How do I start a grief journal?

Start small. Read one line someone else wrote about loss, then write for five minutes about what it brings up. Don’t edit it and don’t share it. Come back tomorrow.

What should I write about in a grief journal?

Whatever is true today. A memory, something you wish you had said, what the house sounds like now, what you are angry about. There is no right order and no wrong entry.

Journaling after a loss

Writing through grief

A gentle way to put grief into words, one line at a time.

Many people find that writing helps them carry grief. Not to make it smaller, but to give it somewhere to go. The hardest part is the blank page. Grief is too big to start from nothing.

“I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson · In Memoriam A. H. H. · 1850

Tennyson felt it too. Then he wrote In Memoriam anyway.

Begin with someone else’s words

You don’t have to find the first sentence yourself. Begin with a line from someone who has been here before: a poet, a letter writer, a mother who lost a child three hundred years ago. Their words open the door. Yours can follow.

A simple way to write through grief

Read one line. Just one. Let it sit.
Write for five minutes about what it brings up. A memory, a feeling, a sentence you never got to say.
Don’t fix it. No editing, no making it beautiful, no making it make sense.
Keep it private. This page is for you, not for anyone else to read.
Come back tomorrow. A few minutes a day is enough.

Grief journal prompts

Describe one thing they left, as you remember it, and as it actually is.
Write the conversation you wish you’d had.
What does the house sound like now?
What did they know about you that no one else does?
What are you allowed to feel today that you weren’t yesterday?

Why a poetry journal

Saudade is built around this. Each day brings one verified line of poetry or literature, and a private page to write back. Nothing is shared, there are no streaks to keep, and every week you write binds into a volume on your shelf. Months from now you can look back and see how far you’ve carried it.

Saudade gives you one line of poetry or literature a day, chosen by a person, from writers who felt it first. Then a private page to write what it brings up. Nobody reads it but you, and over the weeks your pages become a book of your own.

Get Saudade on the App Store

Saudade is a place to read and write. It isn’t therapy or grief counselling. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or reach your local emergency number.