One year on

A personal story of writing and grieving

Dear Writing friends,

I’m writing this letter a little later this week - and it feels very important. Tomorrow, 28 September 2023, it will be one year since A, V, V and I lost our very much loved husband, Dad and Grandad Fix-It.

His name was Roger and, one year on, we miss him terribly.

One year ago today, I had not yet discovered that it isn’t true, that old saying, about how time is a great healer. It isn’t true that grief and pain at losing someone we loved so very much lessens or fades with time.

What happens instead, at least for me, is that the feelings shape-shift.

I think of the feelings now as a bit like the small stream that runs across the muddy field at the edge of the town where I live. Some days, the stream is so loud that you can hear it from the top of the track. Some days, it is swollen with rain, collecting the run-off from the surrounding hills. The water gathers force and then, just as suddenly, it disappears under the old road, only to bubble up in the next field, loud and insistent. I have crouched there and held my hand in the water and it is too cold for me to keep it there for long.

Twisted up in that stream are many griefs. The loss of Dad, the ways that I may have disappointed him, the words I didn’t say. But also my grief at the loss of lives I have not lived; paths I have not followed; relationships that didn’t last. The grief I feel for a world that, some days, seems so wrong and broken. (Even now, they are building houses on the flood plain of that field, putting in extra drainage, cutting down hedgerows.)

This year has been a year of living bravely and deeply. Still, I feel that I’ve barely begun to test the depths of my sorrow.

This year has been a year in which I’ve turned to writing, to the page, to my notebook, for comfort. This is what emerged in my free writing this morning, my hand laying down lines along the points of the star at the top of this letter:

Sometimes we don’t know how to begin so we begin somewhere and gradually, putting one word in front of another, one phrase, one sentence, we move - forward - maybe it doesn’t feel like forward… but then one day, we pause and look back, perhaps read back over our words and realise how far we’ve swum, climbed, shifted, perhaps some days we’ve even danced. One word in front of another. One day joined to another. One thought following another thought. Dad, I don’t know where you are - in the trees or the wind singing, in this silver ring or the robin that comes to my garden - but I know you are not gone.

One year on, I am thankful for this writing practice that has helped me to join one day to another. And, dear friends, I am thankful for all of you who have so gently and kindly read, witnessed and received my scribbled offerings.

If you too are grieving, I wish you a soft place to land, a space where your words can lead you from one moment to another.

When we lose someone or something beloved, we lose a part of ourselves, a possibility that we can never recover. This year, I have learned that it is not about trying to mend or move on from that, but about allowing room for the loss to keep flowing. By letting the feelings move, even if that movement is sometimes deep underground, in the dark, cold places that are too difficult to visit for very long, we can find a way to continue to live.

Using writing to acknowledge and connect with difficult feelings

If you too are using your writing to acknowledge difficult things - pain, loss, grief - here are a few ideas that I have found helpful:

1. Be kind. Write to yourself in soft, soothing tones, as you would talk to a grieving friend.

2. Go gently. There is no need to write about anything that is just too difficult. If the pain feels too much, put down your pen, take a breath, stretch, move your body. If you can, go outside and let yourself be for a while.

3. Create containers. Set up structures to hold your writing. On any given day, your container might be:

   • Time - Set a timer and write for three minutes.

   • Shape - Write a spiral. Draw a circle and write things inside or outside it. Create structures with tape, collage, coloured pens or whatever feels right and fill them with your words. Experiment with writing on a very big piece of paper or a very small one.

   • Form - Write a haiku. Write a letter. Write a still-life description.

   • Getting literal. Find an envelope and put your words inside it. Seal it, sleep with it under your pillow, rip it up, burn it, bury it.
     

4. Be curious about what might happen - See all of the above.

5. Dialogue with your writing. Have a conversation with your writing in the margins or around the edges or in between the lines.

6. Be even kinder towards yourself than you think you need to be.

Maybe you too have tips and ideas that you’d like to share in the Comments?

Dear friends, I want to thank you for being here with me in this space. It means more to me than you could ever know.

I wish you hope and joy and love this week. And I’d like to leave you with some words from my lovely Dad, who always encouraged me.

‘You were born to write,’ he once said. ‘So write.’

Sophie x

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Dates for next Dear Writing Together sessions:

Wed 11 October at the slightly earlier time of 6pm GMT

Thu 16 Nov at 7pm GMT

Sat 9 Dec at 5pm GMT