if grief could write a poem about you
what would it say?
i wonder what grief would write about me.
if it scribbled onto paper each night
after i’ve finally fallen asleep.
would it say i come in waves.
how it is struggling to grasp
that it will live with me forever.
sometimes she can be so gentle.
other times she grabs me by the collar
and tries to drag me out of her bones.
i wish she knew that i didn’t cause this.
i am just the part that comes after.
she doesn’t welcome me
the way she welcomes love.
but one day she will see
that i belong here too.
I wrote this poem a few weeks ago and haven’t stopped thinking about it. While I write about grief from my side of things, this prompt put me in grief’s shoes. I am a big fan of personifying grief, death, life, and love so this felt therapeutic. As therapists, we ask clients to personify emotions which can externalize them, make them tangible, and create new avenues to process them. This poem did that for me.
Some days, I hate grief. I hate how it hurts. I ignore it, curse it, and wish it away. I blamed grief as though it was the cause of my pain and not the natural process that comes after loss or trauma. We write about how grief comes in waves. How we are trying to accept that we will live with grief forever. How it is a rollercoaster of a journey. Well, my grief would say the same about me. If you follow my writing, you know that sugarcoating loss and grief is not my thing, but this prompt didn’t feel like that to me; it felt like I was exercising a compassion muscle. I was getting eye level with grief and seeing its perspective. I will cautiously use the h-word here and say it was… healing. I continue to jot down thoughts of what grief might write about me and hope to share those in the future. May this prompt reach the people who need it <3
What would grief write about you if it could write poems?
updates
EVENTS:
Love and Grief: Find Me There, an evening of poetry with Sara Rian. Hosted by Welcome Home of Chattanooga. Friday, March 14, 2025. Chattanooga, TN
Conversation & Poetry Reading with Onyx Angels Support Group for Bereaved Families. Hosted by The Onyx Victor Foundation. Saturday, April 19, 2025. Chesapeake, Virginia
PODCASTS:
I will be interviewed for another podcast this upcoming week and have three more scheduled! I cannot get enough of these incredible conversations.
I am so excited to do my first interview as both a grief poet AND a sex therapist with the Empty Arms Podcast to discuss intimacy and sex after loss. You can submit anonymous questions soon, so make sure to follow Empty Arms Podcast on Facebook and visit Empty Arms of Great Bangor website.
thank you for reading and supporting.
with love,
sara rian
I love this perspective on grief. I, too, curse at and try to ignore mine, but unfortunately— and fortunately, weirdly— she is here to stay. I try to remind myself that the grief is only keeping me present with the loss of my mom, and that it’s okay to bask in these feelings and let them overcome me from time to time. I deserve it, and so do those emotions.
I spoke with my therapist about how I hate my younger self for not appreciating how good my mom was sooner. All of the arguments and struggles where I know I made her feel like she wasn’t good enough. The anger stage of grief was new to me and I hadn’t experienced it until then so I was extremely frustrated and I couldn’t stop crying for about a week. Thinking about “if only I knew” or “how dare you say that” only made me feel worse. Anyways, I would tell myself I understood in the end, and I know she felt it. We got so close in the last 6 years of her life and it was the best thing ever. I know how loved and protected she felt in the end. She wouldn’t want me to rot in my grief but she also wouldn’t want me to ignore it either, so I sit with it every day.