Thoughts on Writing in a Time of Global Grieving

Kerry Schafer, also writing as Kerry Anne King, is the author of nine novels, including the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller  family drama, Whisper Me This. Check out her new podcast, Write Healthy, Write Whole, featuring tips on mind, body, spirit and creative health for writers. 

 Over the last few days I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster, cycling through tears, anxiety, anger, frustration, laughter, and random moments of joy. My brain alternates from a state akin to a herd of cats turned loose at a laser show, to feeling like it’s caught in quicksand and the smallest twitch of a neuron will bury it forever. I’ve needed to lie down a lot, my body just suddenly deciding that it’s exhausted for no particular reason.

This, my friends, is grief. Deep, pervasive, life-altering grief on a global and dramatic scale.

I’m familiar with grief, personally and professionally, but in this case it’s taken me awhile to recognize it for what it is. I haven’t lost anybody I love to this #&#@!! virus, at least not yet. I’ve still got my job. I know I’m blessed to be able to say both of these things, but all of us, even the most fortunate, have lost our ordinary, taken-for-granted reality. 

Restaurants. Social gatherings large and small. Conferences and book launches. Weddings and funerals and graduation ceremonies. Many of us have families home full-time and we’ve lost the luxury of long stretches of uninterrupted writing and thinking time. 

The process of grief impacts our creative lives, sometimes in unexpected ways. I have friends who are completely immersed in words right now as the ultimate escape strategy, barely coming up for air. I have friends who are finding it almost impossible to focus. Some of us (me) are getting words written but it’s damn hard slogging. And some of us are doing well to get out of bed.

The grieving process—and how it impacts our writing—is highly individualized, so I can’t offer a clear roadmap that reads How to Write While Grieving for the Effects of a Pandemic. But I can offer what has worked for me. Take what feel helpful and ignore the rest, keeping in mind that what feels right on one day might be all wrong the next.

Honor whatever you feel. Emotions are messy. They are also normal, important, and every single one of them is valid. It’s not selfish to grieve the loss of something you might think is small or petty. You feel what you feel, in any given moment, and that’s okay. Journal your feelings. Channel them into your writing if possible. Allow yourself to cry. Try Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) meridian tapping to release darker emotions and make a shift back into peace and maybe even creativity. Check out the free tapping meditations, some specifically for coping with Corona Virus, at The Tapping Solution, or download their free app. 

Give yourself permission to escape into your creative world,  to love reading a book, or to be grateful that you are safe and well, even when other people are not. We often feel that it’s wrong for us to feel joy when others are suffering, but you can’t help anybody else by being miserable yourself. You can’t hold back the spread of the virus by worrying about it. And it’s not selfish to carve out writing time for yourself—it’s a gift you can offer the world. Just think about how much comfort you’ve taken from reading during difficult times.

Be extra kind to yourself and those you love. The Viking and I just engaged in tears and raised voices over something stupid and insignificant. This sort of thing is normal when we’re in grief, because all of our emotions are very near the surface. We’re vulnerable. And we’re probably angry.  Cut yourself and your loved one a lot of slack. Pour on a little extra love for them and for you. Give yourself an inner hug. You’re human. Which means you’re probably a little reactive right now, and that’s okay.

Engage in active gratitude. Seek out the good things, big and small. They are still there. Right beside you in a cup of coffee or tea. The snuggles from a child or a fur baby. The roof over your head. The device on which you are reading this. That breath you just drew into your lungs, and the one that followed it. Look for the good things happening out in the big, scary world as well. People are going out of their way to help others. If you look for the good, you will find it. Check out Barbara Bos’s Head in the Sand page on Facebook. Subscribe to the Good News Network newsletter to get a dose of good news in your inbox every morning.

Avoid marinating in the bad stuff. Immersing yourself in the news feeds or in the communal angst on social media feeds anxiety and despair and swamps our creativity. Pick a couple of feeds to watch so you can stay informed, and schedule them once or twice a day. Steer your conversations toward other topics whenever you can. Hang out (from a distance) with positive people.

Be kind to your body. Grief sucks up a lot of energy, physical, mental, and spiritual. So you might just need to lie down for a minute. Or take a nap. You might also find yourself craving alcohol and sugar—do yourself a favor and go easy on the “quarantinies” and comfort desserts. Feed your body healthy foods, which fortunately totally includes dark chocolate! Exercise. If you can, do yoga or Tai Chi or walk outside. If you can’t walk outside, practice taking a meditative walk around your home, observing every footstep.

Laugh whenever possible. Stream comedies. Watch funny stuff on YouTube. Tell jokes. Laugh for no reason and every reason. Laughter is incredibly healing. While you’re laughing, in that moment, you’re not anxious or sad. It’s great for your immune system and your mood, and hey—it makes you take deep breaths which oxygenates your brain, which helps you think more clearly. 

Get outside if it’s safe to do so. Or find a place from inside where you can see the sky. Open the windows and the sunlight. If nature is available, revel in it. Do outdoor or indoor gardening and lavish extra love on your houseplants. Observe your own fur babies as if you were a National Geographic photographer pursuing a rare species in the wild. Feed the squirrels or the birds. 

Listen to music. Pick something upbeat and inspiring and allow it to lift your mood. Maybe even have a private dance party. I’d forgotten this one, until I was trying to write and put earbuds in to block out household noise. I felt better immediately. 

Adjust your expectations. As writers, we are hard on ourselves at the best of times. Let all of that go. Accept that your output and quality may be lower now. Some days it might be nonexistent. If you don’t have deadlines and you’re not feeling the love for writing, step away for a bit and do something that feels better. If you do have deadlines, try shaking things up a bit and shift to parts of the process that might come more easily. If you can’t focus, maybe you can brainstorm. If you can’t plot, maybe you can write a character sketch. If writing for your usual stretch feels overwhelming, see if you can write for fifteen minutes, or even just five. Give yourself credit for being heroic and showing up at all, even if it’s just to sit and stare at your screen for five minutes. 

Above all—don’t let me or anybody else tell you how to grieve or how to write during grief. You are the expert on you. Treat yourself with what seems like the ultimate love and compassion, and then amp it up some more.

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Kerry Schafer, also writing as Kerry Anne King, is the author of nine novels, including the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller  family drama, Whisper Me This. Check out her new podcast, Write Healthy, Write Whole, featuring tips on mind, body, spirit and creative health for writers.

EVERYTHING YOU ARE

From the bestselling author of Whisper Me This comes a haunting and lyrical novel about the promises we make and the forgiveness we need when we break them.

One tragic twist of fate destroyed Braden Healey’s hands, his musical career, and his family. Now, unable to play, adrift in an alcoholic daze, and with only fragmented memories of his past, Braden wants desperately to escape the darkness of the last eleven years.

When his ex-wife and son are killed in a car accident, Braden returns home, hoping to forge a relationship with his troubled seventeen-year-old daughter, Allie. But how can he hope to rescue her from the curse that seems to shadow his family?

Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee, granddaughter of the eccentric old man who sold Braden his cello, believes the curse is real. She swore an oath to her dying grandfather that she would ensure Braden plays the cello as long as he lives. But he can’t play, and as the shadows deepen and Phee finds herself falling for Braden, she’ll do anything to save him. It will take a miracle of forgiveness and love to bring all three of them back to the healing power of music.

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