After our mom died my sister gave me a notebook to write my feelings down in. She said it would help cope with the grief.
I let the notebook sit on my nightstand for about three weeks before I finally opened it.
Every night I’d look at the cover and think – not tonight. And then one evening, and I can’t remember what prompted it, but I picked up a pen and wrote a sentence: I keep reaching for my phone to call her.
That was it. But it was enough to start me off and I’ve been journaling through my grief ever since.
If someone has suggested a grief journal to you or you’ve come across the idea yourself and you’re wondering whether it’s worth it I’m going to take you through it all.
This guide will look at what a grief journal is, why it helps more than you’d expect, how to start one when your struggling with your grief and a lot of prompts for the days when you aren’t sure how to start.
What Is a Grief Journal?
A grief journal is a private place where you write about your loss. It isn’t a diary of your day, although it can be. It isn’t a scrapbook but people do put photos and ticket stubs and pressed flowers etc. in theirs all the time.
It’s just somewhere to put the mess of feelings that grief gives you so they’re not hanging around inside of you unspoken.
Some people write letters to the person they lost. Some, like I originally did, write down a line or two before bed. Some fill pages with anger one day and a happy memory the next.
Your journal can be something fancy like a leather notebook or it can just be the notes app on your phone. It could even be a pile of loose paper you shove in a drawer. What it looks like matters far less than the fact that you have one and are getting something from it.
Does Journaling Help With Grief?
When my sister first gave me that notebook I thought the whole thing sounded like it wouldn’t do a thing. Write my feelings down and feel better? Sure. But it turns out there’s a surprising amount of research behind it and it goes back decades.
Back in the 1980s a psychologist called James Pennebaker ran a now famous study where people wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings around a painful experience for about fifteen minutes a day over a few days. The people who did this made noticeably fewer trips to the doctor in the months that followed compared to those who wrote about ordinary stuff.
That one study lead to many more. A review of thirteen of these studies found a real benefit from this kind of writing. It wasn’t a huge benefit but it was there and researchers have been building on it for more than forty years now.
Some of that research looked specifically at bereavement, at people writing their way through the loss of someone they loved. The found that putting difficult emotions into words seems to make them have less of a power over us.
Nobody’s claiming a notebook fixes grief. But the science lines up with what a lot of grieving people have felt for a long time which is that getting it out of your head and onto a page helps you deal with it.
How a Grief Journal Helps
Apart from the studies below is what journaling has done for me and for many other people I’ve heard from.
It gives your feelings somewhere to go
Grief will hit you at any point and doesn’t care. It shows up when you’re grocery shopping, at red lights, at two in the morning.
When you don’t have anywhere to put those feelings they can come out in ways you don’t want. Like snapping at people you love or lying awake replaying everything.
A journal is a way to contain them. You put that grief it in, close the cover and the weight is lifted from you a little.
It slows everything down
When you write you can’t move at the speed of a spiraling thought. You have to slow down to the pace of your own hand.
The fact that is forces you to be slower is part of how it helps. It turns a fog of feelings into one sentence, then the next, and somewhere in that process things start to feel a bit more manageable.
It becomes a record of them
My journal isn’t only about my sadness. It’s full of my mom.
I was so afraid of forgetting the small things and now they’re written down. On the hard days I read them back and she’s on that page.
It shows you how far you’ve come
When you’re going through grief you’ll find it hard to see when it could possible end. But flip back through a journal after a few months and you’ll see it.
The early entries and the later ones don’t sound like the same person. You’ll have evidence of the progress you made and that can really help on the days when you’re struggling or feeling stuck.
What You Need to Start a Grief Journal
Almost nothing, which is why it’s so good. You don’t need to buy anything special or wait until you’re in the right frame of mind.
It can help to pick a format that suits you because the easier it is to reach for, the more likely you are to use it.
These are the main options:
- A plain notebook and pen. The classic. Handwriting is slow and physical and a lot of people find it more emotional and more honest than typing.
- A guided grief journal. These come with prompts and questions already printed on the pages so you’re never struggling with what to write. Lovely if the pages feel intimidating. You can find lots of them online.
- Your phone or a journaling app. You always have access to it, its private and easy to write in late at night without having to turn a light on. Perfect for getting down a feeling the moment it hits.
