Coloring Books to Help with Grieving

After Oakwood, OH cremation services, as the process of grieving fully sets in for both adults and children who’ve lost loved ones, the emotions start coming hard, strong, and from all over the place. They can seem overwhelming and consuming. Sorting through emotions and putting them in perspective is part of the journey that turns the bonfire of intense grief into the perpetual simmering flame of loving and missing someone.

While coloring used to be considered a children’s activity, a plethora of adult coloring books are now on the market. Coloring is a quiet activity that allows your brain to work on other things that it needs to take care of, which can promote good emotional health.

While children should be encouraged to express their feelings through artwork and crafts, adults should consider doing the same so they can understand what they’re feeling, analyze what and why they’re feeling these things, and then make peace with those feelings, whether that means holding on or letting go (because both of these have to happen at different points during the grieving process).

Coloring is a safe way to process grief. Adults are reminded of their own childhoods when they had nothing to worry about but coloring pages in a coloring book. This helps to let some of the burdens of grief go for a short time. Coloring is also immersive, so it requires awareness and focus, which gives the brain a tremendous overload processing break. It doesn’t mean you don’t think about other things while you’re coloring, but it gives you a chance to tackle them one by one instead of all at once.

There are coloring books that have been specifically created for grieving adults and children. They may be helpful in the early days when grief is intense and the emotional floodgates have been opened.

The Lonely Tree is one such coloring book. This coloring book has been created by Nicholas Halliday for grieving children. The story relates how an old oak tree has died and an evergreen tree is grieving for it.

Remembering Dad is a coloring book for adults who’ve lost their fathers. The artist Nami Nakamura use art to process her grief when she lost her father, and the experience inspired her to create this coloring book to help other adult children cope with the grief of losing their dads.

How I Feel is a children’s coloring book created by Dr. Alan Wolfelt, a highly-regarded educator and grief expert. In it, he encourages children to explore not only their own grief emotions, but the grief emotions they see other people express, and then gives simple explanations of them.

Bereavement and Grief is an adult coloring book (with a three-month grief journal where ideas and thoughts can be written down) created by JC Grace that goes through the various stages of the grieving.

Colors of Loss and Healing was created by Dr. Deborah S. Dermen. Dermen is a first-hand expert in loss: she saw her parents die in a plane crash and her husband died prematurely when their children were quite small. She is a bereavement counselor who wanted to give adults a creative outlet to get through the tough times of grieving and to move toward healing.

If you would like information about grief resources as part of Oakwood, OH cremation services, our compassionate and experienced staff at Glickler Funeral Home & Cremation Service can help. You can come by our funeral home at 1849 Salem Ave., Dayton, OH 45406, or you can contact us today at (937) 278-4287.