Gratitude for Grief Camp

a writing prompt for you + an Andrea Gibson poem + April Writing Hour

Welcome to Writing in Company. This is a community for you, whatever your experience with writing. It’s an invitation to write about what matters—grief, gratitude, grace, and more. In an off-kilter world, using our words can help us stay centered and move toward healing and wholeness. Writing in company with others saved me once. Let’s keep writing now, alone and together, and trust our words to help us see and say what matters.

I spent the weekend at grief camp again.

Okay, it’s not really camp. I spent many summers at actual camp, and my bereaved mothers’ writing group eats way better.

We’ve had a lot of practice. We’ve been eating and writing together since October of 2002, when we joined a one-day writing workshop, and then we just kept meeting.

According to the list we are keeping, this weekend was our 59th gathering.

A few of those were on Zoom during Covid, including a memorial gathering for one of our group.

A few were day trips to museum exhibits, a retirement party, book signings, or a meal.

A few were weeklong adventures in France, New Mexico, Nebraska, Quebec.

The majority have been weekend trips to the mountains, the beach, or a lake, usually in borrowed homes where we bunk together (like camp!), take walks, play cards, eat well, and—always—write. We’ve belly laughed and ugly cried together. We’ve written a book together about our children, and the first five years of writing about them. We’ve written through diagnoses and divorces and death. We’ve celebrated new babies, new grand babies, new jobs, new homes, and new loves. We’ve shared our worries about children and spouses and siblings and parents. Even when some of us are missing, we are all still together.

The texts are frequent and funny right after our weekends. This weekend’s stream included terrible puns and creative emojis, a question about who left behind a copy of All the Birds of North America, surprise news about a pregnant cat, pictures of mountain sunsets and wild violets, a quote about Christian nationalism, a children’s book recommendation, and reporting on the adventures two had looking for a charging station for the groovy all-electric flower-decal VW bus the one planning her 80th birthday is now driving.

Sometimes I hear from someone who asks how to find a group like ours. I’m learning to ask more questions. Is it a group of grievers they want? A group of bereaved mothers? A group to write with? I wish all that for anyone who needs it.

More, I wish for them a group that makes room for each voice, until they are as familiar as family. A group that listens generously, no matter what words end up on the page. A group that learns to carry the words and weight of loss together. A group that discovers that their words can keep them fumbling forward in the dark with only the smallest nudge from a prompt, a memory or promise of light, and a few trusted companions; and it’s enough.

Maybe you are the beginning of just such a group, and there are others who would join if you handed them a pen and a poem….

Poetry has always been the most generative kind of prompt for me in writing from a place of loss. During this National Poetry month, and a difficult time all around, I’m sharing poems that might help us use our words to imagine new possibilities. This one is from the remarkable poet Andrea Gibson. You can find her on Substack here:

a writing prompt

Read the untitled poem below, then find a word, a phrase, an image, or an idea, and start there. See what comes into focus as you write.

A difficult life is not less 
worth living than a gentle one. 
Joy is simply easier to carry 
than sorrow. And your heart 
could lift a city from how long 
you’ve spent holding what’s been 
nearly impossible to hold. 
 
This world needs those 
who know how to do that. 
Those who could find a tunnel 
that has no light at the end of it, 
and hold it up like a telescope 
to know the darkness 
also contains truths that could 
bring the light to its knees. 
 
Grief astronomer, adjust the lens, 
look close, tell us what you see. 

—Andrea Gibson 

April Writing Hour - Sat. April 19 | 4-5 pm Eastern

Want to join with a group of generous listeners to write together? My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is in two Saturdays. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join in. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.

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Each week I share some ideas and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft a writing project, as prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. If this one doesn’t resonate, look back through the archive for more. Clicking the heart to like this post helps keep my writing prompts visible and my own writer’s heart grateful.

Photo by Kyler Boone on Unsplash