Grief journal prompts
There is no order to these and nothing here you should be feeling by now. They are ways to keep talking to someone, and to put down things that have nowhere else to go.
How to use these
Take one on a day you want one. The page is not waiting for you, and leaving it for a month is not failing at anything.
Keep talking
Addressed to them rather than about them. Most people find this the easiest way in, and some never write any other kind of entry.
- What would you tell them about today?
- What do you wish you had said?
- What do you want to say now that you could not say then?
- What would they say to you about how you are doing?
- What would you ask them, if you could ask one thing?
- What have you been keeping from them out of habit?
- What would they find funny about this week?
- What do you want to tell them that has nothing to do with them being gone?
Keeping them
The details go first and they go quietly. These are the entries people are gladdest to have five years on.
- What did they sound like?
- What is a small, unimportant thing about them that you never want to lose?
- What do other people get wrong about them?
- What reminded you of them today, out of nowhere?
- What do you want to keep doing because of them?
- What did they always say, word for word?
- What were they like on an ordinary Tuesday, not at their best or their worst?
- Who else remembers them, and what could you ask that person?
How you are
Nothing here is a stage and none of it is on a schedule. Answer one, or none, and come back whenever.
- What has been the hardest hour of the week?
- What are you carrying for them that you could set down?
- What are you angry about?
- What have people said that helped, and what has not?
- What do you need this week that you have not asked anyone for?
- What is the thing you have not said out loud to anybody?
- What was ordinary today, and was that all right?
- What is coming up on the calendar, and what would make that day gentler?
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