Anxiety- The Missing Stage of Grief

by Claire Bidwell Smith

  When I wrote my memoir Wild, it was my own grief I explored, and that too was a huge growth experience. Every time I reengage with my grief or my mother’s life and death, I learn something new about it. The experience is in some ways unchanging, but in other ways it shifts over time. I see it in a new light with every passing year. In Wild, I went all in. It was nonfiction. I didn’t cast that experience onto imagined characters who had a lot in common with me, but rather said, This is what happened. This is how I felt. I did that in my essays too. My first essays are directly about my grief—“Heroin/e” and “The Love of My Life.”

  Writing is always a journey. I’m always writing into what I think I know but don’t really. Writing helps me see, but you can’t know what you’re going to see until you’re upon it. This is even true—and maybe even most true—when writing memoir. I teach memoir writing sometimes, and I always tell my students that though they think they know the plot to their life, they are mistaken. It’s a strange contradiction, but it’s true. Things happen to us, and we go right past it. When we write, we turn back and look. We reinhabit the person we were through the consciousness of the person we’ve become. It’s enlightening. It’s shocking. It’s beautiful.

  I couldn’t believe how many people there were who said they knew exactly what I meant, who said I’d written their truth. This didn’t begin with my books. It began with my essays. Then with Torch it grew, and with Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things it exploded. Thousands upon thousands of people who told me my work made them feel for the first time that they were not alone. But you know what? Their response was the first thing that made me feel that way. I remember so vividly how alone I felt after my mom died. I didn’t know one person with a dead mother! How can that be? And yet it was true. I found my tribe by telling my truth. I wrote to them and they wrote back.

  I think most people benefit from writing. You don’t have to be a serious writer to do it. No one has to read what you write (and most of the time no one would want to read what most of us write). Stories are the way we make sense of ourselves and others; they are the way we understand love, loss, fear, rage, revenge, jealousy, beauty, friendship, and well, everything. There is a story about everything. There is a story that will make you feel every emotion—from laughter to sorrow. I’m a huge advocate of using writing as a healing tool. It can be as non-structured as saying I’m going to write X number of times a week in my journal to get some thoughts on paper or as directed as taking a class or being part of a group that requires you to write about specific things. Writing is like walking to me: it never fails to clear the mind. There are so many ways to do it right.

  Writing through grief is an actual impulse that bubbles up for many of us. We are stopped short when we do not consider ourselves writers, so I want to ask you to set aside that restriction and allow yourself to become a writer, if only for the sake of your own healing.

  Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss, gives some great advice about this type of writing, something she learned to do for herself after the death of both of her sisters. “Don’t expect beautiful prose yet, to undo the terrible thing that has happened to bring you here, or even a million-dollar book deal. Simply tell your story, and you will begin to build a bridge that connects who you were then with who you have become.”

  Jessica goes on to say, “No story of loss is a simple one. The feelings that come with grief can be hard to pin down with a pen or put in order with a keyboard. As you write, you encounter strong emotions, memories, often a wealth of family stories, differing opinions, and facts. This is why writing about grief in steps helps you build that bridge.”

  As Jessica explains in Braving the Fire, writing about grief helps build an understanding of you were before the loss and who you will go on to become. This is essential to the healing process. Accepting that you have begun a new life and working to understand who you are now without your loved one are how you will find peace moving forward.

  Now let’s get you writing.

  JUST GETTING THE WORDS OUT

  If you’re worried about putting your grief on the page, try some of these prompts from Cheryl, who says,

  Prompts allow us to begin—which is half the battle in writing. A couple of years ago I was asked by a college English professor if I could give her a list of suggested prompts she might share with her students who’d just read Wild. I came up with this list off the top of my head, and I think it’d be useful to share them with you too. They aren’t all about loss and grief directly, but loss and grief isn’t ever only about loss and grief. More often it’s about love, about what remembering what we once had and letting that be enough:

  Write about a time when you realized you were mistaken.

  Write about a lesson you learned the hard way.

  Write about a time you were inappropriately dressed for the occasion.

  Write about something you lost that you’ll never get back.

  Write about a time when you knew you’d done the right thing.

  Write about something you don’t remember.

  Write about your darkest teacher.

  Write about a memory of a physical injury.

  Write about when you knew it was over.

  Write about being loved.

  Write about what you were really thinking.

  Write about how you found your way back.

  Write about the kindness of strangers.

  Write about why you could not do it.

  Write about why you did.

