Grief & Loss Resources
Grief is a deeply personal response to loss. It may follow the death of someone you love, but grief can also occur after the end of a relationship, a major life transition, pregnancy loss, the death of a pet, a serious medical diagnosis, or another significant change.
There is no single “right” way to grieve and no universal timeline for healing. Some people want to talk about their loss, while others need quiet, information, community, creative expression, or simply time. Grief can also change over time. A loss that feels manageable one day may feel overwhelming again around holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or unexpected reminders.
The following resources can help individuals and families in Knoxville, East Tennessee, and across the United States find information, support groups, podcasts, articles, and specialized grief services.
Knoxville & East Tennessee Grief Resources
GriefShare — Knoxville Groups
GriefShare is a structured, group-based grief support program offered through churches and community organizations throughout the country. Multiple Knoxville-area churches currently host GriefShare groups, and locations and schedules change throughout the year.
GriefShare may be especially helpful for adults who would like a structured, faith-based environment in which to learn about grief and connect with other people who have experienced the death of someone close to them.
Current Knoxville groups can be found through the GriefShare Knoxville group directory.
The Compassionate Friends — Knoxville
Compassionate Friends provides peer support to parents, grandparents, and siblings following the death of a child. Unlike general bereavement groups, The Compassionate Friends focuses specifically on the experience of losing a child, regardless of the child's age or cause of death.
The Knoxville HOPE Chapter offers an opportunity to connect with other families who understand this particular form of grief. The national organization also provides online communities, educational materials, and additional grief resources.
Survivors of Suicide Loss Support Group
Survivors of Suicide Loss Support Group is specifically for adults grieving the death of a significant person by suicide.
Suicide loss can bring additional layers of grief, including unanswered questions, guilt, anger, trauma, stigma, and difficulty understanding why the death occurred. Being with other suicide-loss survivors can provide a type of understanding that may be difficult to find in a general grief group.
The group currently meets in Knoxville and Maryville and asks new participants to contact the facilitator before attending.
Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network
The Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network maintains a list of suicide-loss support groups throughout Tennessee, including several Knoxville-area options.
The directory includes programs for people grieving a suicide death. Because locations and meeting schedules can change, check the current directory before attending.
Find Tennessee suicide-loss grief support
Mane Support
Located west of Knoxville in Rockwood, Mane Support Inc is a nonprofit grief counseling organization providing equine-assisted grief support.
Programs serve children, teenagers, and adults who have experienced a death, are anticipating the death of someone they know, or are dealing with other forms of loss and trauma.
Mane Support's activities with horses take place on the ground rather than through therapeutic riding. The organization incorporates approaches such as equine-assisted work, art, journaling, discussion, and other experiential activities.
This may be an especially appealing resource for children and teenagers who have difficulty processing grief primarily through conversation.
Cancer Support Community East Tennessee
Cancer Support Community East Tennessee provides support for people affected by cancer, including patients, caregivers, family members, and people grieving a cancer-related death.
Programs include professionally facilitated support groups and bereavement support. This can be particularly valuable when grief has occurred following a lengthy illness or when family members have experienced both caregiving stress and bereavement.
Covenant HomeCare & Hospice Bereavement Support
Covenant HomeCare and Hospice provides hospice and bereavement services in the Knoxville area. Community grief-support programming includes bereavement groups for adults.
Hospice bereavement programs can be useful even when a person does not think of themselves as needing “therapy.” They can provide education about grief, opportunities for connection, and support during the months following a death.
UT Medical Center Hospice
University of TN Medical Center Hospice Services provides hospice services in Knoxville and offers bereavement follow-up and support for families following a death.
Families dealing with anticipatory grief may also benefit from connecting with hospice support before a death occurs.
Grief Resources for Children & Teenagers
Children experience grief differently from adults. Their understanding of death changes as they develop, and children may move in and out of grief quickly. A child might cry about a parent who died and then ask to play five minutes later. This does not mean the child has forgotten the person or is not grieving.
Play, art, storytelling, movement, rituals, and developmentally appropriate conversations can all help children process loss.
Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families
The Dougy Center is one of the most comprehensive national resources for grieving children, teenagers, young adults, and families.
Its free resource library includes activities, tip sheets, articles, podcasts, and specialized information based on the child's age, relationship to the person who died, and circumstances surrounding the death. Resources are also available for parents, caregivers, schools, counselors, and other professionals.
Particularly useful sections include resources for:
Children
Teenagers
Young adults
Parents and caregivers
Schools
Grief after suicide
Grief after a violent death
Advanced serious illness and anticipatory grief
National Alliance for Children's Grief
The National Alliance for Children's Grief provides education and resources specifically related to childhood bereavement.
Families can access support toolkits, information about talking with children about death, educational materials, and a searchable directory for grief-support programs.
This is an excellent starting point for parents who are wondering, “How do I help my child after someone dies?”
Grief Websites & Online Resources
What's Your Grief
What's Your Grief is an extensive online grief-education resource covering many different forms of bereavement.
Topics include coping with grief, understanding grief responses, supporting someone who is grieving, holidays and anniversaries, complicated relationships with people who have died, secondary losses, coping skills, and finding meaning after loss.
It is particularly useful for people who want practical, readable information rather than highly clinical explanations.
Refuge in Grief
Refuge in Grief was created by psychotherapist and author Megan Devine and takes an approach that does not treat grief as a problem that simply needs to be fixed.
Resources focus on understanding grief, learning how to live alongside profound loss, and helping friends, family members, and professionals become better at supporting grieving people.
The Compassionate Friends
The Compassionate Friends is a national organization supporting families after the death of a child.
In addition to local chapters, the organization provides online support and grief information for parents, grandparents, and siblings.
This can be especially important because child loss can feel profoundly isolating, even when someone has supportive friends and family.
MISS Foundation
The MISS Foundation provides support to families experiencing the death of a child at any age and from any cause.
Resources address traumatic grief, child loss, family support, and the long-term process of living after a devastating loss.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
For people who have lost someone to suicide, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention provides information specifically for suicide-loss survivors.
Resources include guidance for coping after suicide loss, connecting with other survivors, remembrance events, and finding support.
National Alliance for Children's Grief
In addition to its resources for parents, the National Alliance for Children's Grief offers a nationwide directory that can help families locate children's grief programs, camps, peer-support groups, counseling, school-based programs, and virtual services.
Helpful Articles
Helping Children Understand Death: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers
Recommended Grief Podcasts
Sometimes listening to someone talk honestly about grief feels easier than reading about it. Podcasts can also reduce the sense that you are the only person experiencing certain thoughts or emotions.
Grief Out Loud
Produced by the Dougy Center, Grief Out Loud combines personal stories, conversations with bereavement professionals, and practical discussions about supporting grieving children, teenagers, adults, and families.
Listen to Grief Out Loud and browse episodes
All There Is with Anderson Cooper
In All There Is, Anderson Cooper explores grief through conversations with people who have experienced significant losses while also discussing his own experiences with the deaths of his father, brother, and mother.
The conversations explore memory, loneliness, love, identity, and what it means to continue living while carrying grief.
What's Your Grief Podcast
The What's Your Grief podcast explores grief from both professional and personal perspectives. Episodes cover different kinds of loss, coping strategies, grief theories, relationships, and the everyday realities of bereavement.
Good Mourning
Good Mourning approaches grief through candid conversations about death and loss. The podcast can be particularly helpful for people who appreciate straightforward discussions about experiences that are often avoided in everyday conversation.
Terrible, Thanks for Asking
Although not exclusively about bereavement, Terrible, Thanks for Asking explores grief, trauma, major life changes, and the complicated reality behind the automatic response that we are “fine.”
Grief After the Death of a Child
The death of a child can profoundly affect parents, siblings, grandparents, marriages, family relationships, identity, and a person's sense of safety in the world.
Helpful resources include:
The Compassionate Friends — Peer support for parents, grandparents, and siblings.
MISS Foundation — Support following the death of a child at any age.
Dougy Center — Resources for surviving siblings and grieving families.
