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6 de abril de 2018
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My heartfelt guide to writing about grief
My attempt at a structure for thoughts expressed via a tear-stained keyboard
Jason Berek-LewisFollow
Apr 6, 2018
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Grief
We’ve all felt it; that rising, choking sense of despair, of crushing loss.
We’ve all lived it; falling to the ground, blood draining from our faces, our throats
tightening, our wellspring of tears erupting.
But, how do we effectively write about it?
On Monday, 26 March, at around 5:30pm, my dog “Jedi” died. She was in the second
consulting room at our local vet. We had been to the vet many times, but not often in that
room. Perhaps I now know why.
I was with Jedi, as was a veterinary nurse. The room was cold. The lighting was stark. Jedi’s
breath was sharp and ragged. The nurse inserted the intravenous drip into the vein on one of
my girl’s front legs. The nurse intoned in a voice devoid of emotion: “I’m administering the
drugs that will stop her heart…”. Mere moments later my best friend took her final ,
shuddering breath. I burst into tears.
Here lies my challenge as a writer; if I use my words as a tool to manage my emotions,
how do I write about the aching grief that is consuming me after the death of my dog, my
best friend?
I feel as though writers ponder grief often. Writing about this type of loss, about the death of
a loved one, requires the penning of words filled with grace, care, love, reflection, hope and
aching authenticity.
But sometimes, days, and even years, later, the emotions remain too raw to touch our fingers
to our keyboards...
Writing about the loss of a loved one
I often write about my late grandparents, Sam and Mina Berek. Both of my mother’s parents
died almost 25 years ago. I’ve tackled the pain of their deaths through writing poetry and
prose. A quarter of a century on, I still tear up each time I sit to write about them; so deep
was our love for each other. My dog was my best friend. Yes, a sentence torn from cliché,
but deeply true none the less. My connections to my dog and to my late grandparents remain
incomparable, but I still shed tears over losing them all.
So, on to my heartfelt guide to writing about grief:
Honesty.
If your pain is real, your writing must reflect on its hurtful truth. When writing is a part of
the healing process for your grief, there is no point in hiding your mournful truth. This is
very much the case when writing about grief for ourselves and our own journey towards
acceptance, but also when writing to share our pain with others. A deeply honest exploration
of memory and emotion associated with loss can help us to take those first steps towards
healing the pain that comes with our grieving.
Writing with this level of emotional honesty is draining, on your feelings and even on your
body; sometimes I walk away from my keyboard vanquished, tired and empty. When I write
in this way, truly tapped into my rivers of pain, I walk away with my face red, my eyes
swollen and my cheeks damp with way too many tears.
Authenticity.
If you are writing about your pain and you want to share this writing with others, one certain
way to ensure your writing connects and packs an emotional punch is to Write Your Truth.
Writing about pain and loss and grief isn’t easy; if your work is polished and it reads like
content generated by an AI, your reader won’t feel your pain — that’s what it’s all about.
Readers want to connect and, for many of us, grief is a shared experience; we have been
through it too. Write in a way that is authentic and honest and your work with carry deep
emotional impact, your readers will shed tears with you and you will build a bond that will
keep them coming back to read more, even when your other content is not about your grief.
Emotion.
Cry on the page, rain tears on your keyboard and your readers’ eyes will weep too. And your
readers will remember you and the way that your work made them feel. Too much writing
on the web is vapid, devoid of emotion; sure, it’s optimised and has been run through SEO
and headline checking software, but this leaves content cold, drained and hollow. This is
why AI is a long way from taking writers’ jobs; would you rather read something “written”
by an algorithm or something written by a human writer who feels love, hope, pain and
sorrow? I know which I’d prefer.
Above all, Vulnerability.
This has been my biggest challenge in my recent writing; am I truly brave enough to be
totally, utterly vulnerable? I’m sorry to say that so far, my answer has been “No”. I’m
working to get to “Yes” every day. Because my answer has been “No”, I’m certain my
writing has suffered, as have my readers; they can tell that I’m holding something back and,
I think, that gets in the way of my building a connection with them, with you. For that, I’m
sorry; I’m working on getting closer to my vulnerability each time I write.
Tears on my keyboard
Screenshot of my Facebook post by me
The pic above is a screenshot of the Facebook post that I wrote on the night my dog died; I
wrote this post about 2 hours after I kissed her “Good bye” and heard, and felt, Jedi take her
final breath. Here’s the text:
Good bye my beautiful girl �
I loved you in a way I never imagined was possible.
You made me laugh harder than I ever I imagined I could.
You protected me and my family.
You cared so deeply for me when I was ill.
You made me laugh and laugh, even when I experienced my depression.
You walked with me, even when my arthritis caused me impossible pain.
You turned my heart from a fear of dogs to unending love for you.
Please Jedi, give me one more gift; please wait for me so that one day we can walk together
across the stars.
I hope you have found peace, and an enormous, juicy steak in the sky.
I love you Jedi, my gorgeous girl, my best friend �
I will miss you for the rest of my life
I cried and cried and cried as I typed that out on my phone. I cried and cried and cried as I
chose that photo of Jedi from my phone’s camera gallery. I still cry when I read over that
post. The writing isn’t ‘great’, there are grammatical errors, but the copy was written under
the full crescendo of my deepest grief; it’s authentic, it’s emotional and it’s vulnerable.
That’s how I write about my grief.
What about you?