WRITE YOUR GRIEF

Grief is messy, foggy, and it doesn’t always speak in full sentences. Sometimes it shows up in blur, in fragments. A smell, a silence, a sharpness in the chest. Sometimes it hides. Sometimes it roars. Writing won’t fix it, but it can give it form. It can give it breath. It can become a place where the ache is allowed to exist without apology.

Why Writing?

There is real science behind it. Studies show that expressive writing, especially about grief or trauma, improves mental clarity, emotional regulation, even physical health. Writing gives chaos a container. It activates the parts of our brain that allow us to make meaning. It helps us metabolize the unbearable. 

But beyond science, writing is ritual. Writing is how we remember who we are, who we were, and what we’ve lost. It is how we hold grief in our palms instead of letting it fester in our bones. For those of us who weren’t allowed to grieve loudly, or who were told our losses were too small, too strange, too much, writing is a form of reclamation.

What Writing Grief Can Do (and What It Can't)

Writing grief can...

• Help us name what was unnamed

• Offer space where no one interrupts

• Make beauty out of the unbearable

• Show us what we didn’t know we were carrying

• Build a record, a memory, a ritual

Writing grief can't...

• Take the pain away

• Give you closure

• Replace being held by someone else

But it can keep you company. And sometimes, that is enough.

How to Begin

There are no rules. This isn’t about being a writer. It’s about being a person with grief, and How to Begin

There are no rules. This isn’t about being a writer. It’s about being a person with grief, and letting that grief move through your fingers.

Start here:

Grounding Prompt: Describe Your Space First

Before anything else, describe the physical room or space you’re in. This anchors you in time, body, and setting before grief moves:

• What’s the shape of the room? Furniture? Light? Smells? Textures?

• Where is your body in relation to objects? How do you feel held (or not)?

• Is the space warm or cold? Still or vibrating?

• Let your grief inhabit this space. Where does it sit? Under your feet? On a chair? Around the edges?

5 Writing Prompts to Explore Grief

1. Describe Your Grief as Weather
   If grief were a storm in the room you’re in, what kind of storm? Quiet rain? Tornado? How does the room hold it?
   
   

2. Free vs. Focused Writing

• Free: “Write continuously for 5 minutes about what grief feels like right now.”

• Focused: “Write about guilt. What does it taste, smell, or feel like?”
  
  

3. Memory Detail
   Pick something concrete: a sound, smell, meal, object, gesture connected to your loss. Describe it fully and then trace the feeling it contains.
   
   

4. Grief’s Letter to You
   Let grief take the pen. What does it want you to hear? “I’m here because…,” “I need…,” “I’m sorry….”
   
   

5. Grief + Resistance
   Write about a moment when grief felt tangled with anger at colonialism or injustice. What did it feel like to both sorrow and rage?

Coming Soon: Saddies and Baddies

A grief writing space for the ones whose grief is tangled up with memory, identity, oppression, and survival. If you’ve organized, fought, cared, held it down for your community, and now feel emptied out, you belong here.

 This is a place to write what aches. To share what surfaces. To tell the truth without flinching.

Sign up to be notified when it launches.

Until then: write your grief. Don’t try to fix it.  Befriend it. Give it a voice. Say: I am still here.