National Alliance for Children's Grief — Resources for helping surviving children and teenagers understand and process a death.
In Knoxville, families may also want to explore the local Compassionate Friends chapter and Mane Support.
Pregnancy & Infant Loss
Pregnancy loss, miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, and infant death can create intense grief that other people sometimes fail to recognize.
Grief may involve not only the death itself but also the loss of expectations, imagined experiences, milestones, and the future a parent expected to have.
People experiencing reproductive or infant loss may benefit from therapists or support groups specifically familiar with pregnancy and infant loss rather than relying solely on general grief resources.
Grief After Suicide
Suicide bereavement can involve grief alongside trauma, shock, guilt, anger, confusion, stigma, and persistent questions about whether something could have been done differently.
Specialized suicide-loss support can be particularly valuable.
Knoxville residents can explore the local Knoxville Suicide Grievers Support Group and other groups listed by the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.
Nationally, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention provides additional resources for survivors of suicide loss.
Anticipatory Grief
Grief does not always begin after a death.
People caring for someone with terminal cancer, dementia, neurological disease, or another life-limiting condition may begin grieving long before the person dies.
Anticipatory grief can include sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger, exhaustion, fear about the future, and grief over gradual changes in the person's abilities or personality.
Hospice organizations can be particularly helpful during this period because their services typically include emotional and family support in addition to medical care.
Pet Loss
For many people, a pet is a family member, attachment figure, daily companion, and important source of emotional support.
The death of a pet can therefore produce profound grief. Unfortunately, people sometimes feel pressure to minimize pet-loss grief because others do not recognize its significance.
Grieving a pet is legitimate. Support groups, memorial rituals, journaling, talking with people who understand the relationship, and counseling can all be helpful.
Books About Grief
Some widely used books on grief and loss include:
It's OK That You're Not OK — Megan Devine
A compassionate alternative to the idea that grief is something people need to quickly “get over.”
Bearing the Unbearable — Joanne Cacciatore
Explores how people learn to live alongside devastating grief rather than erase it.
The Grieving Brain — Mary-Frances O'Connor
Explores the neuroscience of grief and how the brain adapts to the absence of someone deeply connected to us.
Finding Meaning — David Kessler
Explores meaning as an important part of living after loss.
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
A memoir about grief following the sudden death of Didion's husband.
Books can provide comfort and understanding, but no book describes everyone's grief experience. Keep what feels useful and leave what does not.
When Grief Counseling May Help
Grief itself is not a mental illness. Pain following a significant loss is a natural human response to losing someone or something important.
However, counseling can provide a place to process the loss without feeling pressured to protect other people, “move on,” or grieve in a particular way.
You may consider talking with a therapist when grief feels overwhelming, you feel isolated in your experience, the circumstances surrounding the death were traumatic, guilt or anger feels difficult to manage, relationships have been affected, or you simply want a private place to talk about the person and what their death has meant to you.
Children and teenagers may benefit from professional support when they have difficulty expressing grief verbally, show significant behavioral or emotional changes, become highly anxious about additional deaths, struggle at school, withdraw from others, or have experienced a traumatic or sudden death.
Grief Counseling in Knoxville, TN
You do not have to reach a particular level of distress before asking for support.
At Knoxville Counseling Services, therapy can provide a supportive and nonjudgmental space to process grief, understand the emotional impact of loss, develop healthy coping strategies, and begin adjusting to a life that may look very different from the one you expected.
For children, therapy may incorporate developmentally appropriate approaches such as play, art, creative expression, and family involvement. Adults may benefit from individual counseling to explore grief, relationships, identity, trauma, guilt, anger, and the process of finding meaning after loss.
Learn more about grief counseling or schedule an appointment with Knoxville Counseling Services.
Crisis Support
Grief can sometimes become so painful that a person begins thinking about suicide or feels unable to remain safe.
In the United States, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is an immediate life-threatening emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
This resource guide is provided for educational purposes and is not a substitute for medical care, mental health treatment, diagnosis, or emergency services. Support-group schedules, locations, programs, and contact information may change. Contact an organization directly before attending a group or program.