How Writing Vilomah Helped Me Grieve When Nothing Else Could

There are moments after a profound loss when language itself seems to fail.

In the months after my son's death, there were long stretches of silence.

Conversations grew awkward. Messages stopped coming. The world, it seemed, had moved on—while I was frozen in a kind of invisible grief.

I didn’t have the words to explain what I was feeling.

Even if someone had asked, I don't know if I could have answered.

But late at night, when the ache grew too big to hold inside, I found myself reaching for scraps of paper.

A line here.

A fragment there.

Not complete thoughts—just pieces of sorrow, anger, disbelief, love, and longing.

Over time, those fragments began to shape themselves into poems.

Writing What I Couldn’t Say

In those first raw months, poetry became the language my grief could understand.

It wasn’t about perfect structure or beautiful words.

It was about survival.

Poetry gave me permission to be exactly where I was—shattered, furious, numb, aching—with no expectation to explain or justify it.

In a few short lines, I could scream into the void.

In the next breath, I could whisper hope.

There’s something about poetry—its ability to hold contradictions—that mirrors grief so perfectly.

One line could rage against the unfairness of it all.

The next could cradle the fragile hope that love somehow endures.

From Private Grief to Public Offering

Vilomah wasn’t meant to be a book at first.

It was my private journal. My whispered prayers. My grief given shape when nothing else could hold it.

But as time passed, I realized that maybe—just maybe—what I had written could help someone else feel less alone.

Maybe someone stumbling through their own devastation could find a mirror in my words.

Not solutions. Not easy answers.

Just a hand reaching out into the darkness, saying, "I know this place. I'm here too."

That’s when Vilomah became more than a collection of poems.

It became an offering—to anyone who needed to know that their grief was real, valid, and not invisible.

The Healing Power of Being Seen

Writing Vilomah didn’t erase my pain.

It didn’t tie it up in a neat bow.

It didn’t turn grief into something tidy or acceptable.

But it did give my grief a voice.

It made the invisible visible.

It allowed me to honor the magnitude of my loss without minimizing it or rushing it.

And through sharing it, I learned something even more precious:

When we allow ourselves to be seen in our truest, most broken places, we create space for healing—not just for ourselves, but for others too.

If you are grieving, know this:

Your sorrow deserves a voice.

Your love deserves to be honored.

And you are not alone.