A monthly Orange Glow series exploring practical, psychology-informed tools that may help families navigate grief after the loss of a child.
There is no roadmap for grieving a child.
There is no exercise that will make the loss okay, no coping skill that can erase what happened, and no timeline that tells a parent when they should begin to feel differently. Grief after the death of a child can affect nearly every part of a person’s life: emotions, relationships, concentration, sleep, sense of safety, identity, and even the way the future is imagined.
That is why we want to introduce a new series at The Orange Glow Project called Tools for the Toolbox.
Once a month, we will explore one practical tool that research in grief, trauma, psychology, or emotional processing suggests may be helpful for some people. These are not treatments, prescriptions, or promises of healing. They are simply options.
Because grief is individual.
What helps one parent may do absolutely nothing for another. What feels supportive today may feel impossible six months from now. And sometimes the most important thing a grieving person can do is decide, “This is not the tool I need right now.”
The goal is not to give parents another list of things they are supposed to be doing.
The goal is to make sure there are tools available if and when they want them.
Our first tool is one of the simplest:
Writing.
Why Writing?
After a traumatic or deeply distressing experience, thoughts and emotions do not always arrive in an orderly way.
They may come as fragments.
A memory.
An image.
A question.
A sound.
A moment of guilt.
A flash of anger.
A sentence that begins with, “If only I had…”
A memory that appears unexpectedly while driving to the grocery store.
Grief can involve constantly moving between remembering what happened, longing for the person who died, trying to understand a life that suddenly looks different, and attempting to function in the world that continued afterward.
For parents after child loss, that processing can be especially complicated. The death of a child is not simply the loss of someone deeply loved. It can disrupt a parent's identity, assumptions about safety, expectations about the natural order of life, and an entire imagined future.
Research has repeatedly shown that parental bereavement can involve particularly intense and persistent grief, and some bereaved parents experience symptoms associated with trauma or prolonged grief. That does not mean intense grief is automatically a disorder. It does help us understand why losing a child can affect emotional and psychological functioning so profoundly.
Writing can provide one place for some of that experience to exist outside of your mind.
Not to make it disappear.
Simply to give it somewhere to go.
Your Brain Is Trying to Make Sense of Something That Does Not Make Sense
Human beings naturally try to create coherent stories about their experiences.
We ask:
Why did this happen?
Could I have prevented it?
Who am I now?
What does my life look like without my child?
How do I continue loving someone who is no longer physically here?
These questions may not have satisfying answers. Some may never have answers at all.
But putting experiences into language can help us begin organizing what otherwise feels chaotic.
Research on expressive writing, much of it associated with psychologist James Pennebaker and colleagues, suggests that writing about emotionally significant experiences can sometimes help people process difficult experiences and improve aspects of psychological or physical functioning. Researchers have also found that simply repeatedly reliving painful events on paper is not necessarily what helps. How we write, including whether we begin developing perspective, language, connection, or meaning around an experience, may matter.
That distinction is important in grief.
The goal is not to force yourself to “find the good” in your child's death.
There may be no good in what happened.
Meaning-making is not the same thing as finding a reason.
Sometimes meaning is simply beginning to understand what this loss has done to you.
Sometimes it is recognizing what you miss.
Sometimes it is naming anger you have never said aloud.
Sometimes it is writing down a memory you are terrified of forgetting.
And sometimes the page simply holds something that feels too heavy to carry internally for another minute.
Why This May Matter Specifically After Child Loss
Child loss contains more than one kind of grief.
There is grief for the child who existed.
There is also grief for the future that was supposed to exist.
Parents may grieve first words that will never be spoken, graduations that will never happen, birthdays that will always arrive differently, weddings that were once imagined, grandchildren who may never come, or simply another ordinary Tuesday with their child.
There can also be a profound change in identity.
You are still your child's parent.
But the world may not always know how to recognize that relationship after death.
Writing can create a private place where that relationship does not need to be explained.
Your child's name can appear as many times as you want.
You can write directly to them.
You can tell the same story again.
