Journaling through grief: a gentle guide for after a loss

After a loss, a lot of well-meant advice arrives at once. Some of it helps. Much of it seems to assume grief is a problem with a solution, or a road with an end you should be walking toward.

Writing can be a quieter kind of company. A journal doesn't need you to be doing well, and it doesn't get tired of hearing the same thing again. This guide is about how to use one through grief, gently, and without turning it into another task you're failing at.

It applies to any kind of loss: a death, a relationship ending, a pregnancy loss, a diagnosis, a home, a job, a future you'd been counting on. Grief doesn't only follow death, and you don't need anyone's permission to call what you're feeling grief.

In the early days, write anything

In the first days and weeks, focus can disappear. Reading is hard. Long sentences are hard. If that's where you are, let your journal be as small and scattered as you need.

Some things that count:

• One line a day, even if it's the same line.
• A list of what you did today, however small. "Got up. Drank tea. Answered two messages."
• Fragments of memory as they come, without trying to put them in order.
• Things you need to remember, like calls to return and forms to fill in. Grief makes everyday memory unreliable, and getting it on paper takes one weight off.
• "I can't write today", with the date.

There's no need to explain your feelings or make sense of them. You're keeping a record, and keeping yourself company.

Writing to the person you lost

Many people find it natural to write directly to the person who died, or to the relationship that ended, or to the version of their life that's gone. You might:

• Tell them what happened today, the way you would have.
• Ask the questions you didn't get to ask.
• Say what you're angry about. Anger is a common part of grief, including anger at the person you've lost.
• Thank them for something specific.
• Write the goodbye you didn't get to say, or a different one from the one you said.

Letters like these don't need to be sent, finished or kind. Some people write one a day for a while. Some write one and never need another.

Prompts for when you're ready

When you have a bit more room, prompts can help. Take one at a time and skip any that feel wrong.

1. What's a small, ordinary thing I miss? A phrase, a sound, a habit.
2. What did they know about me that hardly anyone else does?
3. When is the hardest time of day right now? What happens then?
4. What are people saying that helps? What are they saying that doesn't?
5. What am I afraid of forgetting? Write it down in as much detail as I can.
6. What would they say if they could see me today?
7. What am I carrying that isn't mine to carry?
8. Is there anything I'm relieved about, and can I let that be true too?
9. What have I done this week that took more strength than anyone noticed?
10. What do I want to keep doing, or start doing, in their memory?

That eighth one can be hard. Relief often sits alongside grief, especially after a long illness or a difficult relationship, and it's easier to live with once it's been said somewhere.

Keeping a record of the person

Over time, a grief journal often turns into something else as well: a place where a person is kept. Stories, sayings, recipes, the way they answered the phone. Things that only you remember.

If you'd like to build that deliberately:

• Write one memory per entry and give it a short title.
• Ask other people for their stories and write them down too, noting who told you.
• Write about the photographs you have. Who took them, what happened just before and after.
• Note the dates that matter to you: birthdays, anniversaries, the day of a last good conversation. You'll likely feel them coming, and it helps to see them on the page ahead of time.

You don't have to grow from this

A lot of writing about grief moves quickly to growth and lessons. Sometimes something new does come out of a loss, much later. Sometimes nothing does, and the loss is just a loss. Your journal doesn't need to reach a conclusion, and you don't need to write toward one.

It can still be worth looking back now and then, just to notice where you are. Grief often changes shape over time, and it rarely moves in a straight line. Rereading what you wrote six months ago can show you something about where you are now that's hard to see from the inside.

How Understory makes room for this

Understory was made for this kind of slow writing, and a few of its features exist specifically for loss.

A nurse log. In a forest, a nurse log is a fallen tree that slowly becomes the ground new things grow from. You can mark any entry as a nurse log, for a loss or an ending. It stays in your journal like any other entry. Later, when you're ready and not before, you can save a short reminder from it, called a spore, that waits in your list until you want to come back to it. You can put what you're laying to rest in your own words. Older nurse logs are also among the entries Understory may bring back to you on the dashboard, with a gentle question about whether anything has taken root since.

Fallow. For the stretches where there's nothing much growing, you can mark an entry as fallow. Its ring is simply drawn thin and grey. Nothing is asked of you.

A companion that doesn't argue with grief. If you use the optional AI companion (part of Premium), it stays quiet while you write until you ask it something. When it talks with you, or walks you through a slow look at one thought, its instructions tell it never to question or reframe grief or the loss itself, and to stop asking questions and simply stay steady if you seem to be in acute distress. It's software, though, and it can get things wrong. It doesn't replace the people in your life, a grief counselor or a therapist.

Privacy. Your entries are encrypted in your browser before they're stored, so we can't read them. If you use the companion, the text it works with is sent to Google's Gemini models when you ask it something and when you finish an entry, and each finished entry's mood and a few themes are stored without end-to-end encryption so your rings can be drawn. Nothing goes to the AI until you've agreed, and you can turn the companion off completely. The full details are in our post on whether your journal app can read your entries.

Sharing with someone who's helping. If you're seeing a grief counselor or therapist, you can share chosen entries through an encrypted link that closes when you choose. Our guide to sharing your journal with a therapist explains how.

When grief is more than you can hold

Grief can be overwhelming, and sometimes it brings thoughts of not wanting to be here. If that's where you are, please reach out to someone now. Find a Helpline lists free, confidential support in many countries. If you're in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number. If grief stays this heavy for a long time or keeps you from daily life, a doctor, grief counselor or therapist can help.

A place to keep it

If you'd like a private place to write through a loss, at whatever pace grief sets, Understory is free to start. You might begin with one line, or with a letter. If a list of questions would help, our prompts for a hard week are written for exactly these kinds of days.