How to Write a Letter to Someone Who Has Passed Away

Writing a letter to someone who has passed away can be extremely cathartic for a number of reasons.

First, it can help you to keep their memory alive, which can help you to manage any guilt you might feel about letting them go and moving on with your life.

Second, it can help you to say things that maybe were left unsaid when they were alive, which can help with the grieving process. Many people find that they can find closure following loss through a period of letter writing.

Writing is also highly therapeutic in itself, and the act of slowing down your thought processes to the speed of handwriting can help you to process what is happening in your mind.

In this guide, we’re looking at some practical steps you can take to start writing letters to someone who has passed away. We’ll look at how this helps the grieving process and how you can optimise the process to ensure you are making the most of the opportunity.

How does writing letters help with grief?

Writing letters to the dead might feel like a pointless task. The letter isn’t going anywhere, and they’ll never read it. So what’s the point? When explaining letter writing as part of the grieving process, it’s easier to think of letter writing as a kind of journaling. It can help individuals to order their thoughts and bring to light things that they hadn’t previously been aware of.

For those who might struggle to talk about their feelings aloud, writing things down can be highly therapeutic and might pave the way for talking therapy. It allows them to get comfortable with their thoughts and practice articulating them in a private space.

What you then do with the letters can also be helpful. You can keep them and refer back to them in the future. This can help to give the timeline of your grief a sense of scale. You’ll be able to see the changes in your grief and how you have grown and developed.

And those who choose to get rid of the letters can find it rather liberating to be free of those feelings. It first allows the feelings out, and then it gives you permission to let them go.

Creating a safe space to write your letter

If you would like to start writing letters to someone who has passed away, it’s helpful to create a ritual around this so that you can feel more comfortable with it. Choose a quiet place where you can be sure you won’t be disturbed. It doesn’t have to be a solitary place – just somewhere that you can find peace. For example, you can find a moment of solitary peace in a crowded cafe, provided you don’t know anyone there.

You don’t have to have special paper or a fancy pen to make this work. A simple notebook and any pen that allows you to write with ease will do the job. It’s helpful if you can easily tear the pages out of the notebook, as this can help you to get rid of them at the end – if you decide this is who you want to handle it.

And finally, give yourself the mental space to be able to feel everything you are feeling. Don’t try it on your lunch break when you’ll feel the pressure to return to work. Find a time when you have the freedom to go deep into your feelings, without the pressure to return in a hurry.

What to do with the letter when you are done

When you have finished your letter, you’ll have a few options. Some people like to fold the letters and place them in envelopes that can be sealed and revealed in the future. This approach could help you to revisit your previous self and see how your grief has progressed and how you have grown.

It’s also acceptable to destroy the letter when you are done. You might decide to shred it or even burn it. This can be highly cathartic, and it can feel like an effective way to “deliver” the letter to the intended recipient.

You might choose to leave the letter at their graveside, which is highly symbolic. Be aware that there are no guarantees someone won’t take the letter, which can feel very intrusive and add to your pain.

Whatever you do with the letter, you can rest assured the process of writing it will help you to start to process your grief. It gives you a space to air your thoughts, say things left unsaid, and to articulate your grief in a way that only the person you have lost could understand. It’s also helpful to keep their memory alive and help you to feel connected.