  WRITING EXERCISES FOR MOVING THROUGH GRIEF

  I’m going to share with you the writing assignments that have proved most effective for my clients. Read through them all, and decide which ones resonate with you. If you have a strong emotional response to one—for instance, if you tear up at the thought of writing a letter to your loved one—this is often a strong indication that you need to do this, even if it seems that it might be a very emotional experience.

  Also, if you try one but do not find it to be a good fit, if the feelings or sentences are not flowing, try another one. Ideally, I would love for you to try them all.

  DAILY JOURNALING

  To ease you into your own writing, I want you to pause for a moment and get out a piece of paper and write anything. Just write down the first thing that comes into your mind about how you’re feeling right now, in this moment.

  To give you an example of how free you can get with this, I’ll tell you that for a year after my mother died, I couldn’t write anything—not a school essay or a poem or a grocery list—without first writing the sentence, “I am an ugly, hateful person.” The first time this happened, the first time I wrote those words, I was taken aback. I had no idea that I had been carrying that belief around with me so strongly every day.

  I felt that way about myself after not having been there for my mother in her final moments. But I found that each time I wrote that sentence down, I was able to release that belief a little more. And finally, one day, I didn’t have to write it anymore at all.

  This is an example of the kinds of things we can carry around within us following a loss. And I now know that carrying these thoughts and beliefs in our hearts and minds has a profound effect on the central nervous system. These repeated thoughts, even when they are unconscious, are what have a direct effect on your level of anxiety. Even when you are not conscious of it, these thoughts create emotions to well up inside you, and those emotions in turn cause your body to react, creating anxiety and fear and sadness.

  Aside from a good therapist, there aren’t a lot of good outlets for exploring these thoughts and beliefs, and that’s where writing comes in as a source of support.

  So I want you to begin by writing down anything you might be carrying around in your heart. It could be something like, I’m lonely. Or I’m scared. Or simply I’m sad. Then write another sentence. And keep writing for ten minutes. Write whatever comes. Cry if you need to, but keep writing. Letting it out
is the key to finding peace.

  One of the best practices you can cultivate during your grief process is to do this kind of free writing every day. This comes in the form of daily journaling. Go to the bookstore or an art store and buy a beautiful journal. Then pick a good spot in your home and decide on a consistent time each morning to devote to this practice. I know that this can be difficult for some people who have hectic lives, so if it’s not the same exact time or place every day, or if you need to write in the evenings or afternoons instead, that’s okay, too. The main goal is to be writing every day.

  Allison, who lost her father suddenly when she was thirty-two years old, found herself experiencing a lot of difficulty in the workplace during the initial months after he was gone. Throughout the day, her attention would often turn to her father, and her emotions would begin to rise up. Because she needed to maintain a professional decorum at her job, she was really struggling to manage these feelings that came in the middle of the day. I suggested she buy a journal and that during her lunch break she find a quiet place to sit and channel out all of her emotions into a journal. She began to do just that and found that after ten minutes of letting herself write about all the things she was feeling, she was able to return to her tasks at work with better concentration and the sense that she had released some of the emotions she had been holding in.

  Remember that no one has to read this journal—you yourself don’t even need to reread it. (Sometimes looking back through these journals, though, can be a great way of seeing just how much you’ve changed and grown throughout your grief process.) This kind of daily writing is simply an outlet. It’s like a receptacle for all the pain and fear you are carrying inside of you when you are grieving. Dump it out into words on the page, and I think you will find that you are better able to move through your days and your interactions with others.

  LETTER WRITING

  As I talked about in the beginning of this chapter, another invaluable tool is to write letters to your loved one. When we lose someone significant in our lives, we lose a person with whom we are used to communicating on a regular basis. It can be so difficult to suddenly not have that person to talk to as you used to.

  When it’s been years since you’ve lost your person, the impulse to reach out to them may have faded, but you may still have many things you wish to share with them. It might be big life events, memories that you’d like revisit with only them, and all the ways you’ve changed and grown since they died.

  For those of you whose loss is recent, you are probably finding that the impulse to reach out is still there. You may find yourself picking up the phone to call them or wanting to tell them about something that just occurred. When this impulse happens after a loss, we immediately feel a strong sense of frustration and sadness that we cannot reach out as we once used to. And often this is where we stop. We put down the phone in our hand, feeling an even greater sense of loss and emptiness. Yet just because that person is no longer physically here does not mean that we need to cut off communication.

  In fact, I think it does a great disservice to our psyche to do so. You are sending a message to your brain that you cannot communicate with that person anymore, and for many of us, after a lifetime or a deep relationship with that person, it can feel very wrong to deny ourselves the impulse to communicate with them. So don’t deny it. Get out a pen and a piece of paper and communicate. While emotional, it will also feel incredibly soothing.

