Fifteen minutes, five segments. This one deliberately promises nothing. Read the opening exactly as written — it sets the terms the rest depends on.
What this is and isn't
2 min[normal speaking voice, no softness yet — this segment is a contract with the listener and needs to sound like one]
This is fifteen minutes for sitting with a loss. It won't ask you to let anything go, move through a stage, find a lesson, or feel better by the end. Those things get asked of grieving people constantly and most of them are unhelpful.
You can stop at any point. If it becomes too much, opening your eyes and looking around the room is enough — that isn't failing at this. [pause for 10 seconds]
Sit or lie however you want. Eyes open or closed. Have something to hand you might need — water, a blanket, tissues. [pause for 20 seconds — soften slightly from here, but only slightly]
The body first
3 min[keep it physical and undemanding — grief is exhausting and the body is usually holding a great deal]
Start with the weight of you. Wherever you're sitting or lying, let it take you. You have been holding yourself up for a while. [pause for 25 seconds]
Grief sits in the body more than people expect. Often the chest, or the throat, or a kind of heaviness in the arms. See where yours is today, without trying to move it. [pause for 30 seconds]
And notice that it moves. It's not the same today as last week, and it won't be the same this evening. That isn't progress. It's just weather. [pause for 30 seconds]
Making room
4 min[the longest silences in the script are here — do not fill them, whatever the impulse]
Whatever is here, let it be here. If it's sadness, let it be sadness. If it's anger, or numbness, or a strange flatness where you expected to feel something — all of those are grief too, and the flat days frighten people more than the hard ones. [long pause — 45 seconds]
You don't have to cry, and you don't have to not cry. Both are fine and neither means anything about how much you loved them. [long pause — 45 seconds]
If guilt is in here somewhere — the thing you didn't say, the visit you didn't make, the relief you weren't supposed to feel — let that be in the room as well. Nearly everyone has one, and almost nobody says it out loud. [long pause — 60 seconds]
Something specific
4 min[invite, never insist — and give the escape route in the same breath as the invitation]
If you want to, bring one specific thing to mind. Not the whole of them and not the ending — one small ordinary detail. The way they answered the phone. How they stood in a kitchen. Something they always said.
And if you'd rather not today, don't. Stay with the weight of the body instead — that's a complete practice on its own. [long pause — 60 seconds]
Whatever came, let it stay as long as it wants. You're not visiting it to make it hurt less. You're just letting it be somewhere other than folded away. [long pause — 75 seconds]
Coming back
2 min[bring the voice up gradually; the last two lines are the ones that matter and must not be cut]
Start to come back to the room. The surface underneath you. The sounds outside. [pause for 25 seconds, then begin lifting the voice]
Move your hands. Take a fuller breath. Be gentle with what you do next — this takes more out of people than it looks like it should, so if you can have a slow half hour afterwards, take it. [pause for 10 seconds]
One last thing. Sitting with this alone helps, but it isn't a substitute for people. If you're carrying it mostly by yourself, tell someone this week — a friend, your doctor, or a bereavement service where you live. Grief is not meant to be a solo practice, and nobody manages it well as one.