Healing from Grief Through Writing: An Investigation

Introduction 

Recovering from grief can be exceptionally difficult because the nature of grief is that it touches every aspect of a person’s life – including physically, psychologically, and socially. Previous research has shown that bereaved individuals suffer from physical and psychological issues caused by their grief, including depressive episodes, physical pain, fatigue, heart palpitations, and back aches (Utz et al. 460). These symptoms are considered typical in those experiencing grief and are not caused by underlying health conditions. 

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Research has shown that writing can produce significant positive effects for individuals experiencing grief, and can be especially useful as a tool for healing (Lattanzi and Hale 45). Additionally, subjects who wrote about their grief as part of their healing process experienced numerous psychological and physical health benefits. Physical health benefits included fewer health center visits and improved immune system functioning while psychological benefits included consistent grades rather than a drop among college students, quicker reemployment rates, and lower rates of absence for professionals. Additionally, individuals who wrote about their grief reported feeling less grief, anxiety, and guilt. (Range et al 116). All of these point to the beneficial nature of writing in helping grieving individuals process their loss in a healthy manner. 

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Due to the all-encompassing nature of grief, it is important to investigate the multiplicity of ways that the effects of grief manifest in people's lives, including its effects on writing. While the benefits of writing while grieving are well documented, there is much less research detailing what themes emerge among author interviews regarding the nature of writing about grief, particularly, how it affects the writing process, and what motivates writers to create works centering on grief. 

 

Methods 

To explore how grief affects writing, six interviews with authors who had produced works depicting their relationship to grief were examined to search for common themes within the authors' reasons for writing about grief. Interviews were found through an internet search using the terms “‘grief’ AND ‘writing’” and “‘interview’ AND ‘grief’ AND ‘author.’”  All of the interviews used in the study featured authors who were being interviewed about works they have written, which center on their experiences with grief. The interviews utilized in this study included:

• “Crafting Memoir and ‘Doing Grief’: an Interview with Melanie Bishop,” published by Vela Magazine and written by Amanda Giracca. This article is an interview with the novelist and essayist Melanie Bishop. 

• “A Python Swallowing an Antelope: An Interview With Gail Griffin on Grief and Writing,” published by Michigan Quarterly Review and written by Kelsey Ronan. Gail Griffin is an essayist and poet. 

• “Writing About Grief: An Interview with Jenn Koiter.” Published by LunchTicket and written by Gail Vannelli. Kenn Koiter is a poet and screenwriter.

• “Grief in Three Bodies: A Conversation,” published by Poetry Foundation. This article is a conversation between the poets Victoria Chang, Prageeta Sharma, and Khaty Xiong. In it, they take turns asking and answering questions about their poems about grief and their personal experiences with grieving. 

After an appropriate amount of interviews (six participants) were acquired, the interviews were carefully read and annotated. Next, an emergent approach to data analysis was utilized. To do this, the annotations were compared to look for any similarities between the information presented by the authors in their interviews. The similarities that were found were documented as “grief’s effect on memories,” “using writing to confront grief,” “use of humor in writings about grief,” “desire for distance while writing about grief,” and “ desire for truthfulness while writing about grief.”

 

Results  

Grief’s effect on memories

Several of the authors discussed using their writing as a tool to record their memories of the people whom they had lost. For example, Prageeta Sharma in the article “Grief in Three Bodies: A Conversation” said, “So I guess memories haunt me. I wonder, did I have that life? What was it? The aftermath made these memories shift so much. I’m grateful that I had something ‘pure' for a while in Grief Sequence because I don’t know if I would have been able to write the same book today” (Sharma et al.). In the same article, Khaty Xiong responded, “I too have already noticed changes in both my grief and in my poems. It makes me wonder if putting together my second book will be an even harder project because of the passage of time and its influences on memory and grief” (Sharma et al.). These quotes reveal a pattern that authors rely on their works to store their memories of the deceased. The authors expressed worry that the memories they have of their deceased may become altered in some way over time, and they view their writing as a tool to accurately preserve their memory. While the comments from the authors make it clear that they want to use their writing to capture their memories of the deceased, it also seems that the authors want to capture their own emotions that arose during their grieving in their writing. This can be seen clearly in Xiong’s comment as she wonders if her next project will be more difficult because of how time affects grief and memory. Additionally, Sharma calls the period of time when she wrote her work “pure.” The comments from Xiong and Shamra show that, in a way, both authors are seeking to capture the fresh emotions caused by their grief in their writing.   

