The article below is from Grief Digest Magazine and was written by Kathy Curtis, an artist, writer, and grief workshop facilitator. Kathy writes about losing her mother but the action of writing to our loved ones regardless of age is powerful and healing. Hope you find some comfort in reading this article called, Invisible Ink.
From the moment our lives change after the death of someone we love deeply, we have to make a confusing transformation from living a life that made sense to a different life that doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. With courage and faith, we do our best to recreate our lives without that person.
We might try a variety of things to help us heal and rebuild our lives, such as therapy, grief-support groups, self-help books and online research. But a very simple thing that we all know how to do, write letters, can be another truly healing approach to our grief.
Throughout the ages, people have written letters when there’s something intimate they long to say. Letters speak from the writer to the reader in the language of the heart and soul. When we write to a loved one who is far away, we imagine how they will feel when they read our letters. The same thing happens when we write to our loved ones who have died. By imagining how they would feel reading our thoughts, we not only express our grief with more courage (for their sake), we also strengthen our spiritual connection with them.