write your grief.

i just finished a 30 day writing course called ‘write your grief’. i found this on the recommendation of a friend, through the website refuge in grief. the author, megan devine, is a psychotherapist and writer who has created an online grief support space, after the unexpected loss of her partner in 2009. at first, i felt worried that the writing course was more geared towards grief related to death/loss; but i soon realized that while individual reasons for grieving are very different, many of the underlying emotions are the same.

as you know, from my 19 for 2019 list, i had wanted to take a writing course. while this course focused less on the craft of writing, and more on looking closely at grief, i thought this was a good place to start. the course wasn’t easy. it was emotionally draining to be so vulnerable day after day, and to read and connect with others who were in deep pain. however, now that it is over, i feel lonely. i felt acknowledged, understood and accepted in that group of strangers. somehow, people who have experienced deep loss have a sense of intuition – or perhaps an unspoken language – on how to show up for others in pain.

i will share some of the writing that i did in the course below, but first, here are four things i’ve learned from taking my first writing course:

1. our writing muscles get stronger when flexed: this is rather obvious, and is what we teach students about being writers. writers, write. that is what they do. for me, the accountability structure and routine of writing every single day, meant that the writing came easier, and it was of higher quality. not all of it, of course. there was lots of crap! over the month, my stamina grew, my desire to write increased, and even the way i saw myself as a writer changed.
2. prompt based writing is not as confining as i expected: i’ve been a teacher of writing for many years, granted at the elementary level. we use a writing workshop approach, where students are generating ideas, and writing what they know. we don’t often use the more traditional prompt based approach.  i was worried, initially, that the daily prompts would be confining and limiting. my experience was quite the opposite. the prompts were open and broad, and took me to places i did not expect to go. megan always encouraged us just to put pen to the page – or in my case – fingers to the keyboard. some of the prompts were more tailored to grief related to death, but i was usually able to translate the prompts to my experience.
3. it can be easier tell strangers the truth than the people you love the most: i don’t know exactly why this is true. we posted daily in our online space, commenting and reflecting back each other’s words and emotions to one another. there was no advice, no explanations, no platitudes. there was no grief minimizing, no grief comparisons, no pitying, no solutions. perhaps because we have no baggage with one another, perhaps because we recognize the burdens we are carrying…. i don’t know. but in this group i wrote about topics that i wouldn’t dare to write on this blog.
4. having your pain acknowledged doesn’t take it away, but it does make it infinitesimally easier to bear: i wish i could go back in time, and get a re-do with all my friends and family who have experienced loss. i’m such a look-for-silver-linings, optimistic person, that i don’t think i really understood the power of simply being with people in their pain, heartbreak or grief. sometimes there just simply is no silver lining, and everything just isn’t okay. grief has always been all around me, it just never really impacted me personally… until the last year or so. the video below sums it up nicely:

now that my ‘write your grief’ course has finished, i need to find my own structures for fitting in more writing. i don’t think i can write every single day, because it is simply too emotionally exhausting. since i have a full time job, this work of writing might need to be relegated to weekends. if you are feeling called to write, i urge you to try; even if just in a journal to yourself. writing your pain forces you to really look at it, from a variety of angles, which sometimes leads to tears, a big sigh, or on a rare occasion, a moment of insight.

below are examples of the prompts we received, and my response to them.

Prompt 16: What’s it like for you to see the condition of your heart?

Today I went looking for my heart and it was lost. This has never happened before. All I felt was a release of tension, my shoulders dropped, and it was gone.

Is it on my sleeve, as it has often been known to be? Or is it playing hide and seek? Did it roll away, or get left behind? Did it find a heart it recognized?

My plan was to be gentle with my heart and tell it a story, or give it a laugh. I have the most unabashedly loud laugh. Oh, how my heart deserves to hear that. It deserves to much. Tenderness. Hopefulness. Lately, my plans haven’t worked out. Such is life.

It was confronting to look inwards and see emptiness. The cavern where my heart should have been was tingling – it was alive. I had the sense that my lungs had been suffocating and my heart left to give them some space to breath. I was aware of every nerve ending on my skin all at once. When my heart left my body, it left ripples. It still echoes.

My wretched heart has been treated unfairly recently, so maybe it just threw up its arms and went on strike. Or, it is campaigning for better working conditions. Which, to its credit, seems entirely fair.

Perhaps this heart of mine is better off without me.

Or maybe I am better without it.

-Sarah, Write Your Grief, February 2019, Prompt 16

Prompt 9: Today, I want you to write from a color – any color. You can pick one, or close your eyes and start with whatever color comes to your mind. Follow the color, and the images it conjures, wherever it leads you.

Brown.  Nobody ever chooses brown as their favorite color.  It’s the color of my eyes, my long straight hair, and my tanned skin.  Skin that spent years outside, weathering under the sun. There was a phase about fifteen years ago when everyone bought brown cargo pants, and it made me happy.  Brown: the color of earth, mud, of living.

Brown is the color of a coffee stain on a white blouse, and the color of my first bikini.  It is the dirt that gets stuck under my fingernails, and of tree trunks growing for hundreds of years.  People say that green is life. But I think its brown. Life begins from soil, and soil is what we return to in the end.  

Brown is also the color of the moles.  Not just the burrowing mammals, although that is also true.  The mole that ruined my life was not an official spy; yet it infiltrated my body quietly and initiated a hostile takeover.  How could a tiny brown mole, no bigger than a pencil eraser make its way onto my shoulder unnoticed? Without a sign, without a sound?  How did I not sense its evil presence?

Brown is the color of my demise.  It seems almost comical – there was no major accident, or poor decision making, or error in judgement that led to my illness.  It was a large brown freckle that brought me to my knees, on the floor of hospital. The hysterical tears when I learned it was in my lymph nodes, and had been growing for a year.  Why aren’t there more tears in hospitals? How could it be so quiet in the waiting room?

I never had a lot of moles.  A constellation of freckles on my arms, a dusting on my nose when I’ve been outside, and a few larger ones on my back.  The one on my shoulder was just out of eyesight, hidden in plain sight. My dark skin, tanned from the sun. It never burned.

If this brown mole kills me, I will return to the earth.  No casket, no burial, no church. I want to be scattered in nature, amongst the trees, on the spongy dark soil at my cottage.  

Otherwise, I will rub essential oils on my light brown skin, brush my long brown hair, and stare at my twinkling brown eyes.  The color of living.

-Sarah, Write Your Grief, February 2019, Prompt 19

taking this course has been cathartic, and it has also led to more questions than answers. some of my posts were hopeful, many were not. i would say i understand my grief better now, and the multitude of layers and nuances. do i feel better? no. but i will continue living the questions.

*i used to love sunflowers, and somewhere there is a picture of me when i was two or three years old – the same height as a sunflower in our backyard. but, it was the sunshine that let cancer into my body, so they don’t have the same appeal anymore. sunflower selfies seem to be the new hipster trend… but no selfies here. i took this photo in september 2018, at the sunflower field which is part of the experimental farm in ottawa (corner of merivale and fisher). i like the contrast in this photo, the cycle of life.