 

Using writing to confront grief

Additionally, a few authors discussed the role of writing in their grieving process, specifically how writing allowed them to more fully come to terms with their grief. Importantly, authors who were not white discussed how writing about their grief allowed them to heal in a society that values them less. Sharma said: 

I have learned, especially as a Southeast Asian woman, that I am quite invisible to the public eye, and therefore my existence (as well as the grief inside that existence) is not real. On top of the isolation I’ve felt in the Midwest—being caught in the erasures of body, language, and identity—grief has really pivoted me in a place where I either accept these erasures and flow with the void, or resist it (survival instinct). Maybe writing and talking about grief is the act of making space. (Sharma et al.) 

Sharma discusses how, in a society where she is often rendered invisible due to her race, her writing acts as a way for her to “make space” for her grief in a society that refuses to see it. Through this process, she also must confront her grief through her writing, a pattern that emerged among many of the authors’ interviews. 

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Several authors discussed how their writing served as a way for them to confront their grief and integrate it into their lives. In the article “A Python Swallowing an Antelope: An Interview With Gail Griffin on Grief and Writing,” Gail Griffin said: 

What happens with an enormity like Bob’s death is that you must now integrate a colossal new thing into your selfhood. For a while that feels impossible: the colossus IS your new selfhood. Then you start to integrate it. I think of it as a process of digestion, where what is outside you gradually becomes part of you. To be truthful, the most righteous image that’s come to me is a python swallowing an antelope. I believe that when you feel ready to start writing, the antelope is mostly digested.” (Ronan)

 In this quote, it is clear that Griffin utilized her writing to confront her grief. As she says, while grieving, her loss seemed to become her entire world, and through writing about her grief she was able to reclaim her sense of self while making her loss part of her life, not its entirety. Additionally, she points out that she was only able to start writing once she had begun to come to terms with her loss. In this way, writing assisted her process, but wasn't the beginning of the process of acceptance. 

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The idea that writers use their writing to confront their grief can also be seen in the article “Writing About Grief: An Interview with Jenn Koiter.” In this article, Koiter says: 

early on in the grieving process that followed my boyfriend’s suicide, I wrote a lot of catalog poems. Writing in lists at that stage makes sense. I was feeling and thinking in fragments. I was also still integrating the loss into a bunch of situations (i.e., he’s not at work anymore, we won’t go to that Thai restaurant again, I don’t have to take that exit anymore, etc.). So it made sense to jot down those moments where I re-experienced loss. (Vannelli) 

This quote from Koiter highlights the pattern of authors writing to confront their grief and integrate it into their lives. It also emphasizes a difference in approach from Griffin. Where Koiter wrote early in the grieving process when she felt her loss most acutely, Griffin wrote later in her grieving process after she had already begun coming to terms with her loss. This shows that while some authors write in different stages of the grieving process, they still use writing to process their grief. By doing this, Griffin and Koiter felt that they were able to integrate their loss into their lives and reclaim their sense of identity. Additionally, while there were many different reasons for writing about grief discussed among the authors, the common themes that emerged all included a sentiment that writing allowed the authors to confront their grief, make space for it in their lives and identities, and learn to cope with their losses. 

 

The use of humor in writings about grief

The interviews also included commonalities in the writing techniques and processes employed by the authors while writing about their grief. Several authors discussed intentionally using humor in their works in order to express their grief in the way they felt was most accurate for their experiences. In her interview, Griffin said, “I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you enjoyed the humor, truly. It was emphatically NOT ‘inserted’ to provide relief of any kind. I found that a kind of dark humor was a distinct feature of my own grieving–not, I think, a way of avoiding or deflecting, but just another mode, another language, in which suffering expresses itself” (Ronan). The same sentiment was expressed by Koiter, who said, “For one thing, grief is exhausting, and humor is a way to give ourselves a break from the work of grief…Dark humor isn’t only a way out of grief—it’s a way to be honest in our grief, because our powers of observation and our sense of the ridiculous don’t go away just because we’ve had a loss” (Vannelli). Both of these quotes highlight that the use of humor was extremely intentional by the authors. They both believed that the humor in their works was necessary to accurately and truthfully convey their experiences with grief, and that was why they chose to utilize it as a technique in their respective works. 

