Plain Lab · journal
Grief Journal
Ruled pages and a small set of prompts. Nothing here promises to make grief shorter.
Specification
- Trim
- 148 × 210 mm · 5.827 × 8.268 in
- Pages
- 100
- Leaves
- 50
- Sheets
- 25
- Signatures
- 5 × 20pp
- Spine
- 5.72 mm
- Paper
- white
- Ruling
- lined
- Ruling pitch
- 9.17 mm · 26.00 pt
- Rows per page
- 18
This book will not tell you when you should feel better, because it does not know, and neither does anyone selling you a timeline. What it holds instead is plain ruled pages for whatever needs writing on a given day, whether that is a memory, a list of things left undone, or nothing shaped like either one.
A small set of prompt pages sits through the book rather than at the front, asking short, specific questions rather than open ones: something you would tell them if they walked in right now, something you are angry about that has nothing to do with their dying. The rest of the book is unprompted, because not every day has a question that fits it.
There is no chapter here for moving on. The book ends the same way it starts: ruled pages, and nothing promised.
What is inside
- Notes
- 64pp
- Plain ruled pages for whatever needs writing on a given day.
- Prompt
- 24pp
- Short, specific questions placed through the book rather than only at the front.
- Reference
- 12pp
- The owner page and reference tables at the back, kept as plain as the rest of the book.
The film
Page by page
A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.
Real pages
Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker
Books that sit alongside it
- Caregiver's JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Commonplace InsertWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Dream JournalWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
- Evening InsertWorks alongsideshares personal-writing
Questions
Is it dated?
No. Some weeks have nothing to write, and the book does not mind an empty page.
What kind of questions are on the prompt pages?
Short and specific ones, not open questions about how you are feeling in general.
Does it have a structure for stages of grief?
No. It does not assume grief moves in stages, or in order, or on any schedule at all.
Who is it for?
Anyone who has lost someone and wants somewhere private to put down what that day actually held.
Will writing in it help?
It gives you a ruled page and a question. What that does for you is not something a notebook can promise.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
