receive their own texts with tips on how to support you.

Side-by-Side Comparison

When to Use Crisis Text Line

Text Crisis Text Line if you're experiencing suicidal thoughts or self-harm urges, acute anxiety, or overwhelming distress that needs immediate attention.

Crisis Text Line is not designed for ongoing support. It’s for when you need to talk to someone right away. Their volunteers are trained for crisis intervention, not long-term ongoing care.

When to Use Help Texts

Help Texts is not designed for immediate crisis response. Instead, they offer ongoing support, tips, and resources to help you cope with a wide range of life challenges, including grief, caregiving, burnout, pregnancy loss, pet loss, depression, job loss, and more.

Making the Choice

Ask yourself:

Right now, do I need immediate help? → Text Crisis Text Line.

Am I looking for ongoing support? → Sign up for Help Texts.

Could I benefit from both? → Yes. Use Crisis Text Line when you're in acute distress. Use Help Texts for consistent guidance between those moments.

How to Get Started

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). No sign-up required. Free. Anonymous. Available now.

Help Texts: Visit helptexts.com/sign-up. Complete a brief questionnaire. Your first text arrives right away. $9.99/month. Cancel anytime.

Grief can surface when we least expect it.

The traditional models for grief support—the weekly appointments, support groups that meet on the second Thursday of the month—were built for a version of grief that doesn't exist. The neat, predictable version. Real grief is nothing like that.

The "off-hour" moments that need support

The mornings and evenings. Waking up and, for a split second, forgetting—then remembering all over again. Evenings when the house is quiet, the distractions are gone, and your mind goes straight to the loss. These are often the loneliest hours, and most people face them completely alone.

The waiting. Therapy waitlists for grief counseling can stretch weeks or months. What happens after you've worked up the courage to seek help, but now you have to wait a long time for it? For most people, this means that they are forced to cope alone during one of the most vulnerable stretches of the grief journey.

Holidays, birthdays, and deathiversaries. The dates you can see coming from a mile away and still can't prepare for. Experiencing their first birthday after someone has died can feel impossible. These dates are often some of the hardest days of the year and the least acknowledged by everyone else.

The "I should be over this" moments. Four months in. Six months. A year. When the check-ins start to dry up, but your grief is still very much right there.

Getting support that matches grief's schedule

What does it look like when support is designed around the way grief actually works?

It looks like a text message on a Saturday morning, reminding you that grief can make even small tasks feel heavy—and that's okay. A message two days before your mother's birthday with a concrete suggestion: light a candle, write her a letter, look at photos—having a plan for a hard day makes it feel more manageable. Or a message at the six-month mark, when everyone else has moved on, that validates: if you find yourself still hurting, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Grief takes time.

Support like that exists.

That's what Help Texts was designed to do because it was created by a griever who also needed options when grief showed up unannounced.

Help Texts delivers personalized grief support via text message. We deliver caring contacts and practical suggestions, for as long as you need us. When you sign up, you share who you lost, how they died, and the dates that matter to you. From there, you'll receive supportive messages tailored to your loss and timed to your grief journey.

You can also invite two supporters to receive their own texts with guidance on how to show up for you, because one of the hardest parts of grief is that the people around you want to help but don't know how.

Help Texts isn't designed to replace therapy; it's designed to fill the space between appointments, and be a supportive service during the 2 a.m. moments, the hard dates, and the long stretches of grief.

Here is how Help Texts fills the gap.

If you're grieving—whether it's been two weeks or two years—you deserve support that meets you where you are. Support that knows hard days are still coming. Support that fits into your life.

Grief doesn't happen on schedule. But support can still show up right on time.

Sign up for Help Texts → $9.99/month. Cancel anytime.

Each month, we gather small reminders that hope is still growing, people are still caring for one another, and support can arrive exactly when it's needed most. I want to begin, as I always do, with a few of the messages we received from our subscribers last month. The first one is my favorite!

• “At first I thought, 'This is silly.' But it has been such a help to me.”
• “The texts always seemed to know where I was at and gave me a lift, just when needed.” They also gave me permission to experience exactly what and where I was.”
• “Thank you for always knowing what is concerning me. I am constantly blessed with your texts.”
• “I’ve found it amazing how often I go back and read the texts again and look for advice that meets whatever needs I’m having.”
• “Thank you, these are helpful suggestions, I love the readings from you. It helps me so much.”
• “I like that I can read the texts when I have the time, not when someone else is making time for me.”

