We talk a lot about the business of writing, but there is a personal element of writing that has seen me through various hardships in my life. Grief, especially, is one of them. Sadly, I know grief intimately. Over the years, I’ve lost people I loved both quickly and heartbreakingly slow. Writing has been an integral part of making sense of loss, of archiving loss, of healing from loss.

I heard actress and director Regina King say recently that “grief is a journey,” with respect to her son Ian transitioning by suicide almost two years ago. As you go through life, these journeys become intricate pathways that intersect, and run parallel all while you’re trying to forge your way through a new life, void of the physical iteration of your loved one. Grief becomes this revolving door where some journeys are fresh, while others have been worn in, evolving, settling for years.

In American culture, death and mourning often seem like they need to be swept under the rug. As if everyone is still expecting you to function when your whole world has been turned upside down. Up to five bereavement days are covered, if that, in some places. How do you heal from the loss of a lifetime of love in five business days?

As writers do, many of us turn to the page to begin processing. Recently, I read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir in which she recounts the unexpected death of her husband while her daughter was also suffering from severe illness. It was one of the most raw accounts of grief I’d read. Hard not to bring you to tears. Yet, reading it, I felt like I was seen too. I imagine that the writing was therapeutic in its own way, although it changed nothing about the circumstance, most of us can make a lot more sense of things on the page than any other way.

“I was at the dentist and she was dying,” was the first line to a poem I wrote in my college class at Temple University under the instruction of poet Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon. This class challenged me in ways that made me the writer I am today. One that can pull from all types of places to write. To never be short on inspiration. It was a poem about my very best friend in high school dying of meningitis. It was the irony of it all, you know? We do these mundane things, and at the same time, life changes in an instant.

Dena and I worked at the same clothing store, went to the same high school, and lived two doors down from one another. One morning, my dad took us to school, as he did depending on his work schedule and Dena mentioned she didn’t feel well. She left early from school that day when I tried to find her after school, and two days later, she was gone.

I still write about Dena all the time. I realized how much about that moment I never really processed being that I was so young at the time. I was maybe sixteen years old. Dena was seventeen. It was in Kimmika’s class that I started to understand what processing grief on the page looked like.

There’s not a lot of magic to it, except, writing what you feel. What you think. Being honest. But you’d be surprised how hard that can be for some of us. I was watching a film, I think, where there was a character who literally talked about how angry they were that their partner died. It’s taboo to say, right? But sometimes that’s how you feel. I think the first step is being able to be honest with yourself in order to begin the healing process.

You can also simply write about who they were and what they meant to you. I recently lost one of my beloved aunts and it dawned on me how many lives she touched. I started by writing about her and some of the memories that immediately flooded my mind upon hearing of her passing.

It doesn’t have to be fancy sentences. It could be a string of emotions. It could be colors. Honestly, the page is yours. But I will encourage you to write something. I’ve written my way through losing my dog, family, and friends. Something about letting it all out is cathartic. Sometimes I don’t always feel like people will understand the way the words seem to, so writing is such a huge part of my own grieving process.

It’s not all in one sitting and done. I’ll revisit it over and over much like I’ve done with Dena over the years. Or the moments when I miss Coltrane something awful like making turkey bacon the other day and not having him right by my side waiting for a piece. Or I think of my grandmother. Or my Uncle Charlie. Anytime, that feeling bubbles up in me and tears prick at my eyes, I try to honor it. I will try to write it. Sometimes that is a real challenge, because when you write things, it’s almost like your brain understands it to be true. But only once it’s inked on the paper. While it’s all in your head, you can almost pretend it doesn’t exist. When I write it, I have to feel it, and man, sometimes that’s a scary place to be.

Nneka Okona writes in her book Self-Care for Grief, that grief is not always the physical loss of a person. That felt so important to me. We are constantly mourning, old ways of life, jobs, transitions, all types of things throughout our lives and it’s imperative that we take care of ourselves amid all of those journeys.

Writing has the power to care for you. Trust it with your heart.

Tin House is accepting applications for their 2024 Fall Residencies! Each residency includes a $1500 stipend & Apt in PDX. Residents can stay for any length within the month of their residency, and families/partners are welcomed. Find out more and apply by 3/21: https://buff.ly/3V9lYUj

Poets & Writers is hiring a Director of Programs & Partnerships responsible for working both independently and collaboratively to deliver, evaluate, and refine programming that helps writers advance their careers, build community, and reach readers; ensuring that current programming meets the needs of writers, is aligned with P&W’s mission and brand, and takes advantage of P&W’s extensive content and resources for writers;This is a hybrid, full-time position based in New York City with a salary of $90,000. It requires at least two days in the office per week. Interested applicants should email a resume and cover letter as a DOC or PDF to Executive Director Melissa Ford Gradel at mgradel@pw.org with the subject line “Director of Programs.”

The Columbia Journal is delighted to announce that the 2024 Online Contest will accept submissions in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation from February 21 through March 21, 2024 (deadline extended). The four first place winners of the Online Contest will be published online in Spring 2024 and will receive a $250 cash prize each.

Mashed is looking for enthusiastic, hard-working freelance writers to join our feature team. Ideal candidates have at least three years of experience writing content for print or the web with a focus on food, cooking, and grocery shopping content similar to Mashed. ($.08/word).

ProPublica is seeking a senior editor to expand its Washington Bureau and manage a talented team of five to six D.C.-based investigative reporters assigned to cover politics and the federal government. ($185-210k)

Capital B Atlanta is on the lookout for an enterprise reporter with a track record in resourceful and creative reporting, a watchdog mindset, and a passion for storytelling. ($70-85k).

STAT is looking for an accomplished, versatile editor to lead its business and policy teams. ($100k).