How to Return to the App After a Lapse

Colleen, a 52-year-old nurse practitioner, downloaded Grief Companion four months ago when her 14-year-old dog died. She used it for a few weeks, then life got busy and the grief got quieter, and she put the app away. Now she's opened it again — not for the dog exactly, though that's still there too — but because something else has surfaced: an estrangement from her adult daughter that she hasn't let herself look at properly. She's not sure where to start. She's worried the app will make her feel bad for disappearing.

It won't.

Steps

1. Open the app after an absence

When you open Grief Companion after any period away — days, weeks, months — the app greets you with a welcome-back screen:

"Welcome back. There's no timeline for grief."

This is the only thing the app says about your absence. It does not tell you how long you were away. It does not say "you haven't checked in in 4 months." It does not ask what happened. It just says: welcome back.

The welcome-back screen has one button: Continue. Tap it to go to your dashboard.

2. The app does not mention how long you were away

Nowhere in the app — not on the dashboard, not in your journal, not in any notification — will you see a reference to your absence. Your streak counter (if you had one before) does not display the gap. Your check-in history shows your last check-in date without commentary.

This is by design. Grief Companion is built around the understanding that people move toward and away from their grief at different times. An absence is not a failure.

3. Add a new grief type to your profile if your needs have changed

If you're returning because something new has surfaced — a new loss, a new kind of grief, something you weren't ready to look at before — you can add it to your profile without replacing what you entered originally.

Go to Settings → My Grief Profile and tap + Add Grief Type. Select from the list of grief types, optionally add a name or word for what you're grieving, and save. Your profile now reflects both your original grief and your new one.

The app adapts: daily prompts, education articles, and assessment questions will begin to reflect your expanded profile. Your old grief type remains in your history — nothing is removed.

4. Your old journal entries are still there, untouched

Every journal entry you wrote before your absence is preserved exactly as you left it. Open the Journal tab and scroll through — you'll see your old entries with their original dates, emotion tags, and content. Nothing has been archived, summarized, or flagged as old.

If you want to read your past entries to re-orient yourself, you can. If you'd rather start fresh without looking back, you can do that too.

5. Write a new entry — the app adapts

Tap + New Entry in the Journal tab. If you've added a new grief type to your profile, the guided prompt option will offer prompts relevant to your updated profile. The free-form option is exactly as it's always been: a blank page.

Your first entry back doesn't need to be about the absence. It doesn't need to be about picking up where you left off. It can be about right now, whatever right now is.

6. Take a new grief dimension assessment — previous results shown alongside new ones

If you want to see where you are now relative to where you were before, go to Assess and take a new grief dimension assessment. The assessment takes about five minutes.

When you see your results, your previous assessment results are displayed in lighter shading behind your new radar chart — so you can see immediately what has changed and what hasn't. There is no label saying "you regressed" or "you improved." The two shapes are shown side by side, and the meaning is yours to make.

What to Expect

Returning after a lapse is not a special state in the app — it is a normal use pattern. The app is designed for people who use it intensively for a while, then not at all, then intensively again. Grief works that way. Grief Companion follows the same rhythm.

If you had a Plus or Pro subscription that lapsed during your absence, your account remains accessible on the Free tier. Your data is preserved regardless of your subscription status. If you want to re-enable your paid features, go to Settings → Subscription.

There is no "re-onboarding" flow when you return. The app simply shows you your dashboard, updated to reflect today.

note

All historical data — journal entries, memories, check-ins, assessments, and self-care logs — is preserved indefinitely, regardless of how long you've been away.