Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
Writing from the Heart
Silent • June 18, 2024
Journaling and Final Letters to Loved Ones
In the quiet moments of our lives, as we approach the end of our days, there lies a profound opportunity to reflect, express, and connect.
Journaling and writing final letters to loved ones offer a sacred space to capture our innermost thoughts, share our feelings, and leave a lasting legacy. These written words become a bridge between the realms, a testament to our enduring love, and a gift to those who continue their journey without us.
The Power of Words
Words hold immense power. They can heal, comfort, and transcend the boundaries of time and space. Journaling and writing final letters can be profoundly therapeutic for those nearing the end of life. They provide a means to process emotions, articulate thoughts that might remain unspoken, and find peace amidst the unknown.
Through journaling, one can explore the landscape of one's life, recount cherished memories, acknowledge regrets, and express hopes for those they leave behind.
Writing final letters to loved ones allows for a personal and intimate farewell, a chance to say the things that matter most. These letters can offer reassurance, share wisdom, and convey the depth of our love.
Guided Exercises
To begin this journey of self-expression, here are some prompts and exercises to guide you:
- Reflect on a Moment: Write about significant moments that have shaped your journey. What lesson did you take away? What memories bring strong emotions?
- Express Your Feelings: Describe your emotions as you approach the end of life. What fears do you have? What brings you comfort?
- Write to Loved Ones: Choose a loved one and write a letter to them. Share your fondest memories, express your love, and offer guidance or wishes for their future.
- Legacy Project: Consider what legacy you wish to leave behind. How do you want to be remembered? What values or messages do you hope to impart to future generations? Make it a joy, not a burden, for those you may charge with it.
Personal Reflections
In my practice as an end-of-life doula, I have witnessed the transformative power of journaling and letter writing. I recall a client, an elderly woman named Margaret, who found solace in writing letters to her grandchildren. Each letter was filled with stories from her youth, advice for their future, and expressions of her boundless love. These letters became treasured keepsakes, a part of her enduring legacy. They were named and dated for select birthdays over a decade.
Margaret's journaling also provided her with a space to process her feelings about dying. Through her entries, she navigated her fears and found moments of profound clarity and peace. Her writings became a testament to her strength, resilience, and unwavering spirit.
Creating a Legacy
These writings, whether journals or letters, become a part of your legacy. They capture your essence, your voice, and your wisdom. They offer a way for your loved ones to feel connected to you, even after crossing the threshold into the next realm. They are a gift of love that continues to give, providing comfort and guidance long after you are gone.
Practical Tips
Maintaining a journaling habit can be challenging, especially during the end-of-life journey. Here are some practical tips to help you stay committed:
- Set a Regular Time: Dedicate a specific time each day to write. This could be in the morning when you first wake up or in the evening before you sleep.
- Create a Sacred Space: Find a quiet, comfortable space to write without distractions.
- Be Authentic: Write from the heart without worrying about grammar or structure. Let your words flow naturally.
- Use Prompts: If unsure where to start, use prompts to guide your writing. Reflect on a cherished memory, express a current emotion, or write a message to a loved one.
- Incorporating Journaling into the Kispum Ritual
Journaling and letters can be beautifully incorporated into the Kispum ritual, a sacred practice of ancestor veneration. As you write, consider including messages for your ancestors, expressing gratitude for their guidance and asking for their continued presence in your life. You, as the ancestor, are writing to those who stay behind.
During the ritual, these writings can be read aloud or offered as part of the libation, symbolizing your ongoing connection to those who have gone before.
For instance, you might write a letter to a particular loved one who has passed, sharing how their memory continues to influence your life. This letter can be read during the Kispum ritual, creating a deep connection and honoring the bond that transcends the physical realm.
