Guestpost: Just Because I Find Both Solace and Gifts In Times of Grief

I suspect many of my followers and visitors have trouble finding the perfect gift for their friends who are in grief, and that on occasion includes themselves.  As my own years accumulate I find myself losing friends at a faster rate than I could have possibly imagined and if that feel of loss is accompanied by frustration over not know what to send to a grieving frend–even which book that’s out there!, I feel compelled to share this one by one of the most prolific author I know.    

Dawn Colclasure is a writer that I collaborate with occasionally and have come to be long distance friends over the many years we’ve been doing that and I was struck by this. her Substack entry, she recently published after the release of her Last Writes and felt I must share it. So, naturally, I just asked.  It’s a miracle technique that works more often than not! So here it is with my gratitude, and–I hope–yours! 

Of course, not every writer is going to write about a personal experience as a poem. However, it can be written about in a personal journal or a blog post. I have many friends who have written about their personal experiences in a Facebook post just to capture that experience while it is still fresh in their minds.

But whatever way a person chooses to record their personal experiences or some kind of emotional trauma they are going through, the very act of putting everything into words is what can help the writer write more realistically about these things in their work.

It usually isn’t easy for someone to write about the trauma or loss they are experiencing. Most people feel that writing about missing a loved one or the sheer sadness over losing someone can make them feel worse. However, what it actually does is provide us with an outlet to release our pain, process our emotions, and work through our thought processes. In most cases, with the act of writing about a traumatic experience privately, it provides the person with a private place to air all of their grievances, give voice to their negative feelings and act as a sounding board for all of the things that they want to say but feel that they can’t say. This, too, can work to the writer’s benefit, because it allows them access to the raw emotions overpowering them in the moment which could be sourced later on in their work of fiction or poetry.

So the next time you experience something that really tugs at your heart and shatters your soul, write about it as soon as you are able to. Write all of the good things as well as all of the bad things. You will feel better for releasing all of these emotions and thoughts raging inside of you, and grateful later on that you can use it in your writing.

Dawn Colclasure is a Deaf writer in Eugene, Oregon. She began writing at a young age. She’s a freelance writer, book reviewer, and columnist. She is the author and co-author of several books, among them several poetry books such as Touched by Fire, April Showers, We Will Never Have Enough Daysand Nature Therapy. Her poetry, articles, essays and short stories have appeared in magazines, newspapers, websites and anthologies. She publishes the SPARREW Newsletter online each month, which includes the helpful Tricky Edits column written by Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Her websites are  https://dawnsbooks.com/ and https://www.dmcwriter.com/. She’s on Facebook, Bluesky @dmcwriter.bsky.social, TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@dawncolclasurewilson , tumblr under the name crankytruthseeker, and Instagram @dawn10325. 

Dawn was inspired to write this post for her Substack shortly after her new poetry book, Last Writes (https://www.amazon.com/Last-Writes-Dawn-Colclasure/dp/B0H8ZWZDDJ/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0) was published. The fact that poetry she had written while grieving the loss of her brother one year ago moved her to pen these words, with the understanding that sometimes, the hardest things we go through in life are the things we need to write about.