Areas › Grief and loss › Let the wave come
Take the sorrow you cannot say to anyone else and pour it out to God, in your own plain words.
You do not have to hold it alone or find the right phrase. Say the raw thing to the One who already knows it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Yaqub said, I plead my grief and sorrow before God (Quran 12:86). The place for the sorrow you cannot speak aloud is before Him.
قَالَ إِنَّمَآ أَشۡكُواْ بَثِّي وَحُزۡنِيٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَأَعۡلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
He said, ‘I plead my grief and sorrow before God. I have knowledge from God that you do not have
Qur’an 12:86read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Putting a painful experience into words, rather than holding it in, is linked to better health and adjustment over time. Naming the grief lightens it.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science doi
Putting emotional experiences into words improves health and psychological adjustment.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Putting grief into words, especially to God, relieves the pressure of carrying it silently.
Where this sits: Dual Process Model, loss orientation (Stroebe and Schut).
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.