Healing After A Tragedy

What Does Self-Care Look Like When You're In Grief

I started this newsletter project only days before my brother tragically and unexpectedly died. Originally I planned to publish weekly. That quickly turned into “Whenever I Can Stand To Write.”

Writing has always been a way for me to inventory my heart and mind. My thoughts and moods tend to show up as a furious scribble—a child’s drawing of an angry thundercloud. Writing is my way of unspooling those angry black lines, smoothing them out, and rolling them up in tidy coils. It takes considerable focus and “Self-energy,” which is to say, it requires my highest self to step in like a guidance counselor, and interview my lesser, meaner, angrier, sulkier, selves and then mediate between them until a smooth, linear narrative replaces their howls and shrieks and whines.

It requires stability, in other words. And since my brother died, a bit of emotional vertigo has disrupted my internal balance.

So I let myself disengage. I’m supposed to be working on my book—I’m not. Not really anyway. I rarely post on instagram. I rarely write on Medium. In order to be creative I need to be curious and calm, and these days I’m neither of those (most of the time).

And that’s ok. That’s to be expected.

The clickbait is this: The Truth About Healing Will Shock You.