JOURNALING SAVES LIFE AND SANIATY FOR THE BEREAVED
When I was a young woman, I began journaling. Journaling is a wonderful habit for human beings. It creates a reference for us to refer back to as we age. It assists us in tracking progress, improvements, accomplishments, downfalls, failings, and discrepancies. It affords us a review of our actions and is a private place where we might track our processes and strategies. It also assists us during times of need.
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JOURNALING
Journaling is a beneficial tool whose application catapults a survivor from debilitating grief toward recovery.
It allows the survivor to record their fondest memories of their loved ones.
It offers comfort and testimony that their memories were true experiences.
It helps to organize the mind when disorganization rules one's current world.
It ensures that written references are available for review as time clouds the mind.
It helps relieve the stresses of debilitating loneliness, track one's progress in their healing journey, and offers tangible proof that improvement has been accomplished.
Journaling is a gift we give ourselves. (Mourning Light I, 2016)
As a young woman, I began journaling because my church group committed to it. I had no idea that I was incorporating such a vital habit into my life.
As an adult woman, I now find that journaling is therapeutic. It is a reference for my life's experiences and a place where my thoughts, goals, and most beautiful memories are recorded. It is a chart of my personal growth and accomplishments, as well as my mistakes and improvements. I hope my writings will help my children and grandchildren plan earlier and more precisely than I did.
I lost a grandson four years ago. When his life was lost, journaling became my therapy. I would jot down my thoughts, pains, sorrows, and hopes for my family. I would carry my journal in my purse, and I took it everywhere.
I needed my journal with me so that if I were to need a confidant suddenly, I would reach into my bag and pull it out. It gave me comfort and control in a time when comfort and control seemed beyond my reach.
I was my grandson's funeral director; therefore, I had to remain professional and in control of myself through the entire experience of his death and burial. I had to assist his mother (my daughter) and his father through the most horrific experience in life, the loss of one's child. Additionally, I had to assist my husband, as well as myself, through this tragic loss in our family.
I am the business manager and the managing funeral director of our funeral home. Downtime is not an option for me. During bereavement, I had to continue functioning as though my sweet grandson's death did not affect me professionally. Without my journal readily available, I would not have been able to continue working or maintain executive professionalism without interruption.
I hate that my sweet grandson is dead. However, I am grateful that a wise woman purchased a journal for me in my youth and that she instilled a habit into my life that saved me from the most compromised state I have ever experienced. Journaling saved me when I thought I should perish. Not only could I write my woes on its pages, but I could review my past and understand that although I did not feel vital, I was.
Upon its pages were precious stories of my experiences with my children, grandchildren, and husband. Reading memories pinned in my own handwriting reminded me that I still had family who needed me. I had grandchildren who needed their grandmother. I had a loving and kind husband who needed his wife. And perhaps most importantly, I still had the profound purpose of mothering, nurturing, and guiding my daughter through her most debilitating experience ever. She needed a strong mother, not a weak one. She needed understanding and love, not abandonment. Moreover, she needed hope that she would recover and have the strength to nurture her husband and wee children through this most horrific experience too. In short, she needed a functioning mother to assist and support her as she grieved the tragic loss of her baby boy, Mickey Joe.
Gratefully, journaling assisted me in providing these needs to my family and to myself. It allowed me to be my own friend and help myself through methodic planning and accountability. Journaling set up these methods of critical thinking and personal inventory in my youth, and it did not fail me when I needed it most. It provided opportunities whereby I could review lesser losses and recoveries from my past, and facilitated the successful application of those strategies to my current tragedy. It saved my life, my sanity, and my business. Thank heaven for insightful people who plant habits into your life that one day come back to assist you when your world falls apart.
If you have lost a loved one and feel you need an outlet for recovery, please consider journaling. It saved me when I was lost and broken. I hope it will do the same for you.
