New Journal Prompt: New Traditions and Rituals To Honor Loved Ones
This month’s journal prompt will be about creating new traditions and rituals after loss. This month, we will reflect on your loved one’s personality traits and interests, and how creating new traditions with those in mind can help you after loss.
I started writing and sharing my story and found it so healing. Journaling can be therapeutic, bring comfort and help us in the grieving process. For this month’s prompt, I really wanted to share that creating new traditions can help preserve and honor your loved ones memory.
This year I will be sending 12 journal prompts to my email subscribers, one each month. I will be sharing my answers, and if you’re comfortable, I would love to read and share yours! Everything will be kept anonymous. This month we will be exploring our feelings of how our empathy after loss has changed. Often times once we have experienced loss, our empathy skills increase.
I am so excited for this project. I know as we journal together, we will find community, acceptance, and support. I want you to know your responses are, for lack of better word, sacred to me. Thank you sharing your story. We can do this, this big impossible thing, of healing. Life is a trip, join my caravan as we journal and heal together!
As we dive into this journal prompt, I hope we can find healing together as we explore life after loss. Sometimes we need to address the painful things in order to heal, and I want to remind you to get help with a professional grief therapist or confide in a friend as you go about this. You are not alone!
June Journal Prompt: New Traditions and Rituals after loss
Explore any new traditions or rituals you’d like to establish to honor your loved one’s memory on upcoming anniversaries or milestones. How do these practices reflect their personality or interests?
My Answer: Creating New Traditions To Honor Loved Ones
Creating traditions for those anniversaries has made the days much easier to get through. In fact, Justin’s birthday has become a truly enjoyable day. Justin loved the outdoors—he spent all his free time fishing, hiking, or climbing. When he needed to recharge, he’d head to the mountains, his happy place. I feel closest to him when I’m in nature; it feels like that’s where he would be.
I wanted his birthday to be a joyful occasion, a day to smile, laugh, reminisce, and do something he loved. That’s how we came up with the idea of honoring Justin by creating some new traditions spending his birthday outdoors. Last year, we went up Provo Canyon with one of Justin’s best friends, and it was such a fun day. Now, our friends and family from all over the world join us by spending the day outdoors too.
Establishing new traditions by doing something your loved one liked on their birthday makes the day enjoyable!
Justin’s death anniversary is still extremely hard for me. I know to be patient with myself as it approaches. My boys and I always visit his gravesite and have a picnic there. I spend the rest of the day alone. Planning and preparing in advance has helped me mentally get through the day. Making a plan before the day arrives can make things a little easier. Here are a few things to help you through the harder anniversaries:
Life’s A Trip, Join My Caravan for Community and Support
Subscribe to my email to get monthly journal prompts like this one, and if you’d like to share how you’ve come to terms with life after loss, be sure to comment here or respond to my email. I know that as we caravan together in this grief journey we can help each other through. Navigating grief can be difficult alone, especially when it comes to anniversaries and milestones after loss. Join my caravan for support and let me know how I can help. Follow me on Instagram for more community and support.
Caravan Community Read their stories
Trials touch us all. A year ago, I shared my story to offer support, but I never expected the flood of messages from others facing hardships. Their strength inspired me to create Caravan Community, a space on my blog to share their stories. You have a story to share I’d love to feature you on my blog. You can also read their stories below. Life after loss doesn’t have to be lonely.
Summer is hard for my kids and me. Mark collapsed with an type 1 aortic dissection in March, however due to complications post surgery he was CICU for 16 weeks, then discharged to a skilled nursing facility where he passed away week later. In June we have Father’s Day, then his birthday on June 26th and then he passed away on July 15th. So it feels like hit after hit after hit. You feel like you made it through one day, then here comes the next event. It will be 3 years in July. This year my oldest took it harder for some reason. She was a daddy’s girl and being a young adult navigating life without her dad has had it’s extra feels lately. For my son, he is about to graduate from college and he is missing being able to celebrate this milestone with Mark.
It hurts this mom’s heart because even though I am here, I am not dad and don’t have the same advice or views to share with them like Mark would.
Anyway, we celebrate Father’s Day and his birthday going to eat at his favorite places and remembering the best of him and the good times. As for the day he had to leave us, we remain quiet and give each other a lot of grace. We are all in a funk and quietly do our own things to remember Mark. It is different for us because the kids are young adults and are still learning how to navigate life, especially without dad and his advice. Nonetheless, we remember what he did teach us all….love God, be respectful, work hard but to laugh and love others harder, enjoy the present.