Writing Your Grief
Join us for the 30 day course that lets you tell the truth about your grief.
Live sessions of the course are on break until Spring of 2023.
Start the self-guided course now!
No one knows your grief as well as you. Even if you have supportive friends and family, they’re still looking from the outside in. And you probably don’t have the energy to explain your grief to anyone, even if they mean well. Just once, you’d like to be understood, not cheered up. Just once, you’d like to feel like you’re not the weird one in your social circle, that grieving person everyone’s tiptoeing around.
You’re not alone.
If you’re like many people, you’ve stopped talking about your grief. When you’re met with well meaning, but utterly dismissive comments like “everything happens for a reason,” or “your person wouldn’t want you to be sad,” or even “that’s still bothering you?!” it’s just easier to not say anything at all.
The thing is, grief, like love, needs expression. The Writing Your Grief 30 day e-course gives you the space to tell the truth about what it’s like to be you, right here and now, without the need to sugarcoat it or censor yourself to protect other peoples’ feelings.
And because you’re writing through grief inside a community of fellow grievers, you get the kind of grief support you never thought possible.
This grief writing course gives you a way to engage with your grief on a daily basis, helping you listen for your own story within your pain. And just as important, the course connects you with other grieving people: people who truly understand what it’s like to live inside life-changing loss. No platitudes, no advice, just a community of fellow grievers, writing alone, together.
From early grief through “older” losses, whatever grief you carry – this course is for you.
Your grief has an intelligence all its own.
Let it tell you what it knows.
Throughout the 30 day course, you’ll write with a group of people dedicated to following their hearts, speaking their minds, and honoring their losses. With daily prompts from Megan, guidance from our program director and team of facilitators, and the words of your fellow writers, you’ll build a community that truly understands the realities of grief.
How it works: each day for 30 days, you’ll receive a writing prompt via email. You’ll share your writing and connect with others inside our private community platform. There’s no set “lesson” time, so you can write according to your own rhythms. More details in the “important details” section further down this page.
For everything you’ve had to live – you deserve a place to be heard.
Please join us. We’ve got room for you.
Join our community of grievers and writers.
The live community version of the WYG course is on break.
Join the self guided version for just $99!
When you purchase the solo-course, you’ll get the same prompt-a-day for 30 days as the original course. The prompts will allude to what’s happening in the group, but there’s no group page and no community support. It’s just you and the page. You can start whenever you’re ready.
Prompts begin the moment you sign up. You can be writing in just a few minutes. Sign up at the link below.
Live community sessions of Writing Your Grief will be announced in 2023.
What kinds of losses can I write about?
- Deaths of anyone important to you: spouses, parents, siblings, children, partners, friends, family members, colleagues – if their death impacts you, you can write about them
- Miscarriage, still-birth, TFMR, genetic differences, birth defects and birth-story outcomes tied to loss
- Accidents, sudden death, illnesses, natural disasters, & other life-altering changes
- Suicide, overdose, violent crime, and other deaths considered “taboo”
- Any loss you identify as being deeply part of you – especially if it’s never been acknowledged
Through this course, you will:
- Learn about yourself, your losses, and how to care for yourself inside your pain
- Decrease your loneliness and feelings of isolation
- Feel supported, encouraged, and inspired
- Increase your ability to treat yourself – and others – with kindness and compassion
- Find more peace-of-being around what hurts (which is far different than “moving on”)
- Connect with your true writing voice
- Engage deeply, and creatively, with your grief
- Make new, and lasting, connections with our family of grievers and writers
- Gain access to the wider WYG alumni community for support and special events
Important details:
- In the live version of the course, Megan’s trained facilitators are in the course with you, reading and connecting. You’ll hear from Megan in your daily prompt, and our director and trained facilitators in daily posts inside the private group.
- Though peer support and connection is a huge part of this course, you won’t be required to connect! (though we hope you do!)
- While writing with a community can be therapeutic, the course itself is not therapy, and should not be considered such. Facilitators do not provide advice or therapy.
- There is no requirement to write, share, or connect with others, but as with all things, you’ll get more out of the course the more you participate.
- If you are dealing with grief, you are welcome in this course. Because our work is largely focused on grief related to death, course content is largely death-related. Most students are able to translate the prompts into their own grief experience.
- The course is entirely in written format; there are no video components, and no set “lesson” time. Write and connect on your own schedule.
- At the end of your LIVE course, you’ll be invited into the wider alumni community, where you’ll find ongoing support, a monthly prompt, and access to further writing courses.
- If you have a question that hasn’t yet been answered, be sure to check out the FAQ (click the pink link below). Most importantly, we want this course to be a good match for you, so please read the FAQ.
Because Megan writes largely about grief related to death, yes: many of the prompts relate to that kind of grief. That said, many people come into the course carrying other kinds of grief. If you identify as experiencing loss, you are welcome here. Most people are able to translate the prompts into something relevant to their own experience.
You’ll see Megan in the daily prompt, but not in your private group. Each session tends to have between 75 to 100 people, split between several groups. This means that Megan can’t give personal attention to everyone, every day. It’s simply not logistically possible. Our program director gives direction and encouragement, to each group as a whole, every day throughout the course. Trained facilitators – who have gone through the course themselves – assist in personally reading and responding to your writing. Your fellow writers are also a big part of this process. While Megan and her teams act as your guide, the real magic of this course lies in the community that’s created.
Nope. While writing, and being witnessed in your truth, can be both therapeutic and healing, the course is not group therapy. The team’s relationship with you in the course is as your guides, not therapists. Many people bring their writings into their own personal therapy sessions with their own providers. That’s a great way to get support. This course is not, and should not be, construed as therapy.
