The How Are You
Navigating loaded questions
This is the moment you've been building toward. Answering 'how are you?' when the honest answer is too heavy for small talk — except now the stakes are real and there's no rehearsal. What you do next matters.
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Part of this story
The Empty Chair
→The holidays. The birthday. The ordinary Tuesday that used to be ordinary. Navigate the empty chair at the table.
Part of the quest
First Loss
→The phone call that changes everything, the gathering you're not ready for, the empty chair at the table, and learning to carry someone forward in memory. Navigate grief for the first time.
What you'll learn from The How Are You
This scenario focuses on Navigating loaded questions — a critical skill inside the broader grief & loss domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Empty Chair, a full interactive story inside the First Loss quest.
Skills you'll build in First Loss
More scenarios in this quest
The chair at the head of the table is empty. Thanksgiving, a birthday, a random Tuesday — the absence is loudest in the ordinary moments that used to be full.
What started with the empty chair just got more complicated. Now you need to develop rituals for honoring absence during holidays and milestones — and the situation is shifting faster than your first approach can handle.
You've faced the hardest part. Now turn what you've learned into something sustainable — a way to develop rituals for honoring absence during holidays and milestones not just today, but every time this situation returns.
Ready to practice Navigating loaded questions?
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