How to Write Through Grief

Step 1: Cry.

Step 2: Cry some more.

Step 3: Repeat Steps 1-2 as necessary.

This is tongue in cheek…but also rooted in experience.

(The Difficulty of Writing Difficult Scenes.)

At some point, writers are confronted with heartbreak so all-consuming that the work we’re passionate about, the craft we’ve always turned to, suddenly feels ungraspable. Not for everyone, of course, because grief lands on everyone differently. But for some, grief shatters, and the writing that’s been the throughline of our lives, the purpose to our days, isn’t something that’s easily slipped back into.

This was my experience after my sweet mom, Patty, passed away. For years, I’d driven back and forth from New York City to Cleveland to take my mom to appointments, to treatment, and to do everything I could to make what she was dealing with easier. But when her health declined, my husband, John, our pup, Kona, and I moved to Cleveland in January of 2021 to be close.

We found the loveliest new rhythm there, along with my sister, Kristie, who regularly visited from Chicago, spending time at our house after Mom’s treatment, cooking for her, cheering on the Guardians together. We watched birds in the backyard and were endlessly entertained by this silly corn cob squirrel feeder we’d gotten. My mom would nap on her favorite couch with Kona. We strolled through the park together. Spent mornings doing yardwork side by side. We delighted in the time and were having so much fun despite my mom’s illness. I’d counted on having years together this way. Convinced myself it was possible.

It wasn’t.

That year we moved to Cleveland, my mom wasn’t with us at Thanksgiving…she’d already embarked upon her next adventure.

I became a shell of myself after my mom passed away. Every day, grief chewed me up and swallowed me whole into its spiky belly. I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t read contemporary novels…and I couldn’t write.

But Susan Cain’s illuminating book, Bittersweet, enveloped me like a hug. In it, she wrote, “Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.” Her words resonated deeply.

But the how of making something my creative offering…the actual getting back to the page, that was tricky. Opening my laptop was a non-starter. Was it because it harkened to the time when my mom was alive, and it meant squaring my shoulders to yet another devastating nuance of how life had irrevocably changed? Or was it because stepping into anything normal felt unreachable? More than likely, it was an emotional mashup of all that.

Over the years, I’ve programmed myself to open a Word doc and write. Writers, we develop habits, do we not? Despite being someone who’s always loved paper and pens, fresh journals and all manner of notebooks, the business of writing has always been the domain of my laptop.

But I had this fresh planner.

A pack of colored pens.

And one wintry morning in 2022, I was sitting on the couch with that planner and those pens, with Kona nestled against me, and a box of Kleenex nearby…and I started to write longhand. Breaking the seal on my words, on this act that my mom had always championed, with her now gone, was emotional. My abiding grief, this sorrow that seemingly had no bottom, every thought that percolated up, I splashed it all across the page. I sobbed. And kept writing.

Each day I did this with my paper, pens, and pup. Emptied my head and heart onto the page. Some days I wrote only a paragraph. Other days, pages poured out of me. And at some point, I don’t know how or why, but the alchemy shifted…and I began rolling over in my mind this kernel of a story that I’d always intended to flesh out. My journaling still held the raw emotion that churned through me, but a subtle change was underway. I started to think about scenes and character. What I couldn’t have known was that journaling started in my deepest grief would be the foundation for my debut novel, Recipe for Joy.

Now, was the bulk of those pages that I scribbled usable? Hardly. They were raw. Messy. Unfocused and intensely personal. But I needed that, shall we say, clearing to make way for words that led to something brand new, words that were usable and eventually would become story shaped. All words matter…but they all don’t make it into the final product. Nor should they.

Looking back, I can recall how uncertain and emotionally bruised I felt starting to write again, how jagged that road was. But giving myself permission to come to the page messy, without a plan, and wrung out from ugly crying was a gift. All my life, my mom cheered on my writing. In high school. In college. When I became a journalist. When I embarked on my novelist career. When I was sitting on the couch with my planner and pens, crying through the words, she was with me. And I like to think that she’s smiling down on me now as I continue to write. Particularly this essay, because it was my mom who gave teenager me my first subscription to Writer’s Digest in the 1980s.

I don’t proclaim to have all the answers…this is simply what worked for me. Everyone grieves differently. If profound sorrow keeps you from writing, know that there are lots of folks who’ve walked this same road. There’s something to be said about honoring your grief and understanding that its processing takes time. Lean on the people who love and support you. Enlist the help of a grief counselor or therapist if you need it (I did). As writers, our need to write can feel visceral. The page will be waiting with open arms when you’re ready for it. I believe this because that’s how it was for me…which gives me hope it’ll be that way for you too.

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