Coping with Grief: How Writing Letters to Grief Can Help

The emotions and questions in grief are often tangled, contradicting, and need teasing to unravel and process. Kate Motaung shares how the practice of writing letters to grief can help bring comfort in the grief journey.

---

It took me years before I realized that I process my emotions through writing. When I started writing—both journaling and writing articles for publication—I discovered how therapeutic it could be to get my thoughts on paper. It was like a release. Free therapy, in a sense. Little did I know at the time how writing letters to grief would impact my grieving process. 

Four months after my mom died, I received news that my maternal grandmother had passed away. When I told my husband, he sat next to me on the side of the bed and put his arm around me in an attempt to comfort me. I stood up and said, “I just need to write.” 

Writing was the best way for me to process. I needed to take time to collect my thoughts on paper before they escaped and disappeared. 

Writing as an outlet for my grief

After my mom died at age 59, I didn’t want to be angry with God because I believed that He was a good God and had good plans and purposes. But I still felt as though I needed a place or a way to release my varied and conflicting emotions. 

One day, I sat down at my laptop and the Lord gave me words that became “An Open Letter to Grief.” 

By writing letters to grief personified, I felt I could be honest about my feelings and the depth of my loss while also telling grief that it did not have the final say. 

I was able to acknowledge the impact of my loss and the resulting grief, yet also declare the hope and victory I have in Christ, recognizing that grief is temporary and will soon be no more. 

Over time, after writing that initial Open Letter to Grief, I compiled a collection of letters to grief using a variety of metaphors that were eventually published in gift book form. 

Writing letters to grief became an outlet for me to process my emotions in a safe space. 

My prayer is that the words God gave me to write would help others articulate their own experiences with grief, take the opportunity to express their emotions through writing, and remind them of the ultimate hope we have in the Lord. 

An Excerpt from the Book, Letters to Grief

Dear Grief, 

You are the ocean.

You pull in strong currents. Your depths are unknown. Your power is unmatched. 

Your vastness takes my breath away. I stand at the edge of you and feel conflict within—I am simultaneously enamored by you and terrified of you. You are deafening and strangely soothing. 

You make me feel small. 

You come in waves, rising with lofty swells that crash down incessantly. I ride in your crest until you break and I wash onto the shore, empty and defeated.

Your tides are ever-changing. Some try to predict you, but you are a force of your own. You charge forth uninvited and pull back in retreat, exposing evidence of life better left hidden under your surface. 

I cannot comprehend your mystery.

You can be murky, violent, and volatile. You offer a means of passage from one destination to the next for those willing to take the risk. You carry and uphold. You have swallowed souls. 

Your saltiness stings my eyes; I cannot discern your presence from my own tears. 

In winter you form stoic icebergs that line your shore, masses of frozen mounds that keep well-intentioned visitors at bay, too fearful to set foot on your unpredictable foundation.

But as your Master fixed limits for the sea which He created and “set its doors and bars in place,” so He limits you (Job 38:10).^⁠ As He says to the waters He formed, so it is with you: “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt” (Job 38:11).

How Writing Letters to Grief Might Help You, Too

Do the words above inspire any thoughts in you regarding your own experience with grief? 

What metaphor would you use to describe grief? 

If you could give grief “a piece of your mind,” what would you say? 

What promises from Scripture could you use to “put grief in its place,” so to speak? 

Consider jotting down your answers to the questions above, or creating a journal entry to capture your thoughts. 

If you wrote a letter to grief, what would you say? 

Another option is to start with the following prompt to write your own letter to grief: 

Dear Grief . . . 

May the Lord use this practice of writing letters to grief to bring you comfort and encouragement in the midst of your grieving process, remembering that because of the hope we have in Christ, mourning is only temporary and will soon be gone forever.