This month on the Help Texts blog, we published a piece that stopped us in our tracks. It's called A crater called Carroll, and it's about an astronaut named Jeremy Hansen who radioed mission control with a request from the Artemis II crew: they wanted to name a crater on the moon in honor of mission commander Reid Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020 at just 46 years old. We wrote about Carroll's story and the many ways grievers have found to honor the people they love. Read the article

One of the hardest things about supporting a grieving person is not knowing what to say. Many of us say nothing at all, not because we don't care, but because we're afraid of saying the wrong thing. We shared a new post on our Instagram this month to help with exactly that.

It's a simple, practical guide to the kinds of words and gestures that actually help. You can find it on our Instagram page, and we encourage you to share it with anyone in your life who might need it.

Stress is one of those words we use so often it can start to lose its meaning. But the experience of it is anything but small. Stress shows up in the body, in sleep, in relationships, in the way we move through our days. And it shows up differently depending on what we're going through.

Help Texts delivers evidence-based, expert-written support directly to your phone via SMS. No app. No appointment. No waiting room. Just thoughtful, expert-written texts that meet you wherever you are.

We have programs for grief, caregiving, healthcare workers, and mental health & well-being, each built around the idea that consistent, compassionate support, even in small doses, can make a genuine difference over time.

Ready to feel a little more supported? Start today

With gratitude,

Emma Payne

CEO, Help Texts

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It is shaped by everything that came before the death. The diagnosis. The treatment. The waiting. The hoping. The caregiving. All of it.

Grieving a loss from cancer is unique

Cancer loss carries layers that other losses may not. Some of these may resonate with you. Some may not. Take what is useful.

1. You may have started grieving at diagnosis

Cancer-related grief often begins before the death. Watching someone you love go through treatment, holding hope alongside uncertainty and sadness, experiencing many small losses with each new decline — these are all forms of grief. Many people don't even realise they are grieving during this time, but they are. And it has a name: anticipatory grief. This is all of the grief you experience before someone dies.

So when your loved one died, you may have already been carrying months, or even years, of grief before today.

2. You lost a role, not just a person

If your loved one had cancer, there's a good chance you were a caregiver — at times, or the entire time. This means you didn't just lose your person. You also lost the role that was important in your life. The appointments, the routines, the medical team — they stop all at once. That is a drastic shift, and it happens quickly.

This sudden shift in identity — from caregiver to non-caregiver — is one of the things that can make grieving a cancer loss so distinct.

3. The shoulda, coulda, woulda's

Could I have done more? Should we have gotten a second opinion? I would have spent more time with them if I knew the end was so close. These thoughts are common — and they are painful. They are called the shoulda, coulda, wouldas. Thoughts that circle back to what might have been, fueling guilt and regret over things that were never truly in your control. This kind of thinking is very common in cancer-related grief.

4. Haunting images of decline

It's not unusual to find yourself re-experiencing images of your loved one's decline. These visual memories can surface unexpectedly and feel haunting, causing real distress — especially early in grief. It is important to know that they often fade with time. But if they feel too invasive or overwhelming, please reach out to a grief counselor for support.

5. Feeling relief — and then guilt about it

You may be surprised to find that you feel some relief. It may even feel like a betrayal, and it may bring some guilt along with it. But relief has its place in cancer loss. Sometimes we feel relief that our loved one is no longer suffering, no longer in pain. Whatever you are feeling, try not to dismiss it. Notice it without judgment, and trust that it is serving a purpose for you.

6. You may have neglected your own health

Caregivers are sometimes called the invisible second patient. Months or years of focusing on someone else's health and well-being may have resulted in your own health quietly slipping away. Now that the caregiving role has ended, your body may have needs that can no longer wait.

7. At least you got time to say goodbye

Grief is not a competition, but it can sometimes feel like one. Well-meaning people may say things like at least you had time to prepare or at least you got to say goodbye. These comments are often intended to comfort, but they can leave you feeling like your grief is somehow less painful or that you should be further along than you are.

The truth is, there is no hierarchy of loss. An expected death carries its own kind of pain — the anticipation, the helplessness, the watching. A sudden death carries its own kind of pain, too. They are different, not greater or lesser.

Your loss is uniquely yours. And to you, it will always feel like the hardest loss — because it is yours.

Anticipatory grief. Caregiver identity loss. The shoulda, coulda, wouldas. Haunting images. Relief wrapped in guilt. A body that was quietly neglected. These are some of the things that can make grieving a cancer loss so distinct. You may see yourself in all of them, or only some of them.

Your loss is hard because it is yours. So how do you cope? Let's talk about that.

Where to begin

In the early days, the goal is not healing. The goal is getting through the day. Start with the basics. Your body has been through a lot.

NOURISH
HYDRATE
REST
CONNECT
MOVE
BREATHE
NATURE

You can read more details on each of these on our What is Grief blog.

