How the Writing Process Can Help You Heal | Strategies for Compiling a Journal
When a loved one dies, particularly someone with whom you lived and spent much of your time, you can experience a wide range of emotions. You feel unanchored, searching for something to hang onto in the absence of your loved one. You may experience many of the common emotions that accompany grief—anger, sadness, depression or insecurity. You may be uncertain how to move forward on your own.
There are many strategies for coping with or working through loss, but one of the most effective (and least intrusive) methods is through journaling—taking pen and paper (or computer and word processing program) to help clarify your feelings, and to reflect on your emotions, moods and actions. Keeping a journal can bring a sense of order to your life, help you address and even solve specific problems and even help minimize sleep disorders.
Why Is Journaling Effective for Dealing with Grief?
When you’re grieving, it’s generally fueled by the thoughts and words running through your brain. As long as those thoughts and words stay inside you, they’ll always be there, either whispering in the background or clamoring for your attention. When you get the words and thoughts out, either through conversations or with writing, you’ve typically taken great strides to clarify them. Once you’ve clarified them, they typically lose their mystery and become much easier to accept and deal with. Putting words on paper or out loud to others makes them less proximate, with less impact on your daily life.
What Should Your Journal Look Like?
That’s entirely up to you. It can be a nice, leather-bound volume or it can be a legal pad. Complete sentences are fine, but not necessary. Sometimes, the conflicting emotions you’re feeling can only come out as single words. When they do, just write them down. It’s not a homework assignment or something you’re preparing for publication, so don’t worry about things like syntax, punctuation, spelling and grammar. Chances are good that you’ll understand what you were writing about at the time.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of a Grief Journal
While there are no rules for how you create your journal or what your entries should say or address, there are some things you can do to help make the process as helpful, effective and meaningful as possible:
- Try as best you can to remember that nothing is off-limits—If you’ve got something nagging at you, it needs to get out. Every emotion is worth exploring. Engaging in self-censorship will likely make it harder and more time-consuming to get through the grieving process. It can be scary to simply open your mind to whatever is there, but you may be surprised at where it takes you.
- When you’re stuck, just keep writing—Don’t worry that you’re repeating yourself. There’s much to be learned by observing what keeps coming back over and over. When you’re hesitating, turn your brain off and let your heart move your hands. Trust the intuitive and emotional side of your brain and leave the logical function out.
- Dump the editor—This is not for publication, so it doesn’t have to be artful, articulate or exact. It’s better to have free flow than to try to conform to some sense of the “right” way of doing it. That includes any need for correct grammar, spelling, punctuation or other structural components.
- Have the courage to confront deep emotions—when you’re starting to get to the rawest parts of your emotions, don’t be surprised if the pen wants to stop. Keep it going.
How Often Should You Write in Your Journal?
One of the primary benefits of keeping a journal is the potentially repetitive nature of the activity, as well as your entries. There’s cumulative benefit and power to writing over and over about the same emotions and issues, and the power is enhanced when it’s done consistently. Ideally, you’ll start out by writing in the journal every day, if only for 10-15 minutes. Keep that practice up for at least three months and see where you are.
What Happens If You’re Truly Stuck?
Have some standard questions you can ask yourself to prime your emotional pump, if necessary. Those questions may include:
- What is your happiest memory of the deceased?
- What did you learn from the deceased?
- What do you wish you had said to the deceased?
Gutterman’s and Gutterman Warheit—Serving the Jewish Community for Five Generations
At Gutterman’s and Gutterman Warheit, we have provided comprehensive funeral and burial services to Jewish people in New York and Florida for decades, handling all the details of a funeral and burial services after the death of a loved one. We can help you prepare the order of service for the memorial, choose a suitable monument or marker, create a Yahrzeit calendar or prepare to sit Shiva, among other things. We will also be your liaison with the Chevra Kadisha, ensuring the proper preparation of the body for burial under Jewish practices. We provide comprehensive funeral and burial services to individuals and families from all Jewish traditions.
If you need assistance with funeral and burial preparations after the death of a loved one, or simply want to learn how we can be of service to you, call us at one of the numbers provided below. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist you.
Gutterman’s & Gutterman Warheit — Where Relationships Matter
Family Owned and Operated Since 1892
Rockville Centre: (516)764-9400 | Woodbury: (516)921-5757 | Brooklyn: (718)284-1500
Boca Raton, FL: (561)997-9900 | (800)992-9262