Solution 6: Writing a Goodbye Letter
Pen to Paper Connects Head to Heart!
I can’t begin to tell how grateful I am to everyone that has read one of more of these posts. The responses via calls, text, emails etc has been amazing, so THANK YOU! Enjoy another tool I use as a solution.
As I watched my Dad get lowered into the ground, I had so many things I wanted say. So many things I never got to say. So many things we’d never get to talk about again. That day was just the beginning of a stretch of important people that would pass away and I had things that didn’t get said to all of them.
I carried those never had conversations with me for a long time. I’d play them over and over in my head in whatever situation I was in or whoever best fit what I was going through. I’d talk to my Dad when I was on the golf course or playing baseball. When we’d take our annual trip to Fin and Feather I’d talk to Papa J while I fished or played frisbee golf. All of them would end with “if you were only here.”
In one of our first conversations, Floyd (the scary sponsor I mentioned in another story) told me to get a journal or a note pad and a pen. We were going to be doing some writing. I didn’t know exactly what that meant but he quickly let me know everything we did, every step we worked and some of the practices were going to be handwritten. We didn’t have iPads or tablets, we barely had computers but he was crystal clear, it was pen to paper only. He was the first to tell me about the power of our minds and how putting pen to paper connected our head and our heart. It was the first lesson that, what’s in our minds is scarier until we write it down.
In the beginning it was hard to put things on paper. For some reason seeing what was actually going on in my head was not something I was ready for. My head was a terrible place to be and putting it on paper just made it real. I’d write these Dear God letters in the evening and I could tell from the handwriting if it was a good day or a bad day. I’d write gratitude lists and lists of people I had met so I wouldn’t forget their names. It was never ending writing or at least it seemed that way and we hadn’t even done the first step yet.
My writing was angry and sad and bitter. There were so many things I couldn’t get out, that just didn’t go from brain to paper. The handwriting itself was sharp and jagged and messy, just like my brain. As time went on, the thoughts became clearer and the writing more legible. Less angry, more grateful. Less bitter, more appreciative. Less sad, more laughs.
The more I wrote the better I felt and for some reason I would stop for long periods of time. It was hard to trust the good feelings. The writings were showing me things. Things I had thought were real but really weren’t. My writings were showing me patterns too. Patterns in how I handled situations, people, relationships. Not all of that self discovery made me feel very good about myself but I also learned that many of the worries I had in my head, many of the fears, never really happened when I wrote them down. The act of putting it down on paper took away their power.
One thing that gets said over and over is that 90% of the problems we worry about never happen and the other 10% are of our own making. My writing proved that to be 100% true and it still does today.
One of the steps and practices in the program is to make amends and a caveat of that is “except when to do so would injure them or others.” This genius part of the step was put in to save us from ourselves. To give us another way to do something that keeps us out of harms way. It’s not an excuse to not make an amends, it just gives us the ability to make a good decision on how to do it. For the amends that were in this category, Floyd said write a letter. So I wrote letters.
I had to write quite a few letters and many never got sent. They were written, read with Floyd and burned. For those amends the work wasn’t in the giving of the letter but in getting whatever I needed to get out, out. It was the the putting the pen to paper to look at what I had done so that I understood it and how I could be better moving forward.
It all shifted when I was writing one of these amends to my Dad. I was sorry I hadn’t done more to stop him. To keep him from committing suicide. If only I had done this or that, something might have been different. It wouldn’t have, I was just a kid and I had no idea what he was going to do but in my mind I could have stopped it. My writing that day turned into the first goodbye letter I wrote. It went from an amends to telling him all those things I had in my head. All those conversations I wanted to have that never got to be. All the advice I needed but we never got to talk about and all the things he was supposed to be here for that he had missed. I don’t remember how long I wrote or how many pages it was but in my mind I can still see that yellow legal pad, that black pen and that those words coming out faster than I could put them down.
The pages and pages of writings were part of a healing that I needed so badly. I had carried so much for so long that writing that all down, getting all of that out and getting to say goodbye on my terms was eye opening. It gave me a closure I never had. More than anything it gave me a sense of peace. I got to put everything down in one spot, look at it, take a deep breath and move forward. Not move on but move forward knowing that what needed to be said was said.