Once you have the basics covered, there are a few things that deserve your specific attention after a cancer loss.

1. Get a check-up for you

A physical. Dental. Vision. Your health was likely on the back burner. It cannot wait any longer. Getting a check-up early on in grief can help you and your doctors differentiate what is normal grief or what else might be happening that could be making your grief harder to manage.

2. Find your community

Losing a person and a caregiver role at the same time is disorienting. A solid support network can help anchor you. This might be a cancer loss group, a faith community, an online space, reading a memoir, or listening to podcasts. Being witnessed by people who understand parts of your pain can normalize what you are going through.

3. Reconnect with yourself

Caregiving can consume your identity. Give yourself permission to revisit old interests — or try something new. Finding new ways to invest parts of you will help you find parts of your identity that are waiting to be discovered. And the good news is that there is no timeline for this.

4. Give yourself time — lots and lots of time

There is no finish line for grief. Let go of arbitrary timelines that might be self-imposing or that others are suggesting. Grief takes as long as it takes. The most compassionate thing you can do is acknowledge that grief runs on its own timing.

You have been through a lot. The grief you are carrying now is layered — by the caregiving, the waiting, the decisions, the images, the complicated feelings, the missing of someone you love. That is a lot to hold.

You do not have to sort through all of it right now. You just have to get through today. And make sure that you're taking care of yourself with the same intention that you cared for your loved one. Because you deserve that.

If you need more support, we are here to help.

Help Texts delivers grief support straight to your phone — compassionate, research-based, and available whenever you need it. No appointments. No pressure. Just gentle guidance to get you through your hardest days.

Start today for $9.99/mo.

What Does "Grieving Properly" Actually Mean?

The idea that there is a right way to grieve is one of the most persistent and harmful myths about loss. For decades, pop psychology promoted the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) as a linear roadmap, but grief is not a straight line and doesn’t have a finish line.

Clinicians and thanatologists agree on the fact that healthy grieving is grief that is felt, processed, and integrated, not avoided, suppressed, or rushed.

According to a research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, SMS has played a critical role in the advancement of mobile health, this is because support works best when it is accessible, consistent, and ongoing, not a single intervention at the moment of loss.

Help Texts delivers expert-written, personalized grief support via text message, making it available to people wherever they are. Our published research shows 95% acceptability rate and 90% six-month retention, Help Texts reaches grieving people in 61 countries and 28 languages, guided by a team of thanatologists and grief specialists.

Get Help Texts for only $9.99 USD/month.

Source: Dobson, R., Whittaker, R., Abroms, L. C., Bramley, D., Free, C., McRobbie, H., Stowell, M., & Rodgers, A. (2024). Don’t Forget the Humble Text Message: 25 Years of Text Messaging in Health. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, e59888. https://doi.org/10.2196/59888

Our grief expert Melissa Lunardini recently sat down to unpack something important: technology and AI are not the same thing, and for people navigating loss, that distinction matters.

Hospice bereavement programs face significant barriers: staff shortages, difficulty reaching hard-to-reach populations (older adults, men, rural communities, non-English speakers), geographic and transportation limitations, and low engagement with traditional outreach methods like voicemails and mailers. Consequently, only a small percentage of grieving family members who need support actually receive it. This presentation introduces an innovative solution: Help Texts, a clinically sound text-based grief support program that meets people where they are. Grounded in contemporary grief and coping models and aligned with a public health approach to bereavement care, Help Texts delivers ongoing support, information, and encourages adaptive coping behaviors via text messages offered as a hospice benefit. Attendees will hear compelling research data demonstrating high retention rates, strong satisfaction scores, and particularly positive outcomes among traditionally underserved populations, including older adults and men. These findings suggest text-based grief support effectively overcomes traditional barriers and offers an accessible, equitable, and impactful way to expand quality bereavement care.

Melissa Lunardini, Head of Clinical at Help Texts, and Lianna Titcombe, a certified hospice and palliative care veterinarian, one of Help Texts' expert contributors, speak together about pet loss, and their new service that delivers a full year of personalized support via text, when a beloved pet dies. The pet loss grief segment demonstrates the organization's commitment to addressing diverse forms of grief and fostering a compassionate and understanding community. Help Texts uses the simplicity and ubiquity of text messaging to deliver timely and empathetic support to people who may be struggling to find inclusive support or an appropriate outlet for our grief.

There is an urgent need to provide bereavement training and support to nurses and social workers, as a way to improve employee morale, reduce burnout, and eliminate avoidable workplace errors

There’s a movement afoot, and as the new broadway beetlejuice show suggests; It’s all about death. From death cafes and death over dinner, to the surge in new netflix shows like dead to me and after life, new life is pouring into old conversations about death.