In August, I sat down with Amy Isaman, author, book coach, and podcast host, to have a candid discussion about writing through grief for her podcast, Dear Creativity. . . Let’s Write!
Writing and reading fiction has always been the way I process pain. Sometimes you can’t talk about your pain, your grief, because it’s too much. Sometimes you’re afraid of being judged for the thing that caused you pain. But through fiction, we get the opportunity to process those feelings and start to feel not so alone.
Here’s the thing about grief, and pardon my language, grief is a nasty, conniving bastard. It rears back and smacks you in the face before it hides and convinces you that you’ve evaded its pervasiveness. Only, when you least expect it, you wake up in the middle of the night and find it standing over your bed staring you down with bloodshot eyes.
Grief is unpredictable.
During Amy and mine’s conversation, I spoke at length about how the past five years have been a roller coaster of events: dealing with my parents’ lost youth, their declining health, my sibling’s alcoholism, and grieving the picture I painted for my future as I dealt with these changes. And through it all, I continued to write and used writing as a way to process these changes.
Something I haven’t talked a lot about
Earlier this week, I released my short story A Nice Island, and like most of the stories and books I’ve written since the summer of 2016, it was written amid grief.
I’ve told you a lot about the writing process related to A Nice Island’s creation, but what you might not know is that while I was writing this story my dad died.
Writing those words is hard. I know I shared a little bit about my dad’s journey with you, and I received so much love and support from this community. Right now talking about this loss isn’t something I want to do, but I found so much peace writing that short Halloween story. Storytelling has always been a beautiful, gracious outlet that allows me to examine heartache and release the pain in a safe space and share that with you, the reader.
I invite you to listen to the podcast, whether you’re a writer, a reader, or both. Click the image below to listen to the podcast on Audible, or listen to the podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and thank YOU. Thank you for allowing me a safe space to share.