- A voice memo. If writing feels like too much you can try talking instead. Record yourself for a couple of minutes as if you were leaving a voicemail. It counts.
- An art or memory journal. Not everyone processes things in words. Sketching, making a collage or sticking in photos and mementos is just as good as writing.
Don’t spend too much time thinking about all this. The best grief journal is the one you will open.
If a beautiful notebook makes you want to write then that’s what you should go with. If a scrappy legal pad feels less precious and therefore less scary that’s just as good.
How to Start a Grief Journal – Step by Step
This is how to begin once you’ve got yourself a journal, especially if you’ve never journaled before and the whole idea feels a little strange.
1. Pick somewhere you feel safe
Grief journaling can bring up big feelings so you want to be somewhere you can let them come without an audience. For me that’s the armchair by the window once the house is quiet.
Yours might be your bed, the car, a certain room, a bench in the park. Somewhere you can cry or swear or be in silence and nobody will ask what’s wrong.
2. Choose a time that fits into your day
Some people write first thing in the morning to get down whatever they woke up thinking about. Others write at night to unload before sleep.
Any time is fine. Make it part of something you already do, like your morning coffee or the moment your head hits the pillow, and it’s far more likely to stick.
3. Start much smaller than you think you should
Nobody sits down grieving and writes three eloquent pages. If you try for something like that you’ll give up very quickly.
One sentence is a full entry. “Today was hard” is a full entry. My very first entry was nine words about reaching for my phone. Don’t aim for something you have no chance of hitting. And let the writing grow on its own, because it will.
4. Write like nobody is reading, because nobody is
Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Forget whether it makes sense or whether you’re allowed to feel this way.
A grief journal should be for you and only you. Nobody else ever has to see it.
It should give you the freedom to be yourself and be messy and unfair and repetitive. Grief is all of those things and your journal should be allowed to be too.
5. Don’t force a schedule on yourself
You might hear that you should journal every single day. Ignore that if it doesn’t work for you.
Some weeks I wrote every night and some weeks I didn’t touch the notebook at all. If you miss a day or a month you haven’t failed and there’s nothing to catch up on.
Just pick the pen back up whenever you’re ready. The journal will be waiting for you.
Grief Journal Prompts to Get You Started
A lot of people get struck with not knowing how to begin. You open the notebook, you’re ready and your mind goes completely blank.
So I’ve got some prompts to help grouped by what you might be feeling on a given day. You don’t need to work through them in order or use all of them.
Prompts for when you don’t know where to begin
- Right now, in this moment, I feel…
- The thing I keep thinking about today is…
- If I could say one thing to you right now it would be…
- Today the hardest part was…
- Something nobody knows about my grief is…
- I wish someone would…
Prompts for remembering the person you lost
- My favorite memory of you is…
- You always used to say…
- The little things I never want to forget about you are…
- You taught me…
- A time you made me laugh so hard I cried was…
- The song, smell or place that brings you straight back to me is…
- If we had one more ordinary day together I’d want to…
Prompts for the difficult feelings
- I’m angry that…
- The thing I feel guilty about is…
- What scares me most about the future is…
- Something I never got to say to you is…
- The regret I’m carrying is…
- I feel relieved about… and that’s confusing because…
- When people say the wrong thing, what I really want them to understand is…
Prompts for the hard days and milestones
- Today would have been your birthday, and…
- The first holiday without you felt like…
- Grief caught me off guard today when…
- The anniversary is coming and I’m feeling…
- I saw something today that I wanted to tell you about…
- Getting through this week I’m proud that I…
Prompts for finding your way forward
- One small thing that brought me a moment of peace today was…
- I’m slowly learning that…
- A way I want to keep your memory alive is…
- Something I’m grateful for even now is…
- The person I’m becoming through this loss is…
- If you could see me now I hope you’d feel…
- What I need more of right now is…
If quotes help to get you writing then keep a few nearby to inspire an entry. Our collections of grief quotes and poems about grief are good places to find a line that will start you off.
What a Grief Journal Entry Can Look Like
Because I think it helps to see the reality of what a grief journal looks like rather than some polished ideal of it I’ve got some example entries.
A short, raw one:
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Bad day. Saw a woman in a green coat just like yours from behind and my whole body forgot for half a second. Then it remembered. I had to sit down on a bench. I’m so tired of my body forgetting and remembering.