  Annie, who lost her brother in a sudden accident, was bereft to find that she could no longer call him every evening on her way home from work, as she had been accustomed to doing. Annie and her brother had been very close, and they’d had a standing daily phone date in which they both downloaded their days to one another. No longer having this outlet was making Annie feel as though she were suffocating. She would go home and try to talk to her husband or her kids about her day, but it just wasn’t the same as it had been with her brother.

  At my urging, Annie began to write notes to her brother every evening. In fact, she found a park that was on her route home from work, and she would pull over each evening on the way home, take out her journal, and tell her brother through a letter all about her day. Sometimes when she was done, she would even close her eyes and imagine that he was talking back to her, telling her all about his day, wherever he is now.

  Annie found this process very healing and more so that it alleviated much of the stress and tension she had built up in the months of not talking to him. To this day, Annie still pulls over occasionally to write to her brother and hear his messages back.

  Again, don’t be afraid of any of this seeming weird. You don’t need to tell anyone about your process or share your writing with them. This is something you are doing for you.

  In addition to restoring a sense of connection with your loved one, writing these letters can also be an important way of working out any unfinished business you may have, such as guilt, anger, or any other unresolved tensions.

  I’ve also had a great many clients who have struggled with anger in the wake of a loved one’s death. Some clients have lost a friend or family member to suicide, and they find themselves left with myriad questions, guilt, anger, and sadness. Or maybe you simply had a complex relationship with your person, and now you feel angry that you will never get the chance to resolve it or to say your piece to them. Writing them a letter (or multiple letters) is your opportunity to do so.

  Last, I want to share a sweet personal memory with you. When I was twenty-three years old, I received a letter in the mail from my dad. It began with a disclosure that I need to suspend any resistance to the manner in which this letter was written and to just read it. So I did.

  The letter was one my father had written to my dead mother. He told me later that he was missing her so much that he felt compelled to sit down and write to her one evening. In the letter he began by telling her about his life now without her and how much he longed for her to still be a part of it. He told her about what it had been like to get to know me better in the wake of her death, but how he often worried that he just didn’t compare as a parent to her.

  But then suddenly, the letter shifted, and my mother took over! My father told me that as he continued to write to her, he couldn’t stop imagining her responses to things he wrote, so he finally let her take over and write the letter herself. In turn, she told him how much she had loved him and how grateful she was for their relationship, and she even gave him parenting tips for supporting me and a long message of love specifically for him to share with me. Her voice rang through these passages in a way that was distinctly different from his.

  I wept when I read this letter, and to this day it is one of my most cherished possessions.

  Again, write the letters you need to write. Say whatever it is you need to say. Let whatever comes out flow naturally. Be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you do so. And allow space for any emotions to arise. These feelings are coming up because they need to. Let them out. Put that pen to paper.

  Letter-Writing Prompts

  Write a letter to your loved one, filling them in on all that’s happened in your life since they died.

  Write a letter to your loved one about something you feel guilty or sorry about that you wish you could apologize for.

  Write a letter of thanks to your loved one for all the ways they made you feel loved and supported during their life.

  Write a letter to your loved one about one of your favorite memories together.

  Write a letter to yourself from your loved one. Allow yourself to imagine what they might say to you if they could give you comfort during this time.

  Write a letter to yourself forgiving yourself for anything you feel that you could have done better during your loved one’s life or death.

  Write a letter to yourself ten years from now. Tell yourself all the ways in which you hope to heal and move forward and whom you hope to become.

  REMEMBRANCE AND MEMORY WRITING

&n
bsp; Another great writing technique during the grief process is to devote time to writing down all your memories about your loved one. This can feel cathartic and also extremely comforting, especially for those who feel anxious at the thought of potentially forgetting anything about this important person.

  You can choose to write about your loved one informally using some of the prompts below, or you could even go so far as to take a memoir or biography class at a local writing center. Either way, you should find this a healing experience.

  My client Sarah began writing down memories of her late husband about a year after his death. She was so afraid that in time, she would forget bits and pieces about all the wonderful adventures they had shared in their lifetime together. At first, she found herself simply jotting down memories as they came, but in time she began to write lengthier pieces, depicting one adventure after another. Several years later, she compiled all the writing into a book that she gave to her children and grandchildren so that they, too, would always have the memories of this important family member.

  You may not find yourself writing a whole book, like Sarah, and you may never do anything in particular with these writings, but putting them down on paper will alleviate the fear that you will forget, and you may find yourself truly enjoying getting to immerse yourself in these old memories and moments.