Journal Meditation: Listing Losses

Allow Kevin Deegan to guide you in a journaling exercise that can encourage you to reflect on grief and loss experiences. Being able to externalize these often heavy experiences will give you space to process the emotions around them and offer a measure of freedom to explore your pain points from difficult interactions. He emphasizes the significance of externalizing these emotions for processing and suggests circling the most burdensome ones for further exploration.

Kevin: With a piece of paper, with the device in front of you, I want you to just begin with the first thing that comes to mind when you think of grief, when you think of loss. What's that thing that happened to you that feels it's always there?

It's the heaviest thing in your backpack. Write that thing down first. Just maybe there's more than one thing. Go ahead and start writing down some of the things that come to mind as you continue to write. 

Think about the things that you may not traditionally think of as losses, but feel like pain points for you. So those difficult conversations that you've had recently, the time that somebody said something that really hurt you, the time that something happened that made you upset in a way that you didn't expect, start writing down those things too. 

You think about the different phases of your life. Your earliest memories, your childhood, your young adult life, and even just your recent experiences. What are some of those points in time that have made a lasting impression, a mark on you because of a loss, because of an experience, a difficult encounter? 

Write down those things too. You may be at a point in your journaling where you're getting stuck, and that's okay. You can look over your list and review and see what other thoughts comes to mind. Even if there's something that you're not sure if it should be on the list, just add it. 

Just write it down. If it keeps coming to your mind, just write it down. If you find yourself free flowing and writing a lot, go ahead and keep on writing until you get to a stopping point. Now that you're at the end and you're looking over your list, why don't you circle those things that feel most heavy right now? 

I'm only imagining what you've written on your list. Thinking of my own list and let me be the first to say, my goodness. No wonder you feel the way that you do. No wonder this has been so difficult for you. 

Look at all that you've been through. So for whatever you may be coping with, we want to extend our blessings to you.