Journaling is a powerful tool for healing through grief. Creative journaling exercises can be used for self-care and healing during times of grief, loss and transition – try them, you will see, your heart will heal and be comforted, one journal entry at a time.
Writing is a way to stay grounded and centered during times of grief and loss. We all have times in our lives when we are called to deal with losses. These losses might be sudden, others might be anticipated, either way we need ways to cope, ways to find our balance when our emotions and circumstances are turned upside down.
I have used journaling as one of my key practices for coping during times of change and loss in my life, including over the past few years as I have grieved and adjusted to the loss of my father to Alzheimer’s disease.
My Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease the year after he retired after 30 plus years of work with Ford Motor Company. By the time he was 68, he had lost his driver’s license. He is now 77 years old and lives in a long term care facility a few blocks from where my Mom lives in an apartment, a place they both moved together when they were forced to downsize their lives as a result of his shrinking memory and increased impairments as a result of the confusing abyss of Alzheimer’s disease. I have watched my Mom care for him while she still could. She tenderly tucked him in at night, latched his arm as he crossed the street, helped him point his fork in the right direction and waited patiently while he put on his clothes (which could take more than an hour). I have watched her love and care for him, her husband of 55 years, as he slowly disappeared from the realm of cognitive functioning, slowly leaving her for a place where he no longer knows her name, no longer knows what day it is, nor if it is summer or winter. He has been in a care home for over a year. She goes to him most days, often twice a day, to help feed him his lunch and dinner. He doesn’t know who she is, but she knows who he is and that’s all that matters now.
I have heard the journey of grief when losing someone to Alzheimer’s referred to as “the long good-bye”. In this slow march of loss, grief does not know where to begin or end. There is no defining moment, a death, or a complete good-bye that triggers the heart to realize “Ok, now I am grieving”. Instead, it happens slowly, like the moment two years ago when my Dad and I were washing dishes together. I turned to him and asked, “Dad, do you know my name?”
He started shaking his head “No.”
I took his hand in mine and said, “Take your time Dad, there’s lots of time.”
Soon it was not just his head saying “No” but his whole body started to tremble, as did mine. I took him in my arms and I whispered in his ear, “Dad, do you know who I am to you, if you don’t know my name, do you know who I am? What is our relationship? Who am I to you?”
There was a long silence. I stood holding him in my arms. He whispered in my ear, “My daughter.”
My Dad can no longer answer this question and I no longer ask him these sorts of things. I don’t need to. My mind and heart have caught up with understanding the gravity of my father’s diminished capacity, it is no longer hard to believe that he is “so far gone” but rather I focus on how to love him now, in ways that he can feel through his skin, feel past his lost memory and somehow be touched by my love on a cellular level when I rub his back, or make him laugh, or sit beside him on the edge of his single bed, a bed that is only separated by a thin curtain from the next “resident’s” bed.
I live half a country away from my parents, which makes this circumstance even more difficult to navigate both logistically and emotionally. I can no longer speak on the phone with my Dad as his confusion is too high and his verbal skills too regressed for such communication. I speak with my Mom most days. I often turn to the pages of my journal to grieve and grow through this terrain of being a daughter to a father with Alzheimer’s disease and a mother who is changing in the space that loneliness holds her in.
In my journal, I can remember my father, who he was before Alzheimer’s. I can hear his laughter as I write about my memories of him then and now. As I write, I feel deep compassion for his journey, for our journey as a family. On the page and in my heart, I tap into this deep, generous, kind space – where I am called, over and over again, to the acceptance of what is and to the deep end of love for my parents and myself. As the great poet Rumi says…“In the thick of things we discover that love will not die.”
Journaling Exercises for healing through the “long good-bye” and other losses…
Do you have someone in your life you are saying “good-bye” to in some way, for some reason? It could be a parent, a child, a partner, a sibling, a friend, a colleague – we say “good-bye” many times in our lives – for many reasons, planned and unplanned.
Journaling is a powerful tool for healing and navigating the stirring waters of grief and transition in our lives. Here are some creative journaling exercises for self-care and healing during times of grief, loss and transition – try them, you will see, your heart will heal and be comforted, one journal entry at a time.
1) Write a letter to the person – saying all the things you would like to say, that maybe you are unable to say in words, or perhaps it is not possible, for whatever reason, to say these things to the person themselves. Writing unsent letters is a way to feel like you are able to express yourself, self-expression heals.
2) Write a poem – filled with words and ideas that comfort you – it can be long or short – rhyme or not – poetry is a way to capture the essence of your heart.
3) Complete this journaling prompt: What nourishes, inspires and comforts me at this time is…
“When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself.” ~ Rumi
