How a Self-Assigned Therapeutic Exercise Helped Heal My Heart

My cat died.

Those words are inadequate. Animal lovers and pet owners know what I mean. That big, fluffy black cat had a whole piece of my heart, and I am heartbroken that he died. He didn’t get to die from old age. It was an unexpectedly early, sudden death that has been difficult to process.

I cried for days. I’m not exaggerating. I leaked tears through meetings and doctors’ appointments. I cried when I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered. I cried when my children cried about it. I cried more for that cat than for anyone in a very long time.

…

One morning, in a temporary break from tears, I decided to sit down and write out a short story about the death of a beloved pet. I wasn’t writing it to share it or sell it — although I may do both one day. I just wanted to express, in fiction form, what it’s like to love a creature that much and lose it.

No one gives us bereavement days to deal with a pet’s passing. We just have to move through our grief while managing all our usual responsibilities. I wept while writing articles and creating social media posts. I carried the heaviness of that loss in my heart through every moment of my day.

But writing that story shifted something in me. Five hours passed. The story grew and shifted into something I hadn’t planned. When it was done, something felt healed in me. I wasn’t consumed by guilt or grief. While I was still sad, the burden didn’t feel as heavy to carry as it did before.

I’ve always had an easier time articulating my feelings in writing. It’s easier for me to access how I feel when it’s just me, my laptop, and my fingers typing out a tune on the keys. There’s a freedom in writing exactly what’s on my mind and heart without filtering it first.

A Matter of Healing

Grief doesn’t follow rules, and neither does healing. A self-assigned writing assignment might not help someone who hates writing, but perhaps painting would. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers — or any of them, really. I just know that when grief is consuming us, we have to find a way to turn it into art and expression. Otherwise, it will eat us from the inside out.

I’ve cried a little even after I wrote the story, but it hasn’t felt like the unending tears I was experiencing before. I feel a curious sense of calm to have said what was in my heart and to find an answer of sorts in the story. I often find that we have the answers we need — if we’ll just shut up and listen long enough to hear them.

I can’t undo what was done. I can’t bring him back to life. I can’t lessen the grief by acknowledging that he was “just a cat”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I loved, I lost, and it was an interesting experiment just to write my way through that process.

Transmuting Grief into Art

I’ve never been any good at grieving. Either I’ve tried to race passed it pretending to be fine, or I’ve held onto the grief like it was saving and not drowning me. I don’t cry at funerals, but I wept for hours for this cat who held a special place in my heart.

In those first few days, I wouldn’t have had the headspace to be able to sit down and articulate what I was feeling. But when day after day bled together in grief, I knew that I needed to find a way to transmute that grief into art. I had a ghost of an idea that wouldn’t let me go — a way of honoring our beloved pet in story form.

I can’t say if it’s good or not. I don’t know. What I do know is that it eased some of my pain — and not in a numbing sort of way. I felt my feelings through the process, and I didn’t shy away from any of them. I felt angry, sad, guilty, and ashamed. I went through every single stage of grief and back again. It didn’t stop the grief, but it did ease the intensity of it. It helped me hold onto the love more than the pain.

I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point of peace with loss. I can’t say that this particular exercise will work with every kind of grief. I’m not saying it’s something anyone else should do, but I am sharing it in hopes of suggesting another way of dealing with the pain. To find something joyful and beautiful in that cavernous sense of loss. To make meaning where there is none. To transmute grief into something that feels a lot like healing.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.