July is Bereaved Parents Awareness Month, acknowledging the thousands of parents who have experienced the unimaginable: the death of a child. Every year in the United States, almost 37,000 children die before their 18th birthday. It happened in my family, too: My uncle died at 13 in a swimming accident at summer camp not long after his bar mitzvah. This was in the early 1950s, before mental health was mainstream (and, even now, it’s not mainstream enough). There were few resources for parents or family members; both my dad and my grandmother rarely mentioned my uncle’s name, Marshall, which is now my son Peter’s middle name.

These days, there are more resources for people doing the unthinkable mourning of a child. There are also resources for community members who want to provide support but might not know quite what to say or how to say it—and this is important: Most parents really do want their friends and neighbors to say something, to remember their child. They already know that their child has died; expressing sympathy isn’t going to make them remember all over again.

If you want to support someone—or are struggling yourself—here are five writers to follow.

Sarah Wildman, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, writes prolifically about experiencing the death of her teenage daughter Orli to liver cancer, sometimes through a Jewish lens. Orli was also a prolific writer, as is her sister, Hana. Orli received a liver transplant at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Jayson Greene wrote “Once More We Saw Stars” about the death of his toddler, Greta, who was hit by a dislodged brick that fell from an apartment building while with her grandmother. It covers guilt, survival, the brutal mundanity and freak cruelty of everyday life and the lonely punishment of navigating among people who will never comprehend this kind of pain—with room for optimism and love again in the form of a new baby, Harrison.

In the mid-1980s, Deborah Spungen wrote the now-classic “And I Don’t Want to Live This Life” about the brutal 1978 killing of her daughter, Nancy, by punk rock icon Sid Vicious on the first floor of the Chelsea Hotel, a Manhattan countercultural hub for generations. The Spungens were a fairly traditional middle-class Jewish family, shaken by Nancy’s rebellious streak and worried about her mental health problems. Instead of college, she took off for Manhattan and London as a teenager, becoming addicted to drugs—and to Sid. Her murder at the Chelsea was lurid and later legendary as conspiracy theories swirled; Spungen offers candid reflection and context. Years later, she spoke to JewishBoston about “Table for One,” her memoir about widowhood.

Nobody chronicles the Jewish lifecycle quite like local author Anita Diamant, whose “Saying Kaddish” offers a Jewish perspective on beliefs and customs around grief and dying, from both spiritual and practical angles: It’s totally accessible and nonjudgmental.

And in “Unthinkable,” Congressman Jamie Raskin reflects on the suicide of his bright, accomplished, 25-year-old Harvard Law School student son, Tommy. Raskin’s memoir is set against the backdrop of the January 2021 insurrection. Raskin was left to contemplate how he might have missed the cues of Tommy’s longstanding depression—all while trying to navigate enormous political turmoil, within the span of weeks.