At times of loss, those of us who write have a strong tool to use in working through our emotions. Whether our loss is a pregnancy, a child, a spouse, a parent, a marriage, our health, a job, an opportunity or a location, writing can help us find a sense of our new selves, selves that carry sorrow but go on, reaching new spiritual heights.

Sometimes we are afraid we will forget the person, place or the time we are mourning; sometimes we are angry about our loss; sometimes we are in pain and feel unbearably lonely; other times we remember happy moments and wisdom from the loss and carry these with us. Writing allows us not only to reconstruct and retrieve the people, places and times we mourn, but to tell what we think will now go unheard. Writing helps us find a way to once again feel all of our feelings, including the joy in our lives and the love, which doesn’t die after loss.

A good place to start writing grief is by naming the loss, stating your desire to write about it and articulating your concerns about writing on the topic. It might be helpful to address a particular person or people in your writing — your writing group members or others you trust with your thoughts. It might also work to write a letter to someone who has never mentioned writing or your mourning, someone whom you would like know a little more about you (you don’t have to actually give this writing to anyone). You could even chose an author or statesperson or literary or historical character with whom you feel simpatico.

Once you’ve written your thoughts, you will feel more ready to retrieve whatever memories come. To ensure that they do come, you can borrow from the strategy of a prayer recited in the Jewish Yizkor service, which is in memory of the dead. Here is a contemporary version of the prayer:

We Remember Them

At the rising of the sun and at its going down
We remember them.
At the first blowing of the wind and the chill of winter
We remember them.
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring
We remember them.
At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer
We remember them.
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn
We remember them.
At the beginning of the year and when it ends
We remember them.
As long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us, as
We remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength
We remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart
We remember them.
When we have joy we crave to share
We remember them.
When we have decisions that are difficult to make
We remember them.
When we have achievements that are based on theirs
We remember them.
As long as we live, they too will live, for they are a part of us, as
We remember them.

Try your hand at this kind of writing. You might write a poem or a prose piece; either way repeat the phrase with “remember” in it: “I remember you” or “We remember you,” or merely “I remember,” or “We remember.” Before each phrase with “remember,” write your specific memory of the person, place or time that is lost. You might start out, “When I have joy I crave to share, I….” Begin now to write specifically from your experience of the one or place you loved.

Next, write more about your experience of writing grief by answering these questions: How has writing about my grief felt and how it has impacted me? What do I hope to continue writing on this topic? What metaphor might I create to express who my loved one(s) or places have become now they are here in spirit ?

You can write your answers as a letter to the one who has died or to someone else who has experienced the loss, too. It can be addressed to someone who has helped you in your mourning or to someone who was absolutely no help at all. In my memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, I call my son a “sun boat” after Greek mythology concerning Seth, his name. What might you name your loved one? It doesn’t have to be mythological–it can the name of a bird, a kind of food you eat each day that nourishes you, a specific flower or sound or piece of furniture. Let yourself associate to something that seems very right to you and tell the person you are writing your letter to what the metaphor is and why it fits. If nothing comes to mind right away, take a look at the meaning of the person’s name–somewhere in that meaning you might find the metaphor you want.

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Here are some links to poems and prose by those who have written grief. After you read them, you’ll feel more sure that writing about loss is important and the source of not only more settled feelings, but of good writing, and the ability to live fully.

Four Weeks After the Funeral by Andrea Hollander Budy

Little Father by Li Young Li

The Dead Boy at Your Window by Bruce Holland Rogers

A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

A Three-Dog Life by Abigail Thomas

In her book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions, therapist Miriam Greenspan says that in grieving we come to accept loss as part of the circle of life, that the ego suffers, but the “larger self grows, and with it, an awe before the mysteries that lie at the heart of existence, an ability to live fully in the present moment, and a gratitude for all things that are borne and die.”

Writing grief can help us along from constant suffering to moments of gratitude. It isn’t an easy journey, and it isn’t a one-way journey — we back up to suffering again and again along the road. But those of us who write and read the writings of others with appreciation are building our stamina for traveling this road.