A great tool used by many grief warriors is the journal.  I have used one most of my life.  I taught my children to use one. And I use one now. Journaling is different than a diary.  Journaling is writing about how you feel with a particular event, situation, day, emotion.  It is about recording the moment and your reaction to it.  The healing comes when weeks or months after you write; you go back and read your journal entries.  And it reminds you of something that you might have forgotten.  It reconnects you to how you felt then. It can illustrate a theme of behaviour or issue that you now see and can address. 

When Zane was killed, I couldn’t write.  My last journal entry, I wrote the date he was killed and one line.  “My life came to an end.”  There was nothing else to write about. So my therapist suggested I write a letter to Zane.  I bought a new journal, one that had a phrase Zane loved and I took one of his pens he used to write in his journal.  I cried. And then I wrote;

Dear Zane,

It has been 8 weeks since the crash.  Payton said to a friend; “dad is sad, mom is mad and I am the strongest”.  The fact is we are all stronger than we thought, maybe stronger than we want to be.  But none of us are ok.  Nothing is ok.

Each day begins with this ache in my chest.  The ‘what ifs’ are so loud they overtake all else. And then, on auto pilot, the day unfolds.  Each of us in our own stage of grief and each of us in pain.

I am told that this pain, this reality will have me live the rest of my life on a different level.  I don’t know what that means really.  I guess I will find out because there is no option but to be here.

Love you,

Mama  Xo

I have been writing to Zane ever since. I write like he is away at summer camp.  (My other journal I write the raw messy feelings and thoughts no mother would want her son to hear).  Letters to Zane are about missing him, reminiscing, talking about what’s new with his friends, sharing conversations we should be having aloud, together.  It is therapeutic. It helps ground me and it keeps a record of past and present to not be forgotten.