In these final days, let your words be a source of light and love, a testament to the life you have lived and the legacy you leave behind. You create a sacred space for reflection, expression, and connection through journaling and letter writing, offering a lasting gift to those you hold dear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walk into any forest in the Cascades and you are standing on the dead. The fir that fell forty years ago is now the nurse log feeding a row of saplings. The salmon carried uphill by an eagle became the nitrogen in the cedar's needles. Nothing in that forest is wasted, and nothing in it is afraid. We have built an entire industry on pretending we are exempt from this. We drain the body of its blood, fill it with preservatives, seal it in lacquered hardwood, and lower it into a concrete vault—as if the earth were a contamination to be defended against rather than the place we came from. Cremation, for all its simplicity, burns fossil fuel and sends the body skyward as carbon. There is another way, and it began here in Washington. Human composting—the law calls it natural organic reduction—was legalized in this state in 2019, the first in the nation. The process is unhurried and honest. The body, unembalmed, is laid into a steel vessel and surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. No chemicals are added. The microbes that already live on the plant material, and on us, do the work they have always done. Over eight to twelve weeks, the body becomes soil—about a cubic yard of it, dark and alive. Families may take some home for a garden or a tree, or donate it to forest conservation land. What was a person becomes, quite literally, ground for new growth. I have sat with the dying, and I can tell you that the question underneath most deathbed fear is not what happens to me? It is did I matter, and will anything of me remain? The Hávamál answers plainly: cattle die, kin die, the self dies too—but what one leaves behind endures. We usually read that as reputation. I have come to read it more literally. A body that becomes soil leaves something behind that you can hold in your hands. Something that feeds. For those of us who keep the old ways, this is not innovation. It is restoration. Our ancestors were returned to barrows and bogs and burial mounds, given back to the land that fed them. The vessel and the alfalfa are new; the covenant is ancient. The earth gives, and the earth receives. Every harvest festival we keep is built on that exchange. It would be strange to honor the cycle all our lives and then opt out of it at the end. This choice is now legal in a dozen states and counting. If it speaks to you, say so—out loud, in writing, to the people who will one day carry out your wishes. Death plans left unspoken become burdens; death plans spoken become gifts. A leaf falls. A seed sprouts. The tree does not grieve the leaf, and the soil does not refuse the seed. When my own time comes, I intend to be useful one last time. That, too, is a kind of prayer. —Silent
For the Pagan and Contemplative Community
There is a grief that arrives before the death. It does not announce itself. It does not have a name that anyone uses at the dinner table, or in the waiting room, or in the parking lot of the care facility where you sit in your car for a few minutes before going in, gathering yourself. It lives in small moments. The first time they didn't recognize you. The day you realized you were making decisions for them that they would have hated. The night you caught yourself hoping — just for a second, just once — that it would be over soon, and then spent the next three days punishing yourself for the thought. This is called anticipatory grief. And it is real, and it is heavy, and almost no one will name it for you while you are living inside it, because you are the strong one, and the person you are losing is still here, and grief, we have been told, comes after. It doesn't always come after. Sometimes it comes alongside. Caregiving is one of the most demanding things a human being can do. It asks you to be present to someone else's diminishment, day after day, while managing your own fear and your own exhaustion and your own sadness — and while the world around you continues as though nothing unusual is happening. You go to the grocery store. You answer emails. You show up. You are praised for your strength, which is a kindness people offer because they don't know what else to give you. What you actually need is someone who will let you put the strength down for an hour. Not fix you. Not give you a plan. Not tell you that you're doing a great job, or that they couldn't do what you're doing, or that everything happens for a reason. Just someone who will sit with you in the weight of it. Who will not be frightened by what you are carrying. Who will let you say the unsayable things — the anger, the ambivalence, the love that is so tangled up with loss that you can no longer tell them apart. That is what I offer. I am a death doula and spiritual director. I work with caregivers who are in the middle of it — not at the end, not after, but now, in the long middle stretch where the grief has no official start date and the world has not yet given you permission to feel it. We meet, usually by video, for an hour at a time. I listen in a particular way — not for problems to solve, but for what is actually present beneath the exhaustion and the competence and the careful management of everyone else's emotions. You do not have to have it together when you come into this space. That is the point of it. A few things I will not do: I will not tell you how to grieve correctly. There is no correctly. I will not rush you toward acceptance or silver linings. Some things do not have silver linings, and pretending otherwise is a small violence. I will not give you more to manage. You are already managing too much. What I will do is be present — fully, unhurriedly, without an agenda — for whatever you bring into the room. If you are a caregiver and you are reading this and something in you recognized itself in these words, that recognition is an invitation. I have a small number of spaces available for caregivers who are navigating the approach of death alongside someone they love. The intake questions at tokeepsilent.me are where we begin. Or you can reach me directly. There is no script for this conversation. We simply start. — Silent