******************
A letter to the person:
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Dad,
I made your chili tonight. Burned the onions the way I always do and you always teased me about. The kids said it was the best thing I’ve cooked in weeks. I didn’t tell them why I was crying at the stove. I think you’d have liked that they liked it. I miss you at the table. I miss you telling me it needed more pepper. It needed more pepper. You were right about that too.
Love always,
Me
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A hopeful one from further along:
******************
Something strange happened today. I thought about Mom and I smiled before I got sad. That’s never happened before, the smile coming first. I don’t know what it means but it didn’t feel like a betrayal, it felt like her. Maybe this is what everyone means when they say it changes. Not smaller. Just different to hold.
******************
Notice how none of them try to sound wise. Being completely honest is what makes journaling work.
When Journaling Feels Too Hard
Some days you’ll sit down and can’t face it or writing seems to crack something open that you can’t put back. This happens to most people and it doesn’t mean journaling isn’t for you.
A few things that help on those days:
- Switch to a list. If writing full sentences is too hard then just list things. Five things I miss. Three things that got me through today. Bullet points are just as good.
- Set a two minute timer. Tell yourself you only have to write until it buzzes. More often than not you’ll keep going, but if you don’t, two minutes was still enough.
- Write one word. Truly. If all you can manage is angry or empty or her name, write that and close the book.
- Talk it instead. Record a voice memo or read your entry aloud to a photo, a pet, an empty room etc. Saying it out loud can help in a way writing can’t.
- Give yourself permission to stop. If an entry is stirring up more than you can deal with right now you’re allowed to close the notebook and come back another day. Journaling should ease the load not make things worse.
When a Journal Isn’t Enough
A grief journal is a wonderful companion but it is not a substitute for real support and grief can sometimes grow too heavy to carry with a notebook alone.
If weeks and months pass and you find yourself unable to function, or if the pain isn’t shifting at all and you’re withdrawing from everyone, if you’re using alcohol or other things to numb the pain or if you’re having thoughts of not wanting to be here, please reach out to someone.
That could be your doctor, a grief counselor or a trusted person in your life. This is sometimes called complicated or prolonged grief and there is real help for it.
Asking for that help is not weakness and it is not giving up on your loved one. It’s taking care of the person they’d want you to keep looking after, which is you.
Frequently Asked Questions About Grief Journaling
How long should I write in my grief journal each day?
As little or as long as you like. The research on therapeutic writing often used sessions of around fifteen to twenty minutes, but that’s a guide, not a rule. A single sentence is enough for a lot of days. Start small and let some days run longer when the words are flowing.
What should I write about in a grief journal?
Anything and everything connected to your loss. Your feelings, memories of the person, things you never got to say, the hard days, the small moments of peace, letters written directly to them. If you’re stuck use one of the prompts above. There’s no subject you have to write about and nothing is off limits.
Is it normal to feel worse after journaling?
Yes, especially early on. Writing can stir feelings up before it helps with them and some entries will leave you feeling raw for a while. That usually eases as you keep going. If it consistently leaves you feeling much worse rather than lighter over time that’s a sign to look for something else that can help support you alongside the journal.
Do I have to write every single day?
Not at all. Daily writing works for some people and feels like a lot of pressure to others. Journal when you need it. Skipping days, weeks or longer doesn’t undo any of the good it’s done and you can always pick it back up with no catching up required.
How long should I keep a grief journal going?
For as long as it helps and not a day longer than that. Some people journal intensely for a few months and then slowly wind it down naturally. Others keep one for years and return to it around anniversaries, birthdays and the first holidays without their loved one. Let it be there for you for as long as you need it.
What can I do with my grief journal later on?
Whatever feels right. Many people keep theirs private forever. Some use the memories they’ve captured to write a tribute, put together a memorial or take favorite lines from and use in a in loving memory keepsake.
If you’re going to be honoring your person more publicly our guide on how to write a tribute can help you shape those journal thoughts into something you’re ready to share.
Final Thoughts
Starting a grief journal won’t take your grief away. But it will give you somewhere out the love and pain you’re feeling.
So find a notebook or open the notes app on your phone right now and write something. It doesn’t have to be something good or wise.
That’s how it begins. My first was nine words about a phone I kept reaching for. Yours can be whatever you want and need.
