So, I'm Writing a Grief Book
Hi!
Welcome to my Substack. If you’re here, you probably know me and know what I’m about. I’m an artist and a griever, and I am passionate about both of those things (I’m currently considering going into Art Therapy …..!!!) It’s important to me to share my knowledge of art and of grieving, that everyone is creative and everyone deserves to grieve well. As I’ve just finished taking a course to certify me as a Grief Support Specialist, I’ve been reading hundreds of pages of research and essays etc. and have been writing a lot of essays about various aspects of grief and loss (for example, Loss, Grief, & Incarceration; Media Analyses of Grief in House MD & Ted Lasso; answering FAQs about grief) and would love to share them with anybody curious to keep up with my thoughts!
I’ll also be sharing books, poetry, dissertations, essays, articles, and papers that I’ve enjoyed reading that may be of interest (like essays on Complicated Grief and Art Therapy; Parasocial Grief; the importance of Mourning Rituals and so on).
Grief and art and the intersections of them are so so interesting to me, and I could (and do!) talk about them for hours to anyone who will listen, and I write these long essays for fun that I end up not having anyone to share them with, so I’d love to share them with someone!
Finally, I also have a long-term goal of writing a grief book that I’ve already begun the early stages of, but will be in the works for a long while, and I would still like to share my thoughts in the meantime!
This book would contain three main things - information about grief & validating the breadth of ways that grief experiences can manifest, art & essays made in response to grief, and grief prompts. The intention with this book is to give people the opportunity and safe space to explore their grief and to remember the person or persons they are grieving in a full and embodied way. The prompts vary from the mundane and everyday, like ‘What was your person’s relationship with their hair?’ ‘What was their family like?’ to deeper or more difficult questions like ‘Write everything you remember about the day you found out they died.’ ‘If your relationship with your person was strained, write about a good memory you have together.’ This spectrum of prompts gives us permission to remember that our dead people are/were whole people, with good, bad, & ugly moments, and that they don’t need to be flattened to two-dimensional theoretically flawless people just because they have died. I think we deserve to remember our loved ones in the fullness of their humanity, in as much depth as we need or want to–even the smallest and silliest, even the hardest and darkest moments. I want to create this resource for, at the very least, those in my immediate circle who are grieving. I’d love for this to become a published resource, but I don’t need it to be in order for this to be a successful project.
I know that grieving is confusing and amorphous and that alone can be very scary for some people, especially when we consider the implicit expectations of grief and the stigmas attached to grieving loudly and continually in the dominant culture in the U.S. All of that can stifle people’s desires to express their love in the ways they need or want to, and I want to do my part in changing the narrative around grief and grieving by giving people tools to better understand grief on the personal, social, and political levels. I believe that more people want and need a tool like this than realize it - I’ve found that sometimes we want to remember things, but when we’re in an activated grief state, it’s challenging to even think of things to remember. This is a tool for those moments as well.
I believe that a key component of grieving well is understanding the multitude of ways that grieving can appear. That there is no right way to grieve, but knowing what grief can be–to put language to what may otherwise be vague anecdotal statements–can, I think, give an immense boost in ability to grieve well, even within the uneven access to grief resources.
I’m eager to keep sharing my grief journey with you!
Love,
Alekz