Closed a5 Grief Journal resting on a plain surface, a tiled illustration field on the cover, a cream label plate near the middle, a narrow binding strip down the spine.

Plain Lab · journal

Grief Journal

Ruled pages and a small set of prompts. Nothing here promises to make grief shorter.

Price

from Rp 58.000

Softcover, French link sewing. Printed and sewn to order.

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Every cover and binding option is quoted when you order.

Specification

Type: Journal
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
Dating: Undated

Build it

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Rp 58,000

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.

In every book

The same six pages open every book: your details, who to call, the signs to point at when you have no shared language, and the map. They sit at the front because the moment you need them is not the moment to be flicking through.

How to use it: One page describing this book, not a different one.
This book belongs to: One page for your name and number, so a book that goes missing can come back.
My details: Blood group, allergies, who to call. Written once, carried everywhere.
Emergency numbers: Forty countries, taken from Wikidata property P2852 (CC0), agreed across two sources, every row carrying its QID. Numbers change and a book does not — verify locally on arrival.
Point at this: A pictogram grid captioned in English above and Indonesian below, for when there is no shared language.
World map: Natural Earth 110m, public domain, equirectangular, with UTC hour meridians computed from the projection rather than from a timezone database. For orientation and for pointing at, not a navigation chart.
Conversion tables: Computed from definitions — 25.4 mm to the inch — and not copied from anywhere, so every row can be checked by anyone holding the book.
Pen test leaf: The last page, printed for it on purpose. Every notebook is used this way; printing it deliberately is cheaper than losing the last leaf to it by accident.

The film

Page by page

A vertical film, 52 seconds: the cover, the ruling page, then 5 reference pages. Synthesised ambient bed, no dialogue — captions in three languages.

A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.

What is inside this book?

Five pages from the Grief Journal laid out as cards: a ruled notes page, a prompt page, a divider, the owner page, and a reference page. — Five pages taken from the print file: a ruled notes page, a prompt page, a section divider, the front owner page, and a reference page. None of the pages ask how you are doing in general; the prompts stay specific, because a general question is easier to leave blank.

Detail card listing the Grief Journal contents: ruled notes pages, a small prompt section, and reference pages at the back. — A long run of plain ruled pages, unprompted. A small set of short prompt pages placed through the book, asking specific questions rather than open ones. An owner page and reference tables at the back, kept as plain as everything before them.

Computed from definitions — 25.4 mm to the inch — and not copied from anywhere, so every row can be checked by anyone holding the book. — Grief Journal — Conversion tables

Forty countries, taken from Wikidata property P2852 (CC0), agreed across two sources, every row carrying its QID. Numbers change and a book does not — verify locally on arrival. — Grief Journal — Emergency numbers

One page for your name and number, so a book that goes missing can come back. — Grief Journal — This book belongs to

A pictogram grid captioned in English above and Indonesian below, for when there is no shared language. — Grief Journal — Point at this

Natural Earth 110m, public domain, equirectangular, with UTC hour meridians computed from the projection rather than from a timezone database. For orientation and for pointing at, not a navigation chart. — Grief Journal — World map

The PDF of this book.

We do not sell the design or the PDF. Download it free, with no conditions at all, not even tracking. What we sell is the book, a real object that is genuinely useful and can help your life.

Download PDF PDF · 100 pages · 0.3 MB

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.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854