SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2021

SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2021 | www.tcf.org.uk 9 (a favourite piece of clothing, a treasured book or toy from childhood). Set a timer for five minutes and write as many words as you can about each item, why it matters, why it doesn’t matter, what the memories are that make it important, perhaps what makes an unimportant item hard to part with. When you’re finished, read through your words. Perhaps it is a poem, and all you need to do is put in where the line breaks are. Perhaps you’d like to pull out one image and rearrange the rest around that. Perhaps one item stands out: see where it leads you. Experiment 2: Lost things Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who worked in end of life care, said there were five stages to grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many people now think it may not happen in that order, and loss may mean different things at different moments. Try this writing exercise to explore what it means to you, right now. Think about a time when you have lost something. Set a timer for five minutes and writing as fast as you can, as many words as quickly as you can, write what you did to try and find it, what you did next, what you thought, what you felt, and what happened afterwards. Let words suggest themselves even if it’s only just the sound they make, just get as many words down as possible. Sometimes it helps to try not to make sense. When the five minutes are up, read through. Pick out the image that means most to you, and reassemble your words into the form of a poem, using that image as a jumping off point. Don’t worry about putting things in the right order. Grief messes with the right order of things, so a jumbled chronology might be right. Or perhaps in that muddle you crave a very meticulous order: in which case, do that. Listen to your internal compass and let it tell you what to do with the words and images. Experiment 3: Words from under the mask As grieving siblings we often spend days trying to suppress our anguish while we attempt to be the good worker or supportive son/daughter, wearing a mask of normality or coping. Taking off that mask can be a huge relief, so this exercise is very simple: before you go to bed (or first thing in the morning if you’re an early riser), light a candle, get a notepad and pen, and write very quickly for at least five minutes about what was really happening for you during the day. Try to splurge everything down, and get at the truth. If you write something you’d like to share with others, please consider sending it to info@tcf.org.uk so we can include it in the next edition of SIBBS.