I found the act of writing on paper to be a powerful tool, like pressing the reset button each time I put pen to paper. I realized that it was essential to describe with honesty and authenticity my personal experience of loss. I wrote to Eli about how I felt and what it meant to be without him. I wrote about what I was going through: helplessness, loneliness, social isolation; and I wrote about my loss of self-worth and regret. I shared my struggles, told him how much it hurt that I couldn’t keep him safe. I shared my very core. I found myself telling him all the things I love and appreciate about him and even told him something I never got the chance to say when he was alive.
A Healing Process
My loss caused me to feel alone, even while in the presence of others. The first few days I attempted to journal was a time to nurture the peaceful stillness that lies beyond talking to others. While being with understanding friends was often comforting, I also needed daily quiet moments in order to find serenity in journaling in my notebook using my favourite Cross pen.
In this way, journaling brought my feelings to the surface. I had lost the relationship I had with my son and my parental identity as protector, provider and nurturer was gone. By writing, I created a new connection that began an adaptive, nurturing and ongoing relationship with my son, one that has evolved over time. The first week I started writing, the words made little sense but after a week or two my thoughts began to take shape.
Years later, with the help of my wife Deborah, we were able to write a letter to our son. Part of the letter reads: “On our journey of healing towards this acceptance, we learned to alchemize our grief, to turn tragedy into transformation and loss into legacy.” This was a further opportunity for healing and, although it was difficult, we both found the process to be a positive one. If you’d like, you can read our letter here.
Journaling Can Lead to Tremendous Personal Growth
Journaling or writing as a tool for healing is well documented. James Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, studied the impact of certain kinds of writing on mental health in 1986. Since then, over 200 research studies have reported that “emotional writing” can improve people’s physical and emotional health.
From my journaling, I was able to develop a guide for parents who had suffered the loss of a child called, “Bridge Over The River Why.” I also realized that I didn’t have to be a professional writer to use writing to help others comprehend the contours of their experience to heal, restore, repair and renew as all they had to do was pick up their pen and begin. The impact of offering peer-to-peer advice was strengthening, empowering and gave me a much-needed sense of purpose and meaning. There is a term for this, it’s called post-traumatic growth, where one moves from victim to survivor to thriver.
Deepening My Own Experience
Eight years ago, I started a men’s storytelling group. We meet once a month, where we share our written stories to express our thoughts and feelings with no politics or jokes. Everyone gets 5 – 8 minutes to read their story with a discussion that follows. The camaraderie that has developed has allowed the group to hone their writing skills in a safe and welcoming environment.
Five years ago, I started writing a storybook for each of my granddaughters through a self-publishing company. I create an imaginative theme, complete with pictures and present each with a hardcover book on their birthdays. This is a form of therapy for me as I am able to channel my love for my late son Eli through my granddaughters, ages 8 and 4.
From Grief to Growth
Discovering journaling and writing has helped me learn, grow, share burdens, adapt, and even reshape my values. Grief is a journey that cuts through our defences, through that instant in time that changes the course of our lives forever, toward facing our new lives, our ‘new normal’. We are blessed with the phenomenon of resilience and the ability to heal. Learning new strategies like journaling can begin to give us strength and hope. For me, this was part of the process of moving away from mourning toward healing.
Opening a Door
A parent wrote to me to say that she is now able to share her journaling with others who have experienced loss, to say “I have had to join the club that I cannot ever leave, but this club is full of the most shining souls I have ever known. The survivors of suicide I have met over the course of a decade have become instrumental in reshaping my new life; they are the life-changers, the game changers, relentless warriors who redefine the word ‘Brave.’ Every day survivors move mountains in honour of their loved ones and head crusades of tireless activism. They have learned to alchemize their grief into a force to be reckoned with. They have turned tragedy into transformation and loss into legacy”.
Journaling and writing opened a door for me. After Eli died, it was extremely hard to live with the pain without being broken by the weight of it. My heart resisted the work I knew I must do in order to move forward. That resistance made my grief work of knowing I needed to lean into the pain even more difficult. Journaling began the process of moving toward healing.
If you’re thinking of journaling, focus on what you can do, not what you can’t. It’s about putting one foot in front of the other. As you move along your own path forward you may find your writing connects you to hope and it may even transform your pain into purpose. Think about giving your inner life shape, substance and meaning; there, you may find healing through self-expression — I did.
Eli’s Place will be a rural, residential treatment program for young adults with serious mental illness. To learn more about our mission and our proven-effective model click here.
David Cooper | Eli’s Place Founding Director
David, Eli’s father, is a retired business owner with extensive corporate and non-profit experience. Founder of STUFF Canada, a non-profit created in 1999 to reduce homelessness and poverty in Toronto, David was the 2004 recipient of the New Spirit of Community Award, Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, and the Peter F. Drucker Award for NFP Innovation in 2003. David, a suicide loss survivor, is the co-author of Bridge over the River Why, a guide for parents who have lost children to suicide, and is currently a volunteer grief facilitator for the Toronto Distress Center. David is a Founding Board Member of Eli’s Place.
