A written guide for bereaved parents who need help answering questions, writing texts, replying to cards, handling school or workplace messages, and speaking in family settings without having to compress a child, a loss, or a life into a short explanation. It gives language prompts, decision rules, short scripts, and boundary statements for real time use.

It's not "How are you?" — that one is brutal, but most bereaved parents develop a reflex for it eventually.

The question they actually dread is: "What happened?"

Not because they don't want to talk about their child. They do. But because every context demands a different answer, and they don't have the energy to calibrate in real time.

At work, "what happened" needs to be short enough that it doesn't derail a meeting. In a text, it needs to be honest without becoming a burden on the reader. At school pickup, it needs to acknowledge reality without inviting follow-up questions from people who mean well but don't know what to do with the answer.

Here's what I've learned building communication tools for bereaved parents:

The problem isn't grief. The problem is translation. Parents are forced to take the most overwhelming experience of their lives and convert it into digestible language for other people — dozens of times, in dozens of contexts, without preparation.

Most parents end up doing one of three things:

1. Over-explaining — because they feel guilty being vague about their child

2. Under-explaining — "I'm fine" — because they're exhausted

3. Avoiding — dodging people, events, and conversations entirely

None of these feel right because none of them are designed. They're survival responses.

The alternative is building a small set of prepared responses — sorted by situation, by relationship, by how much you're willing to share on that particular day.

That's what the Green / Amber / Red system does. Green: full disclosure. Amber: partial, honest, boundaried. Red: minimal, protective, complete.

You don't owe anyone your whole story. But you deserve to have words ready when the world asks for one.