You can record the things you never want to forget.
You can write the angry version.
The grateful version.
The devastated version.
The version that makes absolutely no sense.
No one has to correct you.
No one has to become uncomfortable.
No one has to tell you to look on the bright side.
The page can simply listen.
What Does the Research Actually Say?
This is where we want to be especially careful.
Journaling is not a proven cure for grief, trauma, or child loss.
Studies of expressive writing have found benefits in some populations, while others have shown little or no effect. Bereavement-specific research is also mixed. One randomized study of bereaved individuals found that certain structured writing approaches, particularly writing focused on benefit-finding, were associated with improvements in grief, depressive, and post-traumatic stress symptoms several months later. Other grief-related studies have not found significant benefits from expressive writing alone.
That means we should not say, “Journaling will heal your grief.”
We can say something much more honest:
Writing may give some people a useful way to process, organize, express, remember, and make room for emotions that otherwise feel trapped inside.
And for some grieving parents, that may be valuable.
Tool #1: The Ten-Minute Journal
You do not need a beautiful journal.
You do not need special prompts.
You do not need good handwriting.
And you definitely do not need to write something profound.
Set a timer for ten minutes.
Then begin with one sentence:
“Today, my grief feels…”
And keep going.
Do not edit.
Do not worry about grammar.
Do not worry about whether what you are writing is reasonable.
You are not writing for anyone else.
If you get stuck, try:
Today I miss…
What I wish people understood is…
Something I am afraid of forgetting is…
If I could tell my child one thing today, I would say…
The hardest part of today was…
Something nobody sees about my grief is…
I wish someone would ask me…
The memory I keep returning to is…
Or simply write your child's name.
And see what comes next.
You Are Allowed to Stop
This part matters.
Writing about painful experiences can temporarily increase distress. Research on expressive writing has documented that confronting difficult experiences on paper may initially increase emotional arousal, and it is not equally helpful for everyone.
If you begin writing and notice yourself becoming overwhelmed, panicked, disconnected, or increasingly distressed, stop.
Close the journal.
Put your feet on the floor.
Look around the room.
Take a drink of water.
Call someone you trust.
Come back another day, or decide this tool is not for you.
Choosing not to journal is not avoiding grief.
It is listening to yourself.
And if memories of your child's death are intensely intrusive, you feel unable to function, or writing repeatedly sends you into significant distress, this may be something better explored with a licensed mental health professional who understands grief and trauma.
A journal can be a tool.
It is not a replacement for professional care when professional support is needed.
There Is No Right Way to Do This
Maybe you write every morning.
Maybe you write once a month.
Maybe your journal contains letters to your child.
Maybe it is a list of memories.
Maybe it is full of anger.
Maybe you record dreams.
Maybe you write down funny things your child did because you are terrified those details will fade.
Maybe you write two sentences and close the book.
All of it counts.
There is no grade.
There is no finish line.
There is no correct version of grieving your child.
One Tool. Not the Toolbox.
That distinction is the heart of this series.
Journaling is one tool.
For another parent, the tool may be movement.
For someone else, it may be breathing and grounding techniques.
It may be talking with another bereaved parent.
Creating rituals.
Spending time outside.
Learning how trauma affects the nervous system.
Practicing self-compassion.
Setting boundaries.
Working with a therapist.
Finding ways to maintain a continuing bond with their child.
Or simply learning how to survive a particularly difficult day.
Over the coming months, Tools for the Toolbox will explore some of these practices and the psychology behind them.
Not because we believe grief needs to be fixed.
And certainly not because we believe there is a formula for surviving the death of a child.
We believe grieving families deserve information, options, resources, and support.
You decide which tools belong in your toolbox.
You decide when you are ready to reach for them.
And some days, you may not reach for one at all.
That is okay too.
Your grief is not a test you have to pass.
Your healing does not need to look like anyone else's.
And loving your child is not something you are ever expected to move on from.
Love remains. Hope grows.
The Orange Glow Project
Tools for the Toolbox | Monthly Grief Education Series
