How to deal with the grieving process

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Journaling is a great way to help you through the grief process. 

Get all your emotions down on paper, especially if you have trouble expressing them physically.

The author C.S. Lewis chronicled his experiences when he lost his wife – all the raw sorrow and loneliness, the happy memories, the questions, musings on the afterlife, his fears that he would forget what the real woman he had loved was like in favour of holding onto an idealised image of her and more. 

This journal was published as A Grief Observed, and you might find it healing to read through this and know that you are not the only person to have walked this road or to have experienced the emotional rollercoaster of bereavement. 

You might also like to try journaling your experiences, although there’s no need to make the results public.

If you don’t feel that you are good enough with the pen or with the computer keyboard to get all your feelings down on paper, you might like to try what a counsellor suggested to a child that this writer knows when the child lost her father.

The suggestion was to make a scrapbook of memories and pictures about the person you have lost, putting as much effort into it as you can. The process of working on it is often therapeutic.

You could also try reading some of the great literature written by others going through the grieving process as a way of giving words to your own sorrow.

In Memoriam, the long poem sequence by Tennyson, or some of the Psalms in the Bible offer expressions of a range of emotions that you might like to read to put your feelings into words. Read them aloud if you like.

One of the situations where it can be hardest to come through the grieving process is when there are unresolved issues.

Perhaps you had hurt the other person and you never had a chance to say sorry. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and the other person had never said sorry to you for hurting you. 

hese unresolved issues can still linger and cause problems even if the person who you lost was very unpleasant and you found yourself thinking “good riddance” now and then. 

These unresolved issues can also load you down with guilt as well as grief.

One thing that people have often found quite good for resolving these issues and for setting them behind is to write a letter to the deceased person. 

In this letter, you can either ask for forgiveness for what you did, or you could express your forgiveness for what they did to you.

Then read this letter aloud to the person – maybe at the graveside when you’re alone or to a photo.

 After this, burn the letter (you may have to find a safe place to do this in the height of the dry season, or else destroy it in some other way). 

The act of burning the letter is a way of symbolically letting go and destroying the old problems.

Above all, you need to give yourself permission to express your emotions.

This can be quite hard, especially if you had an upbringing that discouraged you from crying.

While you may need some help, either from hypnotherapy or from some other form of counselling, to overcome the blockages, it is important to lose that inhibition and express your sorrow and anger.

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