How to journal about grief

As a hobby or activity, journaling has the potential to produce numerous benefits, such as improving creativity, organizational skills, and even sometimes memory. But the most important benefit journaling can promise is emotional processing. Writing down your feelings in a safe, private space is freeing and usually cathartic. Especially when dealing with grief, confronting your complicated and overpowering emotions can bring clarity and some relief. If you don’t know what journaling for grief looks like or where to begin, here are some helpful prompts to get you started and advice to keep in mind. 

Journal prompts 

If you don’t know how to begin grief journaling, that’s okay. Unpacking all your emotions is not an easy task, and it’s hard to know where to start. The following are journal prompts meant to help you explore some of your feelings. Some of these prompts are ways you can feel more connected to your loved one who passed by remembering them, while others are used to reveal ways you can learn to appreciate what you do have and ways you can cope with grief beyond journaling.

Begin a sentence with the below prompts regarding your loved one, and see where your thoughts take you:

1. Today, I remembered…

2. If I could say something to you, I would say…

3. The hardest time of day is…

4. One thing I miss the most about you is...

5. Besides grief, I am feeling…

6. One quote that expresses how I am feeling right now is...

Additionally, you can also follow some of the below prompts, which ask you to make lists or approach this process in a different way:

1. Make a list of objects or events that remind you of your loved one. Do these upset you when you see or experience them? Should you take steps to minimize exposure to them?

2. Write a list of activities you could do to make yourself feel better.

3. Who is your support system? People you can rely on that could help or have helped you during this difficult time.

4. Make a list of a few different ways you have or can honor your loved one. 

5. Create a mantra or affirmation to comfort yourself for times when you are overcome with grief. 

Decide how, and when, you want to journal

While most journaling experts encourage new journalers to make the hobby a habit by setting a consistent time to explore their thoughts, this should not be the case for grief journaling. Grief journaling should not be a chore you have to do at a certain time, and it most definitely does not have to be done everyday or even at a consistent frequency.

Grieving is a complicated process that everyone goes through at their own unique pace. It follows that the best practice for grief journaling is to only write when you feel like it, which is usually when you are feeling the most and need to express it.

In the beginning, you may feel like you need to journal everyday to cope with your grief. But as time wears on, it is perfectly normal for you to journal less and less as you start to feel better and accept what happened. 

Whether it’s deciding when or what to write, don’t feel pressured. Journaling is for your eyes only, so let yourself be vulnerable and don’t worry about grammar or spelling or legibility; journaling is for expressing yourself and nothing else. You don’t even need to keep a formal journal, you can just write on pieces of paper when you feel like grief journaling and then throwing it away afterwards.

In order to truly use grief journaling as a method for healing, you need to give yourself the ability to explore your emotions without restraint. To that end, we encourage you to also visit our post on grief worksheets, which, like journaling, provide a structured approach to processing grief.

Grief journaling is a healthy way to reflect on your emotions and help you process through them. Ultimately, it is your decision on what you want to write and when, and you don’t need to follow a certain prompt or write a certain amount. No matter how you go about it, make sure that your method of grief journaling is right for you. 

— Avery Tamura