After I wrote that letter to my Dad, I wrote one to each of my grandfathers. Both helped heal a lot of wounds. For Papa J, it was letter much like my Dad’s. Some of it was a “how could you?” Meaning how could you just leave like that and much of it was things I was going to miss doing with him. He was my safe place. For my Grandad Art it was a more of a, I wish I knew you better letter. All the questions I had that I would have asked as I got older but as I kid, I was to scared or didn’t know how. He was an intimidating figure and I just wish I would have had the chance to get to know him as time went on.
After those letters I didn’t have lot of other goodbyes to write. It wasn’t until after my divorce that I was sitting in therapy and through all we had talked about my therapist asked, have you written a goodbye letter? I hadn’t even thought about it. No one had died. What would I be saying goodbye to. After a few conversations with him, telling him why I didn’t need to do it, why it was only meant for someone that had died, that I started to see how this practice could work on the living. And how it could work on relationships that weren’t just my Dad or my Grandfathers.
Writing that letter to my marriage and my ex wife was the absolute hardest letter I’ve ever written. It was filled with so much shame, regret and things that, when we get married we wish would never happen. No one ever gets married thinking they are going to get divorced especially when kids are involved. After the way I grew up it was something I never thought would happen and I wasn’t proud of it at all. It was so damn hard and it showed me a lot of things I never wanted to be in future relationships. It allowed me to mourn and grieve something that I had built up in my mind, that felt unrecoverable at the time but ultimately was just a part of life. It was just a part of the story, not the whole story and being able to say goodbye to that part, somehow allowed me to move forward.
Little did I know that the letter to my marriage was just the warm up act. I believe in this practice and I was tested. My grandmother and sister both passed in 2015. I couldn’t immediately sit down and write letters to them. It was after a lot of suffering and sadness that brought me to my knees where it felt like one of the only things left to do. My grandmother had suffered so long that much of what I needed to say to her had already been said. The hardest part for me was that I wasn’t there when she passed. I was in my car, just short of Waco, heading to OKC when my Mom called and said she was gone. I wanted to be there because she had been there so many times for me, but she had more important places to be. I felt like I had let her down in a big way and I carried that for years.
My sisters was different too. It was absolutely gut wrenching to write. To think her kids, my nieces, we’re going to grow up like we did. We were supposed to do this life together. People like to tell me I’m strong, she was the strong one. She was the brilliant one. She was the one that was making a huge impact in veterans lives everyday. She was my kiddo and saying goodbye to her, well, there’s no words. But I wrote the letter and said all the things. I still reach down to call her, still think of things I want to tell her and still will write her little messages here and there. Much of what I really needed to say was said in the hospital that long October week. I don’t know if she heard me or not, I choose to believe she did. The letter just let me get the rest of it out. It allowed me to put a lot of the sadness in a place so I could start to remember her the way I wanted to, with a lot of laughs.
I’ve continued to write them and actually have a coach who uses it as part of her practice. She helped give me template to writing them and a new way to approach sitting down to write them. I’ve written some since to relationships and while they don’t seem to ever get easier, the practice works. A lot of this work we do for ourselves is hard and writing these letter is the no different. In the moment, there is nothing fun about sitting down to write these letters. But the reward and the feeling after is something I can’t explain. It’s not that immediately lighter feeling of a weight being lifted off our shoulders but almost just a slower release of a long deep breath, an exhale of sorts. I guess it’s become a ceremony of sorts and I know through practice that will feel better as more time that passes. That regret from things unsaid fade and the shame ultimately goes away.
Writing goodbye letters will always be a part of my life. They will always be one of the solutions in my toolbox. I’ve had to write some big ones but I’ve also written others, to jobs, friends, and situations that no longer served me. There’s no right way to get started putting things down and there’s no judgement around the things we carry in our head. If you’re holding onto something, someone, some situation or if there’s some part of your life that no longer serves you, write a letter, give it a try and just see what happens.
There is power in the pen!
As always, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to read these post. If you want to learn more about how I write my letters or the structure I use, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Cheers!
NonAnonymous is for people that have hit their emotional rock bottom, who’s life or some part of it has become completely unmanageable. We are a movement to help people step out of the shadows of their shame and into their highest good. Ultimately, we are here to serve, to practice and to learn how to show ourselves and those closest to us more Grace and Mercy. Everybody is getting sober from something. NonAnonymous is inspiring people to take action and make the hard choices to improve their life, even if it’s just 1% everyday. Our focus and program will center around a client's emotional sobriety, giving them tools that have over 35 years of testing and validation. Please follow along @iamnonanonymous on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIN for more information.
Once again, this resonates deeply with me.