Wild Sibling Grief Prompts: Everywhere Signs
Three free prompts for asking, watching, and the language only you and your sibling speak.
This week’s essay was about a sign that found me at a dinner table, in a sentence about Swedish fish, at the exact moment I was missing my brother. This week’s guest, author and surviving sibling Karin McLean, has built a whole practice out of asking her brother Brian for signs and watching them arrive. So this set is about signs: the ones we ask for, the ones that find us, and the private language that lets us recognize them at all.
Here are three prompts. Write what comes, as it does.
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1. If you let yourself ask your sibling for a sign, what would you ask for?
Karin McLean, my guest this week, learned that you do not have to wait for a sign to happen but that you can ask your loved ones for them. She has found that asking for something specific works best, because then you both know what to look for. Some readers do this easily. Others have never let themselves try, wonder if this is sacrilegious (listen to the episode to hear Karin’s thoughts on that), or are not sure they believe anything would come.
You do not have to believe it will work to answer this.
Write about what you would ask your sibling to send you, if you let yourself ask. What would the sign be, and why that one? What about it would tell you, without any doubt, that it was them?
If you want to go further, write about what may stop you from asking for a specific sign. Is it a religious or moral belief, a fear that you may not receive the sign, skepticism, something else?
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2. Write about a time something ordinary brought your sibling into the room with you.
A sign does not have to be overly dramatic to count. The one I wrote about earlier in The Feast of the Swedish Fish arrived as a friend’s sibling’s offhand comment about candy. For you it might have been a song on the radio, a smell, a number, an animal at the window, a t-shirt someone was wearing, or a phrase someone said who never knew your sibling at all.
Write about a moment when something small and ordinary made you feel your sibling near. Where were you? What was the thing? And what did you do with the feeling or experience? Did you let it land or talk yourself out of it?
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3. What is the private language only you and your sibling spoke?
Siblings often have a language no one else fully speaks. It’s often includes the nicknames, the inside joke that needs no setup, the look across a room, or a small ritual nobody outside would even notice. It may be how we recognize a sign when it comes if the sign arrives in that same private language.
Write about a piece of the language only the two of you spoke. Not a list of all of it, but one word or gesture or ritual, and a single time it said something out loud that you could never have said plainly.
If you want to go further, write about what receiving a sign in this language might be and what it would mean to you.
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That is where I will leave it for today. Sit with the one that pulls at you. Let the others go.
If you write to any of these and want to share, the comments are open.
If these landed, there is more. The paid set this week, Wild Sibling Grief Prompts: The Ongoing Conversation, takes the work deeper into the ongoing relationship (a.k.a. continuing bond) with your sibling. The nine prompts tomorrow are self-paced and for paid subscribers.
Warmly,
Angela
Tony’s little sister 🐺
🎧 The Broken Pack: Stories of Sibling Loss, Episode 50 with Karin McLean is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Wild Grief is written by Dr. Angela Dean, PsyD, FT, GTMR (psychologist, thanatologist, and Tony’s surviving sibling). Interactions with The Broken Pack, LLC, Dr. Angela Dean, and its content do not constitute a therapeutic or professional psychological relationship with Dr. Dean. All content is educational and informational, not clinical advice. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to your local crisis line or warm line, or visit findahelpline.com.
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