How Journaling Helped me Heal from Grief and How it Can Help You Too

Photo courtesy of Google Search "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn't work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals. My journey through grief started the day the pea-size lump behind my husband's ear was given a name. Metastatic melanoma. Over the course of two years it spread to his lungs, then his brain. A brain tumor the size of a golf ball is what killed him. Four weeks after his death, a tightly sealed plastic box containing a dozen diaries was the first thing I grabbed when I had to evacuate my home ahead of a monster cyclone. Seven years after those events, the plastic container, which by now contains several dozen moleskins, is still the first thing ...