Grief hits hard. It can be sudden — being fired from your job, your house lost to fire, a loved one gone in an instant. Or it can grow slowly, starting with small bits of emotional pain, such as from a chronic disease leading to increasing disability, emotional distance from a loved one widening over the years, or a partner besieged by dementia. These small bits combine and persist until you are under a weight so heavy that you can finally name it: GRIEF.
Sometimes grief comes camouflaged as “normal life,” leaving you grappling to identify the reasons for feeling bereft. Any transition, even a seemingly positive one, can trigger this feeling – from moving to another city for work, committing to a relationship, having a child, or the retirement of a spouse. The ending of any of the various eras of life can trigger grief; a mourning for what your life was and for who you were before this transition.
Whatever shape grief takes, it has a profound impact and needs attention. Writing about your grief can help to lighten the weight of it. In a 2023 interview, Lisa Shulman, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology at the University of Maryland and author of Before and After Loss: A Neurologist’s Perspective on Loss, Grief, and Our Brain explained,
The brain’s response to traumatic loss can result in disorientation and heightened anxiety that can disrupt sleep and increase disturbing dreams by night and intrusive thoughts, such as flashbacks, by day. Understanding these brain mechanisms has led to interventions such as journaling and art therapy that help reconnect emotional and cognitive memories.
Brittany Cowart, LCSW, the Grief Services Director at The Full Circle Grief Center, describes the many benefits of journaling during grief, such as:
- Grief journaling offers a simple outlet that requires only a pen and paper, or computer/tablet.
- Journaling does not require us to talk out loud if we are not ready.
- We can take small but solid and honest steps forward, which is the only way through grief.
- According to grief experts, the task of reconstructing our personal self-narrative is critical in the healing process. Grief journaling is one way of allowing ourselves the safe, judgment free space for genuine re-telling and healing to take place.
Journaling is a time to set aside any external considerations and allow yourself to express all that is happening inside of you without worry or censure. Inevitably, strong emotions will arise, whether it’s shock, a sense of being overwhelmed or even a loss of hope. It is valuable not to hold back when writing about your feelings, especially those that seem unacceptable.
Remember, this is only for you, only for your use, your release, your private experience. So, feel free to write down the darkest thoughts you have, particularly feelings of guilt, intrusive memories or recurrent disturbing regrets that might be troubling you. Feel free to express any unbidden anger that might arise, at yourself, at others, at the one you have lost. In this way, the pain of the loss can be borne more easily, the emotional chaos permeating the days and nights can be punctuated by a space to breathe, even a little.
Dr. Shulman describes her personal experience of journaling to process her grief while losing her husband to cancer,
It wasn’t just effective for getting things off my chest. It was also meditative and allowed me to get at the heart of what I was so distressed about. It was also extremely helpful to read my own words about what was happening. So often when we experience emotional trauma the enormity of it is overwhelming. Giving it a concrete description causes it to feel more manageable. And taking the time to put my emotions into words helped me get in touch with and identify the distress I was feeling.
Cowart offers journaling tips from Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, authored by Natalie Goldberg, including:
- Keep your hands moving.
- Do not pause to reread the line you have just written.
- Do not cross out. Even if you write something you did not mean to write, leave it, let it be.
- Do not worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
- Do not think or be logical. Let your right brain take over.
- Keep it simple (…you may choose to) journal on a grief emotion, use a sentence starter or a grief journal prompt, or draw/paint your grief.
And journaling prompts, such as:
- Today, I am really missing…
- The hardest time of day is…
- I have been feeling a lot of…
- I feel most connected to my loved one when…
- I can honor my loved one by…
- A comforting memory of my loved one is…
- Some of my grief triggers are…
- I could use more of…
- I could use less of…
- I am grateful for…
- My favorite memory of my loved one is…
- My most difficult memory of my loved one is…because…this memory makes me feel…
As an alternative to these prompts, she goes on to suggest writing a love letter to your loved one:
- Tell them what you love and appreciate about them.
- Recall a favorite memory the two of you shared.
- Tell them what has been going on in your life since their death i.e. how you have grown and changed. How you remember and honor them.
When a loss is experienced, whether it is about a personal loss, someone you care about who is declining or has passed away, or even a public figure you admired who has died, it is normal to be reminded quite viscerally of your own mortality. This can weave through the grief of loss, underscoring it deeply. It is equally important not to censor these types of concerns – your own health, life, future – in the face of loss. These concerns are human and natural, and it is necessary to consider all that is occurring to you during this tumultuous time. There is no right or wrong, no proper or improper thing to feel or think about.
Being leveled by grief is incredibly personal, and it is also universal. At some point we will all lose something or someone precious to us and pay a substantial emotional toll. Each person grieves in a unique way, depending on their nature and life circumstances. For instance, some might be given to bouts of gallows humor, some to inconsolable crying, some to brooding silence, some to excessively focusing on practical things. Many people cycle through all these reactions.
Even within families, people’s grief can be experienced on different levels and in different ways at any given time. Because of this, it is crucial that we give endless amounts of grace to ourselves and to others. And since there is no timeline for grief, this offering of grace is integral to more harmonious and steadfast relationships going forward. Writing about all your reactions to others during this time, whether you feel heartbroken for them, angry at them, distant from them, etc., can help.
Grief is life-altering. Often it becomes difficult to recognize ourselves or our lives through the cloud of pain. Routine activities can feel alternately comforting and absurd. It can feel impossible to imagine anything else, to imagine it will ever be different. Taking the time to feel and express your emotions within this private sanctuary of writing can bring you back to a somewhat softer place, can offer snippets of clarity, and allow for a much-needed space to breathe.