Writing as a tool for transformation: Finding the gifts in our postpandemic world

BY RAYYA LIEBICH

After almost a year and a half of global grief, I am stumbling out of quietude and looking for ways to reconnect with the world and with others. For many like me, it is a time of great excitement—and anxiety. COVID has impacted us differently as individuals, yet we have experienced a worldwide grief immersion together. While navigating the pandemic, we have shared in the collective discomfort of recognizing our own mortality. None of us are immune to loss. Hopes and dreams, expectations, livelihoods, time with beloved friends and family—the world as we knew it came to a screeching halt.

My personal crash course in grief came seven years ago following my mother’s sudden death. On that dark January morning, I sat in shock at my kitchen table. There was a blizzard in my rural town, I needed to fly overseas, and my passport had expired. I did the only thing that made any logical sense. I picked up my pen and started writing. Over the next five years, I was able to transform the confusion, chaos, and heartache of loss through poetry. Putting pen to paper was a cathartic outlet that allowed me to move through every tangle and knot. Through writing, I found a way to organize and make sense of the unimaginable. Day after day, page after page, I found my way toward healing.

Grief is a complex and misunderstood visitor. As author and activist Stephen Jenkinson highlights, we live in a world of death phobia and grief illiteracy. Our culture lacks the language, rituals, and supports to hold the bereaved. Yet to move into this postpandemic phase, we desperately need to develop the skills to make peace with what will never be, and to actively mourn our losses. One of the most heart-wrenching and valuable lessons I have learned is that your old life dies when you lose someone you love—or, in this case, when the world loses so many lives at once. At the same time, we have the incredible chance to move into a deeper appreciation of what it means to live fully.

Contrary to popular belief, grieving and mourning are not interchangeable terms. Grief is the internal experience of loss. Mourning is when you take your internal feelings and express them outwardly. Actions like writing allow the loss to be acknowledged and the feelings to transform. Without actively mourning, grievers can feel stuck in the traumatic memory.

Writing allowed me to mourn my loss, and so I was also able to make radical and brave decisions guided by the clarity of my grief. I left my ten-year career as a Waldorf teacher and committed to my dream of becoming a writer. I wrote poem after poem until I was able to publish a chapbook and, eventually, a fulllength collection of poems in memory of my mother.

I connected with my local hospice and created a curriculum called Writing through the Grief to assist others in healing their losses. I swam upstream against a culture that wanted me to pull it together, move on, and get over my grief. But the more I connected with grievers, the more I understood how our societal taboos are holding us back from healing. I found a new joy for life by facilitating death cafés at the Kalein Centre and discovered that grief desperately needs an outlet to exist and that our departed want to be remembered.1 Through loss, I was able to re-engage with the world and live my best life.

In this potent time of reflection, full of anxiety and awkwardness, I’d like to offer a few writing activities to help readers gain perspective around both the past and the future (see page 7). These exercises can be done on your own or with a friend or group. Witnessing each other is a powerful way to change the discourse on grief, but these exercises can also be of great benefit if done privately in a journal for your eyes only. Set aside half an hour or so of uninterrupted time, make a cup of tea, and—without expectations or judgements—invite your pen to guide your reflections. There is no correct way to grieve and no formula for writing. Simply try to keep your pen moving, allow whatever wants to be written to be written, and go where the energy is.2

Acknowledging our grief and reaching out for support is a brave and important step in healing. If writing or reflecting on your losses feels overwhelming, reach out to your local hospice for resources, support groups, or a list of local counsellors. There are also wonderful free resources online, social media communities, and toll-free hotlines for immediate support.3 You are not alone. In fact, more than ever before, may these words ring true:

- Helen Keller

1. Our culture does not teach us to mourn our losses. Our small losses are deemed trivial and not given the validity they deserve.

Exercise 1: Make a list of the small losses you’ve experienced since the pandemic started. Nothing is too trivial to mark. Try for ten.

2. A large part of coming to terms with loss is dealing with our expectations of “what should have been.” Until we articulate our disappointments, it can be difficult to move beyond them.

Exercise 2: Travel back in your mind to New Year’s Eve, 2020, and how you imagined the year was going to unfold before the pandemic hit. Start with, I was supposed to, or I was looking forward to, or I was going to…

3. With grief comes clarity and the chance to create ourselves/our world anew. Through loss we gain new insights on our old lives and selves.

Exercise 3: Make a list, starting each line with I wasn’t expecting the pandemic to help me/show me…

4. We can hold both loss and gratitude. The gratitude does not negate the pain.

Exercise 4: What is in place for you right now because of unforeseen circumstances that could be seen as an unexpected gift or blessing? Start each line with Right now, I am grateful for...

5. This crisis may have shed light on how you want to engage with the world anew.

Exercise 5: Set a timer for ten minutes and reflect. Are there any brave changes you are willing to make? New attitudes you want to bring into your daily life? Keep your pen moving and come back to this question again and again, searching for different responses and angles to explore.

When these exercises are complete, put them aside and read your responses over again in one week. After rereading, ask yourself How can I integrate some of my inner wisdom?

Celebrating what we have is an important part of living fully. Keep a gratitude journal by your bed and commit to writing one line per day.

Reaching out to others and connecting with our communities can strengthen all of us, especially after a time of social isolation. Write a letter to someone who has been by your side or supported you from afar throughout the pandemic. Thank them for the ways they have shown up for you. Send the letter!

Notes

1. Death cafés are part of a worldwide movement to encourage conversations about death, dying, and living fully. The goal is to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives. Over 12,735 death cafés have taken place in seventy-eight countries since September 2011. For more information and guidance on how to lead your own café, visit deathcafe.com and kaleincentre.org.

2. In her classic book titled Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg offers guidelines for an authentic writing practice, including, “Keep your pen moving, don’t cross out, don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, don’t get logical, and go for the jugular” (Shambhala Publications 1986, 8).

3. Visit the virtual mygrief.ca or follow Instagram channels such as @whatsyourgrief for shared understanding. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call the BC-wide Crisis Centre distress line at 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433).

Rayya Liebich is an award-winning Canadian poet of Lebanese and Polish descent. Passionate about writing as a tool for transformation and changing the discourse on grief, she teaches creative writing classes in Nelson, BC. Her debut collection of poems, Min Hayati, has just been released by Inanna Publications (June 2021).