 

The desire for distance while writing about grief

Many of the authors discussed their desire or need for emotional distance while writing. Authors discussed how time and space allowed them to refine their work, and several discussed striving for a sense of distance while producing their writing. Sharma said, “I was so inspired to think about the way the poems built distance and yet stayed immersed in their subjects” (Sharma et al.). Additionally, Griffin said, “The power of the book for me came from the depth of its consideration of grief, suffering, and death, and of course from the beauty of its prose. It’s also a somewhat cerebral book, without ever being chilly or detached, and grief was a partly cerebral territory for me as well” (Ronan). These quotes highlight that several authors whose interviews were utilized relied on or endeavored to create distance. For Sharma, she admired the sense of distance that poems about grief were able to create while still allowing the audience close to the subject. This theme is echoed in Griffin’s quote. She discusses how she found writing her novel to be effective because she was able to be cerebral, not entirely emotional, and create distance in that way without being detached and completely unemotional. This technique of being distant but not unreachable seems to allow the authors to discuss their grief fully and deeply without depriving the audience of emotional connection. 

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While several authors discussed their use of distance in a more metaphorical sense, other authors also talked about the effect of temporal distance on their writing. Koiter said, “I think it was actually helpful to have that temporal distance from so many of the poems. A certain detachment is needed when assembling a manuscript, and I imagine it might be tougher to summon that when all the poems are new” (Vannelli). For Koiter, temporal distance was necessary for the editing process. Recall that Koiter wrote many poems when she felt the loss most acutely and soon following the loss of her partner, so it is important to note that she found space helpful while editing, but didn't necessarily rely on it while writing. Similarly, in her own interview, Griffin commented on the idea that you should wait at least eight years after an event before including it in creative nonfiction by saying, 

I think her advice, which is pretty common, is addressed mostly to students, of whatever age, who want to write about the death that happened last month. A bad idea, unless the writer is simply after “expression,” or relief. To do more serious work, aimed at (forgive me) “artistry,” you just don’t have perspective, or a frame on what the loss means to you, until time has passed. On the other hand, for more experienced writers I don’t believe time limits are necessary: I think you know when it’s time, as I did. You simply feel you’re ready to write about the thing. That feeling in itself is highly reliable, I think. It tells you that you have the perspective you need, though the actual writing and revising and revising and revising gives you even more. (Ronan)

In this quote, Griffin discussed how temporal distance was not something she found to be necessary when writing, as she was able to rely on her own intuition to tell her when she was ready to write about her loss. This is similar to Koiter, who felt ready to write about her loss soon after it occurred. Additionally, both Koiter and Griffin discussed how the editing process gave them more perspective on their grief and allowed them to complete their works.  

 

The desire for truthfulness while writing about grief

Finally, many of the authors discussed trying to capture a sense of truth and faithfulness to their lived reality in their works. A few of the authors discussed it from an academic standpoint, arguing that good memoirs tell the truth in an entertaining way, so capturing the truth was important for them. For example, in “Crafting Memoir and ‘Doing Grief’: an Interview with Melanie Bishop,” Bishop says, “ In straight nonfiction—journalism and reportage—you have to be able to verify all your facts, quotes and sources. You can’t recreate dialogue. Creative nonfiction allows the writer to utilize skills from writing fiction and poetry in order to make an essay or memoir more scenic, more sensory, more detailed, more literary, but most importantly, even more true” (Giracca). For Bishop and the other authors who discussed this in their interviews, capturing the truth of their grief in their works was important because their writing was ultimately for an audience. They wanted their writing to appeal to their audience and they believed that the truth was necessary to accomplish that goal. Other authors discussed the matter from a more emotional standpoint, emphasizing the difficulty that came with reliving the pain in order to accurately capture it in their works. For example, in her interview, Griffin said: 

In fact, two early readers of the manuscript, both fine writers, said they really wanted to ‘see’ Bob more clearly and get a sense of our life together. That’s when I realized I had all but shut him out of the book. And I knew why: looking at my own solo journey was difficult but possible; looking at Bob, and at the two of us together, seemed unbearable. But when two good and very different readers agree, you’d better listen. (Ronan). 

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While Griffin still pursued the goal of portraying the truth in her writing like Bishop, she struggled to include the full truth in her initial drafts. She emphasizes the difficulty of confronting her grief and how painful it can be to write about one’s grief while still affirming the necessity of including the truth in her work.  

