I never thought I would be the one writing something like this.
I never planned for it. You never do.
On October 23rd, 2016, I lost my daughter, Cynthia. And I want you to know, before you read another word, that I am not writing this from some comfortable place where I have it all figured out. I am writing this as a mother who has been in the trenches of grief. A mother who has sat on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, unable to breathe. A mother who has smiled through birthday parties and family dinners while falling apart on the inside. A mother who has driven home in silence and just screamed in her car because there was nowhere else to put it.
That is where this comes from.
It has been years since I lost Cynthia, and I will not stand here and tell you it gets easy. It doesn’t. What I will tell you is that it changes. Slowly, in ways you don’t even notice at first, you find small things that help you carry it. For me, one of those things was journaling.
I know that might sound too simple. Trust me, I thought the same thing. But please just hear me out, because this is not about becoming a writer or documenting your grief perfectly. This is about survival. This is about having somewhere to put everything that has nowhere else to go.
Here is what I have learned along the way.
1. Just write. Don’t think about how it sounds.
The first time I sat down to write after losing Cynthia, I didn’t write anything beautiful. I wrote something like “I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this.” That was it. That was the whole entry.
And it still helped.
There is something about getting the words out of your body and onto a page that releases even just a little bit of pressure. You don’t need grammar. You don’t need full sentences. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. Some days, I just wrote her name over and over. Some days, I wrote about how angry I was. Some days, I wrote about what she would have been eating for breakfast if she were still here.
There are no rules. If you write something that feels too painful to ever look at again, you are allowed to fold that page over, staple it shut, or tear it out completely. Your journal is yours. It should feel safe.
2. Write down the little things you are afraid of forgetting.
This one is important to me, and I think about it a lot.
After I lost Cynthia, one of my biggest fears was forgetting the small things. Not the big memories. The small ones. The way she laughed. The expressions she made. The things she used to say that drove me absolutely crazy and that I would give anything, anything in this world, to hear one more time.
So I started keeping pages in my journal that were just about her. Not about the loss. About her. I would write down a memory when it came to me, even in the middle of the night. A smell that reminded me of her. A song that came on while I was driving made me have to pull over. The silly things, the serious things, all of it.
Grief has this cruel way of making you terrified that the person you love is going to fade. Writing those details down felt like a way of holding onto her. As long as I kept capturing pieces of who she was, she wasn’t going anywhere.
Start that page. Write down whatever comes to you. It doesn’t have to be organized. It just has to be real.
3. Write letters to her. I still do.
I started writing letters to Cynthia not long after I lost her, and I have never stopped.
Grief is full of words that never got said. Conversations that got cut short. Things you meant to say and thought you had more time to say. They don’t just disappear when your child is gone. They stay inside you, and they get heavy.
Writing letters gave me a place for all of that. I have written to Cynthia about the hard days. About the days, I was proud of myself for getting out of bed. About the milestones I watched other families celebrate, and the way that felt. About the things happening in our family that she would have had so much to say about. About the random things I saw that made me think of her and smile, even through the tears.
It doesn’t bring her back. Nothing does. But it keeps something alive between us, and on the days when the silence feels unbearable, it helps more than I can explain.
4. Keep her words somewhere safe.
After Cynthia passed, I found old cards she had given me. Little notes. Messages on my phone I could not delete, no matter how many times I thought about it.
I put them in my journal.
Not all at once. Some of them I couldn’t even look at for a long time. But little by little, I built a section that held her words. Her handwriting. Things she said that I wrote down from memory because I was terrified of losing them.
Some mothers I have talked to print out old text messages and tape them in. Some keep a birthday card tucked in the back. Whatever you have, preserve it. Put it somewhere you can return to on the days you just need to feel close to them again.
On those days, I go back to those pages. And for a little while, she feels a little closer.
5. Keep a list of prompts for the days you have nothing left.
Some days, grief just empties you completely. You want to write because you know it helps, but you sit down, and there is nothing there. Your mind is blank, and your heart is too heavy to even form a thought.
That is exactly why I keep a page of journaling prompts at the front of my journal. Just a list of questions I can fall back on when I have nothing else. Things like what is something she taught me that I carry with me every day, or what do I wish she knew about who I am becoming, or what does today feel like, and what do I need most right now.
Prompts are not a shortcut. They are just a door. And sometimes you need someone else to hold the door open for you so you can walk through it.
6. Permit yourself to write about more than just the loss.
This took me a long time. A long time.
In the beginning, every single page was about the absence. About the pain. And of course it was, because that was all there was room for. But eventually, life kept happening around me even when I didn’t want it to. A good meal. A funny moment with someone I love. A morning where the sun came through the window in a way that was just beautiful.
And then I felt guilty for noticing those things. Like enjoying a single moment was some kind of betrayal.
It is not. I want to say that clearly to any mother reading this. You are allowed to have moments of lightness. You are allowed to laugh. You are allowed to still be a person in this world. Your child would want that for you. I truly believe that.
I added a small gratitude section to my journal, and I was resistant to it at first. It felt forced. But it wasn’t about pretending everything was okay. It was about noticing what was still there. Gratitude for the years I had with Cynthia. For the people who have shown up for me. For the small moments that remind me I am still here and still capable of feeling something good.
It didn’t erase the grief. It just made a little room beside it.
7. Make it yours. Make it look like you.
Not everything in a grief journal has to be words.
I have taped photos of Cynthia into mine. I have glued in quotes that hit me so hard I had to sit with them. I managed to take a walk outside. I have painted pages when I had no words at all.
There is no right way to do this. Your journal can be messy and imperfect and all over the place, because grief is messy and imperfect and all over the place. It just has to be honest. It just has to be a place where you can show up as you really are.
You Are Not Alone in This
I started sharing my story because I felt so completely alone after losing Cynthia, and I never want another mother to feel that way if I can help it.
If you are a mother who has lost a child, whether it was recent or years ago, whether you are surrounded by support or feeling completely invisible in your grief, I want you to know that what you are carrying is real and it is heavy and it matters. There is no timeline. There is no right way. And there is no version of this that doesn’t hurt.
But there is community. There is a place for you here, in One Day One Mother, where you can come exactly as you are without having to explain yourself or perform your grief or pretend to be further along than you are.
Cynthia changed me in ways I am still discovering. She made me who I am. And part of honoring her is showing up for other mothers the way I needed someone to show up for me.
Start small. One sentence. One word if that’s all you have. Write it down.
Because your story matters. And so do you.
If you are looking for a gentle way to begin, our 30-day grief journal was made with so much love for exactly this kind of season. And our community, One Day One Mother, is always here. You do not have to walk this road alone.