Writer, Grief Writing Guide, Mother

about 1 month ago

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3 min read

Rumination & intrusive thoughts(+ journal prompts)

writing through grief
POSTSGRIEF RESOURCESCHANELBRENNER.COMFOLLOW ON INSTAGRAMSHARED GRIEF JOURNAL

Dear Friends,

I gave birth to both of my sons in late July, four years apart, and this time of year always brings up memories around my pregnancies, labors, and the death of my eldest son, Riley. Their births and his death are tangled like necklace chains—knotted and twisted around each other, difficult to separate.

After Riley died, I had found myself obsessing over his brain AVM (Arteriovenous Malformation), trying to understand what had happened, making connections to my pregnancies and his birth. Unwanted thoughts and images repeated in my head. Now, fifteen years after his death, it still happens but less often and with a new awareness like rewatching a scene in a movie over and over again, fading in its intensity with each viewing.

I wrote about this type of rumination in an essay, “Veins.” I want to share this excerpt with you:

“When will it feel worth it?” I ask my friend on the phone while driving home from a vascular surgeon appointment, shortly after Desmond’s birth. As I slowed at a stoplight, I look down at my legs sausaged in compression stockings, just as they had been throughout my recent pregnancy to soothe painful varicose veins and prevent blood clots. I’ll never forget this same friend’s eye-bulging horror when I showed her my right “Frankenstein leg” at my baby shower; a monster’s appendage—it was bloated, purple, with raised, angry markings. I reassured her that I was okay despite its hideous appearance…the doctor had said it wasn’t life threatening.

I thought maybe God was punishing me for being greedy. Maybe I didn’t deserve two children. Maybe varicose veins were God’s way of telling me I had pushed the envelope.

As soon as the words, When will it feel worth it? came out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. What kind of mother says that? The words and the subsequent guilt branded into my memory, but years on, I have compassion for my old self. I know I was depressed from the hormone crash after giving birth to Desmond and overtired from the expected—though no less taxing—sleep deprivation of having small children—two of them, now, a larger difference than I had anticipated.

When my older son Riley died, I kept hearing a voice in my head: Is it worth it now? I tried to stop the intrusive words, but the involuntary thoughts looped in my brain for years before fading away, it was another way I blamed myself, as if the words spelled his death.

I also want to share a poem that I wrote about trying to get pregnant again after Riley died and the fears and ruminating thoughts that surfaced.:

The Morning Before the Pregnancy Test

Now when I think of veins,

I see death returning.

I try to imagine my belly swelling,

my veins safe in compression hosiery,

but I can’t suture what has opened.

My eyelid swells from a spider bite,

till I look like a monster. Other mothers’ kids

panic; baby spiders crawl in my veins.

Fear of another bite turns me

wide-eyed and spindly.

I hope to escape my body.

The window cracks open,

the seed in my belly swells,

and I shop once more at Babies R US—

but I see death monsters everywhere—

and cannot end the panic.

I am a monster. A stone mommy monster,

and only a stone baby monster would want

stone blood in its veins. What if I miscarry

from panic? What if I birth death again?

The defect in my son’s brain didn’t look

like a monster worthy of such panic.

It looked like a veined apple leaf,

a blueprint for life.

Journal Prompts

#1 Think of a fear or a regret you obsess over around a loss. Is there something you wish you had done in the past or that you worry you will need to do in the future? Write about how this fear or regret manifests itself. Does it appear in images or words?

#2 When was the last time you thought about this fear or regret? What prompted it to surface? What did you think might happen? Write about what it will look, like feel like, smell like, etc...

#3 My poem above started as a sestina, but I eventually took it out of its strict form. It’s more like a loose sestina now. A sestina is a form that consists of six stanzas of six lines and repeats six specific words at the end of each line. If you want to challenge yourself, browse these sestinas for examples and try writing one using some of the words from your journaling in prompt 1 and/or 2. Or just try reusing those words, repeatedly, throughout the poem as much as you can.

Warmly,

Chanel

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(Oct. 2-Nov. 6, 2026)

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Chanel Brenner

Grief support after the loss of a child or loved one, through writing tools, groups, books, essays, poems, and more.

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