 

Discussion 

My research revealed several common themes in what motivates authors to produce works about their grief as well as how their grief affects their writing process. The themes that emerged were that authors use their writings to record their memories of the deceased and confront their grief while integrating it into their lives. Additionally, many authors utilized humor to accurately represent their experiences with grief. Finally, authors expressed a desire for distance while writing about grief, both from the audience and temporally from the event itself, and a desire for truthfulness while writing about grief.

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The results reflect positively on writing’s ability to help authors cope with grief.  Many of the authors whose interviews were utilized commented on their worry that their memories of their deceased would fade over time. Without memories to recall, it can be difficult to find joy in the past that was shared with the deceased. However, the authors also discussed how writing helps them to record memories so that they can at least have those memories. This was one way that writing helped authors to cope with their grief. Additionally, using writing to confront grief and reclaiming a sense of self were common themes in the interviews. Authors such as Sharma and Gail talked about losing themselves to grief and how writing helped them to make space for their grief in their lives. This is further evidence of the therapeutic nature of writing about grief. The fact that several authors discussed being able to reclaim their sense of self due to writing is very encouraging. 

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The results of the study also show that grief affects the writing process. Several authors discussed using humor to accurately depict their experiences with grief. It is interesting that several authors brought this up, showing that they used humor very purposely, even if it wasn’t part of their usual style. This pattern in the interviews is evidence that grief changes authors' writing techniques. This claim is further supported by the fact that several authors discussed wanting to put distance between the subject and the audience while still allowing the audience to form an emotional connection with the work. This desire was very conscious on the part of the authors and affected how they wrote their works. Finally, the writers discussed trying to capture the full emotional truth in their writing, even when it was painful. This is another way that their grief affected their writing process and the decisions they made while writing. Even when it was painful, the authors chose to include details that painted the most full and accurate portrait of their grief as possible.

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Many of the results uncovered by this study were unexpected, especially because an emergent data analysis strategy was used. However, among the most interesting findings was that the authors used their writing to record their memories of the deceased. While it is common for people to look back at photographs and texts that feature their lost ones, it is interesting that writers hoped to use their writings as an artifact in the same way that they might use more unbiased methods, like photos.   

There were several limitations of this study. Many of the limitations of the study stemmed from the relatively small sample size. To start, there was a lack of diversity in the genders of the authors whose interviews were used. All of the authors used were women, so there were no nonbinary or male authors to provide their perspectives. Because of this, any patterns that may have arisen among the participants due to gender were impossible to identify. Additionally, five out of six of the authors included were poets. Because of this, any differences that may have been correlated with the form that authors write in were difficult to identify. 

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To investigate this area of research further, one research question that could be asked is how the form that authors write in (poem, novel, essay, etc.) affects how they process and interact with their grief in their writing.  

 

 

Works Cited

Giracca, Amanda. “Crafting Memoir and ‘Doing Grief’: an Interview with Melanie Bishop.” Vela Magazine, http://velamag.com/crafting-memoir-and-doing-grief-an-interview-with-melanie-bishop/. 

Lattanzi, Marcia, and  Mary Ellis Hale. “Giving Grief Words: Writing during Bereavement.” OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, vol. 15, no. 1, 1985, pp. 45-52. Sage Journals, https://doi.org/10.2190/TT15-WAPL-LLMT-X2WD. Accessed 20 September 2023. 

Range, Lillian, et al. “Does Writing About the Bereavement Lessen Grief Following Sudden, Unintentional Death?” Death Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 2000, pp. 115-134, Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/074811800200603. Accessed 20 September 2023.

Ronan, Kelsey. “A Python Swallowing an Antelope: An Interview With Gail Griffin on Grief and Writing.” Michigan Quarterly Review, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2020/03/a-python-swallowing-an-antelope-an-interview-with-gail-griffin-on-grief-and-writing/.

Sharma, Prageeta, et al. “Grief in Three Bodies: A Conversation.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/157105/grief-in-three-bodies-a-conversation. 

Utz, Rebecca, et al. “Grief, Depressive Symptoms, and Physical Health Among Recently Bereaved Spouses.” The Gerontologist, vol. 52, no. 4, 2012, pp. 460–471. Oxford University Press, https://doi-org.du.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/geront/gnr110. Accessed 20 September 2023.

Vannelli, Gail. “Writing About Grief: An Interview with Jenn Koiter.” LunchTicket, https://lunchticket.org/litdish-writing-about-grief-an-interview-with-jenn-koiter/.

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