Writing our way through grief doesn't make the grief go away, but it can help us to find new ways to live with it and new relationships with those we've lost.
As I write this, tomorrow will be one year since we lost Dad.
One year ago today, I had not yet discovered that it isn’t true, that old saying, about how time is a great healer. It isn’t true that grief and pain at losing someone we loved so very much lessens or fades with time.
What happens instead, at least for me, is that the feelings shape-shift.
I think of the feelings now as a bit like the small stream that runs across the muddy field at the edge of the town where I live. Some days, I can hardly hear the stream at all. It mutters to itself at the edge of the field.
On other days, the stream is swollen with rain, collecting the run-off from the surrounding hills. The water gathers force. It is so loud that I can hear it from the top of the track.
And then, just as suddenly, it disappears under the road, only to emerge in the next field, cacophonous, insistent. I have crouched there and held my hand in the water and it is too cold for me to keep it there for long.
Twisted up in that stream are many griefs.
All last winter, I walked to the stream to tell it my sorrows. There is the loss of Dad, the ways that I might have disappointed him, the words I didn’t say. But there is also my grief at the loss of lives I have not lived, paths I have not followed, other lost relationships. There is the grief I feel for a world that, some days, seems so wrong and broken. (Even now, they are building houses on the flood plain of this field, putting in extra drainage, cutting down hedgerows.)
This year has been a year of living bravely and deeply. This year has been a year in which I’ve turned to writing, to the page, to my notebook, for comfort. This is what emerged in my free writing this morning:
Sometimes we don’t know how to begin so we begin somewhere and gradually, putting one word in front of another, one phrase, one sentence, we move - forward - maybe it doesn’t feel like forward… but then one day, we pause and look back, perhaps read back over our words and realise how far we’ve swum, climbed, shifted, perhaps some days we’ve even danced. One word in front of another. One day joined to another. One thought following another thought. Dad, I don’t know where you are – in the trees or in the wind singing, in this silver ring you made or the robin that comes to my garden – but I know you are not gone.
One year on, I am thankful for this journaling practice that has helped me to join one day to another. I am thankful for all of the members of WRITE! Club, our beautiful community of kindness, who have gently and kindly witnessed my grief.
If you too are grieving, I wish you a soft place to land, a space where your words can lead you from one moment to another.
When we lose someone or something beloved, we lose a part of ourselves, and possibilities that we can never recover. This year, I have learned that it is not about trying to mend or move on from that, but about allowing room for the loss to keep flowing. By letting the feelings move, even if that movement is sometimes deep underground, in the dark, cold places that are too difficult to visit for very long, we can find a way to continue to live.
How to start using writing and journaling to acknowledge grief and loss
If you too are using your writing to acknowledge difficult things – pain, loss, grief – here are a few ideas that I have found helpful:
- Be kind to yourself. Write to yourself in soft, soothing tones, as you would talk to a grieving friend.
- Go gently. There is no need to write about anything that is just too difficult. If the pain feels too much, put down your pen, take a breath, stretch, move your body. If you can, go outside and let yourself be for a while.
- Create containers. Set up structures to hold your writing. On any given day, your container might be:
- Time – Set a timer and write for three minutes.
- Shape – Start with a spiral. Or draw a circle and write things inside or outside it. Create structures with tape, collage, coloured pens or whatever feels right and fill them with your words. Experiment with writing on a very big piece of paper or a very small one.
- Form – Write a haiku. Write a letter. Write a still-life description.
- Physical – Find an envelope and put your words inside it. Seal it, sleep with it under your pillow, rip it up, burn it, bury it.
- Time – Set a timer and write for three minutes.
- Be curious about what might happen. See all of the above.
- Dialogue with your writing. Have a conversation with your writing in the margins or around the edges or in between the lines.
- Be even kinder towards yourself than you think you need to be.
And if you're looking for support to explore difficult feelings, please do check out WRITE! Club. We are a very friendly online writing group and we would love to welcome you and your writing, in whatever stage of grieving that you find yourself. WRITE! Club membership includes supportive co-writing sessions and access to lots of self-paced courses and resources that will help you to establish a journaling and creative writing practice that supports your wellbeing and inspires your creativity. Find out more about WRITE! Club membership here.
