Navigating Loss with Journaling
Working as an expressive arts therapist and mental health counselor, I look for opportunities to infuse creative practices into my work to help clients make meaning from life’s challenges. Adopting a regular journaling practice, for example, encourages my clients to express their feelings and clarify their thoughts. As a lifelong journal writer myself, I have used the practice as a mainstay for my mental health, particularly during the years after my husband’s death in 2016.
Studies have shown that directed journaling can positively impact the grieving process to make meaning and reduce prolonged states of grief, while opening the bereaved to the possibility of using other creative outlets to work with their loss experience (Thompson & Neimeyer, 2014).
In the days and weeks following my husband’s passing, I searched in quiet desperation for a note or a letter that showed he was thinking of me before he died. I emptied cabinets and shelves, scattering papers across the floor. I dumped out his dresser drawers and painstakingly searched through his clothing, hoping to find shreds of evidence that we were still connected beyond the grave. After weeks of searching, I finally gave up. Charlie left no words of comfort to hold onto, no tether between worlds.
Then one day I was cleaning my bedroom when the vacuum cleaner brushed against something under the bed. I reached below and pulled out a leather-bound journal. I was baffled. It wasn’t mine and I couldn’t recall ever seeing Charlie with it when he was alive. Curious, I settled myself on the bedroom floor and unfastened the latch. My heart lifted when I saw Charlie’s elegant handwriting. It was his.
I flipped through the first few pages and discovered that he started keeping it in the early days of his health crisis, before Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) stole his ability to write. Only a handful of somber entries, followed by a sea of empty pages, populated his journal.
A pang of sorrow began welling up inside me and I gave myself over to it. I closed my eyes as the memories from our 16-month journey navigating the challenges of ALS began to play like a slideshow in my mind. Adjusting to Charlie’s absence felt insurmountable but I wasn’t interested in orienting my grieving to the methodical task of finding closure and moving on as some grief therapies might advise (Boss, 2006). I wanted to find a lasting connection to nourish me through my grief. Yet here I was, sad and alone in my bedroom with Charlie’s journal in my hands.
This was my first significant loss, and my identity was deeply tied to his. M. Katherine Shear (2016), an expert on loss and grief from Columbia University, explains that a major characteristic of strong loving relationships is interdependence, a reliance on one another that ultimately shapes our sense of self. She states, “...the people we love define who we are so when we lose them we are confused about our very selves, disoriented and lost.” (Shear, M. K., 2016).
Suddenly, I sensed that Charlie’s journal could be a portal where we might reunite in intimacy. I made the decision to make the rest of it a book of letters addressed to him. The human need to make meaning from life’s challenges is universal. According to the Clinical Handbook of Bereavement and Grief Reactions, “As homo-narrans we organically seek to make meaning of our lives in storied terms.” (D. Alves et al., 2018).
My letters to Charlie transported me back to the intimacy of our relationship and became a creative way to channel my shock at suddenly being without him into something I could metabolize. It became a safe place for me to engage with existential questions and the mysteries concerning life and death (Knill, 1999). Ultimately, it helped me set the pace for my journey with sorrow.
Meeting people in my practice who experience loss or other difficulties makes me sympathetic to their journey. Together we explore the vicissitudes of life and find creative ways through them. Journaling helps in that process and allows us to take one conscious step at a time.
Eric Mulholland, MA, LMP, EXAT, LMHCA
