Overcoming Grief and Loss

What’s the best place to start when you’re trying to overcome grief and loss?  I’ve discovered that opening the door to your personal creativity works best—and writing is the first craft I recommend. 

Over 12 years ago I sat in my little office at “the house on the hill of abuse” and received an email from New York Times bestselling author, Cecil Murphy. I sat under his influential teaching at a Speak Up Conference, as well as at other writers ‘conferences in Michigan. His email read, “Darlene, some of the best writing is done in pain, so write.” 

Grief and loss come in all sizes and shapes. Like an overloaded suitcase that bursts open with the contents going in all directions, loss explodes and expands waiting for the owner to unpack their pain-filled story. It’s not neat and pretty to “gut out” grief with God. It’s rather messy if you choose to hold nothing back. And I learned from Cecil Murphy to write in the midst of pain.

I wrote out the scene when I stared at my 40-year-old brother in his casket and pressed into the pain with God and prayed: Please help me grieve, Lord. I am so tired of pain. I want some joy. P.S., I whispered, Lord, if any good can come from his early death, let it begin with me.

I wrote out a description of the scene at the funeral home as I watched my mom viewing her youngest child in the casket while my siblings and I stood nearby, leaking tears of our own.

I wrote out the scene at the cemetery of how I longed to place my body down on the frozen ground near my dad’s headstone and my brother’s fresh grave. I fit there. If I left, I would need to learn how to live again. And I didn’t have much energy left.

I continued to write out fits of rage that described my deep wrestling before a Holy God. He allowed me the grace to be honest about my pain of emotional abuse. I poured out my emotions on paper—for my eyes and His, with my counselor’s awareness of the steps I was taking. 

I came to grips with three truths:  

• He sees us. 
• He knows us. 
• He understands us.

I wrote the scene of seeing a yellow paper flapping in the wind after a police officer stapled it to our home stating: “House in Foreclosure.”

I wrote the scene of reading my name in the newspaper when our family home was listed. The agony. The humiliation. The hatred. The rage I had toward one person for not listening and taking positive action.

I wrote personal letters to my three teenagers and stuffed them in their pillowcases as they walked by me out the front door of the house on the hill to live elsewhere. 

Broken, I described my anger. I wrote my list of why I wanted to hate. I wrote my list of “what ifs” and I wrote my long list of fears. 

I purposely wrote to keep hatred from setting up a camp in my heart that had the potential of growing deep roots of bitterness. My first counselor spoke wisdom: “Do not get bitter, Darlene, or God will put you on a shelf.”

 Writing is a process and a creative tool for keeping evil out of our hearts, if we are gut- wrenchingly honest with GOD and ourselves.

Whether it is a grief loss such as a church division, a divorce, the loss of a limb, or a death, our life changes—forever. Our well-conceived plan goes sideways. 

Top Tips for Doing “Grief Work” in Order to Dream Again:

• Gather your tools.

You’ll need a pen and paper, because there’s a unique power in the tactile process of writing. Take a large spiral notebook or a legal-size pad of paper and write. Your words will fly over the pages if you hold back nothing.

• Wrestle out the pain before a Holy God. 

Grant yourself permission to grieve. Feel the pain. Name it. Release it. Receive the Truth. He sees me. He hears me. He is the GOD of all comfort. ^“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NASB).

• Write. Write. Write.

Write out your anger, your pain, your hurt, your sense of unfairness, your disappointment, your loss, and your grief. Don’t worry about proper sentence structure, outlines, or grammatical flaws—just write.

I had one more job to do before putting closure on this chapter of my life. The house on the hill of abuse stood empty under the May sunshine. I carried five, one-foot-tall, decorated patio bricks to the large oak tree west of the house. Each of my children had decorated a patio brick with a picture of their own snowman years before. I dropped them in the dirt, swiping my tears and runny nose.

        I dug five little graves side by side. Then I placed each brick face up—buttons for eyes, old tube socks for hats and torn sock fabric for the frill of the scarf. 

Five graves, representing five lives that walked all over our thirty-five acres as a family unit for 27 years. Now finished. I covered the snowmen up with dirt. I prayed. I lifted my hands in surrender to God. I wept. I knew I must continue to choose to forgive. Standing up, I brushed the dirt off my knees and slowly walked to my red van and drove away—never to return to the house on the hill of abuse again. 

It was an ending—but it was also a new beginning.

We are created in the image of our Creator, and we are meant to create. It’s healthy to create and it’s a healing process. And if writing seems too much for you, if you’re still numb, create a flower arrangement. Decorate your dining room table, place your hands in dirt, plant a flower, repurpose a piece of furniture, paint a room, crochet a blanket, sew a dress, mend a hole in your socks, design a card, because the process of creating brings hope to you while offering help to others.

Question:  During times of loss, grief, or sorrow, what have you created? How did that process help to heal your heart so you could move forward?