Today is the last day of the year. What is that like for you?

If you lost someone in 2021, you may want to hold onto this year as it was the last year you had together with your loved one. You aren’t ready to enter into a new year that your loved one will not be a part of. Or, you may be ready to put the year behind you because it is filled with so many painful reminders of all that has been lost.

Maybe you are just now realizing that 2021 isn’t going to get better. That your prayer is going to go unanswered—at least it won’t be answered in the way that you so desperately prayed for. And it’s so disappointing that it hurts like freezing wind against bare skin.

I see advertisements all around promising a “new you” for the new year. But what if you want to be the old you? What if you want the life you once had back? You see, when you experience profound loss, your whole world changes—and it changes forever. What do you do when time keeps going while you are standing still?

Going Through the Motions

Grief is hard to put into words. We all know that it is a normal reaction to loss, but it’s hard to find the right words to describe that reaction. We can find ourselves just going through the motions to get through the day while feeling the nagging sorrow in our soul that begs for our attention.

And here you are about to begin a new year that should be fresh with anticipation while you are still trying to figure out this year. How can you possibly look forward to the future and try to figure it out too? You have so many unanswered questions. It just…all seems overwhelming, and is such an indescribable feeling.

You may have people surrounding you that keep telling you to look on the bright side of things, but is there really a bright side when you are the one left from a couple or a friendship or a family? There is so much pressure to do or be something that you are not. You can even end up trying to comfort the people around you to make them feel comfortable around you in your grief which depletes you even more. It can leave you feeling isolated and alone. Is there anything you can do?

What Does Your Pain Want to Say?

First, let me say I am so sorry for your loss whatever or whoever it was. Loss is painful—there just isn’t any way around that. Welcome the pain and let it serve as your teacher; learn from it, and it will eventually bless you as grief tends to make us wiser and more compassionate. In my own grief journey, I had to stop fighting against the pain and begin to say, “Okay, grief. What is it that you want me to know?”

Community

One of the things that we tend to do when we are grieving is to pull away and isolate. However, the more we isolate, the more we make ourselves vulnerable to depression. Depression tells us we should isolate more and it can become a vicious cycle that leaves us unable to tell if we are coming or going.

One of the best things we can do is to be in a community of people who love us. Maybe that is your biological family or maybe it is your church family; whatever “family” it is, lean into them and let them support you. We all need to have our grief witnessed by others, and we all need the opportunity to express it.

But what do you do when you don’t have that safe community? Maybe you’ve moved in the last year and you haven’t established a good community yet or maybe your friend group has changed due to Covid-19. For one reason or another, you just don’t have anyone with whom you can express your grief in order to have it witnessed.

Journaling

Another way to work through your grief is journaling. It’s a great practice. I know, I know. You aren’t a good writer. You don’t have time. You don’t know what to write. As a counselor I’ve heard many statements around why journaling won’t work. But did you know that research proves that it’s not what comes out of us that makes us sick? It’s what stays inside of us. Jesus said it this way, “…if you clean the inside of the cup, the outside will be clean also.”

Dr. James Pennebaker has done much research around writing about grief, loss, and traumatic events. The results show that just a few minutes of writing can help to lower blood pressure and heart rate. It improves your health and eases your emotional pain.

There is something very powerful about putting words to what we are feeling—the expressing part. I’ve heard Dr. Bessel van der Kolk say if psychotherapy clients do not have language for what is happening inside of them, it adds a year to therapy. You simply cannot process what has happened to you until you have language to put with it. And let me say from experience, it took me a long time to find the right words to describe what I was feeling. Grief is so entangled with different nuanced emotions which can make it hard to learn the language you want to speak. And once you write it, I’ve read that there are benefits to saying it out loud to another person—that’s the witnessing part. But I understand if you are not ready for this piece. It’s just a suggestion for when you do feel ready.

Help for Journaling

So, what about you? Have you tried journaling? Would you like to try it? If it didn’t go like you thought it would in the past, would you be willing to try again? I’ve created a journal with prompts to help get you started when you have the desire. If you’d like to receive them, simply click this link – Healing from Within: How to Begin Writing Your Grief Story – to download them for free.

You can also find lots of feeling wheels on Pinterest to help you find the words to use. But you don’t need that to get started. Simply start with whatever thoughts are in your head. It can even be, “I’m supposed to write something, but I don’t know what to write.” This is where the grief prompts will help you. Then follow your stream of consciousness with the journal prompt and write without editing. Don’t correct your grammar. Don’t clean up your words. Don’t worry if it makes sense. Just write. Get all of the yuckiness out of you. And if, for some reason, you are worried that someone may read it, you can shred it after you write it. The point is to put words to what you are feeling; to give your heartache a voice.

Beauty from Ashes

Your first step toward healing can begin today. God is with you. His Holy Spirit will help you. Since God speaks the language of groaning, He can help you to transform your groans into words.

What is one thing you can do to begin to move forward as you take your grief with you into a new year? Consider joining a small group and making journaling a regular habit. Add in some self-care and be mindful of how your grief changes and how you will change along with it.

Here’s to 2022—where together we will grow something beautiful among the ashes.