No one is too far out from their loss to join. If you have grief to write from, you are welcome here. With a loss this big, “just happened” can mean 80 years ago as much as it means this morning.
You don’t have to identify as a writer to join this course. Everyone is welcome. (and we bet you’re a better writer than you think.)
That is entirely up to you. Every day for 30 days, you’ll receive a new writing prompt. Writing is a skill like any other: the more you commit to it, the stronger you get. That said, life does intrude sometimes. You can always go back and revisit a prompt if you miss a day.
They’re your words. Write whatever you need to.
Entering your grief is painful: true. And writing your pain, diving into it with respect and gentleness, changes the pain in some ways. Here’s what one participant wants you to know: “When given the privilege of bearing witness to other’s grief and pain, your own pain gradually loses its power over you. It doesn’t disappear, but rather than bearing down on you, it begins to stand next to you. The prompts urged me to explore my pain, and it sometimes felt very crappy… but at the end of the day (when I chose to write), I knew I would not be in my pain alone. I was sharing it with others that knew of what I spoke. I didn’t have to make excuses, I was given permission to feel and write whatever I wanted to. And when my last word was typed, I simply felt “better.” Simply, what I learned: my pain did not have to control me, I could have some control over it.”
The course gives you sparks for your own writing, whether in your private journal or in our private group. It’s prompt-driven, which means that every day for 30 days, you’ll get a new prompt by email. As a member of this session, you have opportunities with other writers in the course: share your work, get support, and give encouragement. So, in a nutshell: the course gives more opportunity for connection with other writers & grievers, and the prompts can send your writing in interesting new directions.
Nope! We recently made the switch to a new, private platform. We no longer use facebook for the Writing Your Grief course. Once you’ve registered, you will need to set up an account on the new platform, and that’s all explained in your welcome email.
As a team of confirmed non-group people, we can tell you that this group is significantly better than most. For one thing, there’s no forced intimacy: you connect as you wish. There’s no superficial cheerleading in this group; no one is going to challenge your truth or try to talk you out of it. You won’t get any advice either. Just acknowledgement, space, and connection – as much or as little as you’d like. Some people aren’t comfortable posting their writing, but they do take comfort and strength from reading others’ words.
Anything you share with the private group stays within the group. Because the group is private, nothing can be shared elsewhere on our platform. We take confidentiality very seriously: you cannot write freely if you’re worried about who might read it. What is shared in our group stays in our group. There will be more on this when the course opens.
The connection with other writers and grievers through our private group is an important part of this course. We are not here to correct each other, or to give advice. We all get plenty of that elsewhere! Feedback is rooted in reflection of each person’s words. Once the course opens, there will be a detailed post to open our group, giving examples of feedback vs. advice.
Yes! Maybe. You’ll be part of the group whether or not you write, or share your writing, on the first day. However, because of the community-building aspect of the course, we do recommend you wait for the next session if you’ll be more than a few days late in starting.
The community that gets created during this course is like no other; it’s the real jewel inside Writing Your Grief. Most people love to stay connected inside the free Writing Your Grief alumni group – it’s where writers from all the past sessions of the course hang out as one big family. WYG alumni are the first ones to hear about new programs and events. And there are two writing course series that build on the original, so there are more ways to keep writing. You’ll get all of the information once you register.
Yes! Groups tend to have people from all around the world, and you can post your writing whenever you’d like.
Short answer: no. We offer no refunds for any courses, services, or downloads. Please take the time to read the course description and see if it’s a good match for you at this time before you sign up.
We give a small number of partial scholarships for each WYG session. If you’d like to apply for a scholarship, email wyg at refuge in grief dot com and ask to be placed on the list. We receive vast amounts of scholarship requests – far more than we can provide. At this time, we will only respond to your email if we have a scholarship spot to offer. Scholarship offers that are not claimed within the time window described in your offer email will be rescinded and given to the next person on the list. Thanks for your patience.
The Writing Your Grief 30 day e-course gives you the kind of grief support you never thought possible.
This course helps you explore common aspects of grief (like grief and memory, grief shame, and that loneliness we’ve been talking about). It’s not always easy. Grief hurts. You won’t find your grief suddenly resolved, but you will find the oddly comforting relief of being allowed to tell the truth.
In the live version of the course, you’ll also find a rare community of people who listen without flinching, without offering advice, without correcting you out of your grief. That part? It’s magical. It begins in your first 30 day live course, and continues long after the last prompt inside the WYG alumni community.
Find your voice, find your people. Come write with us.
Here’s proof that the Writing Your Grief course is an experience unlike any other.
Over the years we’ve heard from so many Writing Your Grief students who started feeling more understood, less alone, and more validated than they’d felt since their grief began.
How it works for you depends on how much you choose to share and participate, but here’s what some of our students want you to know:
Join the self-guided version for just $99!
When you purchase the solo-course, you’ll get the same prompt-a-day for 30 days as the original course. The prompts will allude to what’s happening in the group, but there’s no group page and no community support. It’s just you and the page. You can start whenever you’re ready.
Prompts begin the moment you sign up. You can be writing in just a few minutes. Sign up at the link below.
YES! SIGN ME UP for the solo course.
Live community sessions of Writing Your Grief will be announced in 2023.
Note: sometimes course emails land in your promotions, “all mail,” or junk mail folders. Please check all those tabs if you haven’t heard from us, and check this page for common tech solutions.
An important note on scholarships: we receive hundreds of requests every single session – far more than we can accommodate. Spots tend to fill within the first week of open registration for the live community version of the course. Please note that we have a very small team fielding hundreds of emails. We will only contact you if we have a spot to offer. There are no scholarships for the self-guided version.