I’ve written countless letters to Rob since he died. Texting was the closest we ever got to writing to each other when he was alive, and that was mainly a one-sided affair in which I tried to talk some sense into him only to be rebuffed by a flurry of emojis that I could never decipher.

In my letters, I told him how I was doing and what he was missing, and I’d make a bunch of Dad jokes that I knew would make him wince.

I was driven to write these letters because I thought it would be a way to ventilate. After all, keeping my feelings bottled up inside would stress me out further, and if my thoughts and emotions didn’t find an escape hatch, they would remain buried deep inside me, like when I couldn’t cry after my mom’s death all those years ago. Writing to Rob helped me process what happened to him, what happened to us, and what happened to me.

That’s why I’m certain that writing to your child will help you, too. It documents your love and loss, and seeing your feelings come alive on the page connects you with your kid like nothing else.

Staying connected to your child, however, cuts both ways. It opens you up and makes you bleed words of love and pain: sometimes it’s sad and beautiful; sometimes it’s agonizing and ugly; and sometimes it’s all of the above swirled together like a crappy Mister Softee ice cream cone.

It’s just another way of

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