#19 Writing your way through grief with trauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis

Grief is something I’ve been growing the muscles to carry.

In some ways it’s a back alley experience.

We try to keep the front of house shiny and bright.  Fresh flowers in a vase.

We grievers will use all the words we have, and they all mean the same thing:  I am not who I once was.

Today is my forty-seventh birthday. My parents are dead. It’s a pandemic.  I don’t leave the house much. I write, teach, talk, about grief all day long.

My grief is a verb.

A permanent low hiss.

And I am not who I once was.

But of course, we never are.

Powerful writing from my podcast guest today, Meghan Riordan Jarvis, Trauma Therapist, author and founder of www.griefismysidehustle.com and Grief Mates, her free writing workshop.

Two therapists talking about grief - it's bound to get personal, as we do in this episode as we discuss many aspects of what grief feels like, for us as well as our clients - the distinctions between being isolated, lonely and alone with our grief, and how writing and other creative and expressive arts can literally move energy out of our body onto the page to help us feel known to ourselves, and to whatever form our grief gang takes.

Each grief is unique, and the desire to connect and be known is universal, and this episode offers insight about how to do some of that through writing.

Contact Meghan Riordan Jarvis at www.griefismysidehustle.com
@meghan.riordan.jarvis on Instagram

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If you are supporting a bereaved child, or know someone who is, you can purchase my book Helping Children Cope with Loss and Change.

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