Telling the Stories and Healing from Grief

It must me National Story Telling Day or something...l keep finding these posts about stories and healing.

Stories are one of the most powerful means of healing for people who are grieving. The telling and retelling of the stories are how people make sense of their loss.

Over time those stories change in subtle and not so subtle ways. Sometimes it's as subtle as a "slip" in tense from past to present or past to future.

Other times the content of the stories change dramatically. The stories in the first few months are most often about the illness (or accident) and the death. As people begin to heal the stories become more about the person before they died. Often there is no conscious awareness of the story changing until it is pointed out.

For the purposes of healing it doesn't matter whether the stories are written or verbal but one of the huge benefits of writing is being able to reread what was written and realizing that the story has been changing and is moving in the direction of healing.

Here's some of what I found today...

On Writing: Your Stories Can Heal Your Heart  has a great list of ideas for getting started writing your stories.

Remembering Alexandria: A Personal Story of Perinatal Loss  talks about how helpful it was to tell stories in a support group.

Share Memories of the Deceased talks about the value of sharing memories.