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Mark Making Through Grief: A Daily Creative Practice: A Creative Workbook for loss and bereavement.
**When Words Fail, Let Your Creativity Speak.**
After losing her husband, contemporary artist Caroline Perkins stood frozen before a blank canvas, unable to paint. What she discovered instead changed the healing power of simple mark making—instinctive gestures made without plan, judgment, or artistic skill.
This isn't an art course.
This isn't traditional therapy. This is a 13-week journey of authentic emotional expression through marks on paper.
Mark Making Through Grief offers a gentle, grounded practice for anyone navigating loss. Each week focuses on a different landscape of grief—from the weight of sorrow to moments of unexpected hope, from rage beneath the surface to the tender act of carrying love forward.
What makes this workbook No artistic experience required – If you can hold a pencil, you can do this practice. Blank pages for your own mark making – Space to express what words cannot say.
Born from lived experience – Created by a Royal College of Art graduate and QEST Scholar who used this exact practice to process her own profound loss
Honours the complexity of grief – Acknowledges anger, darkness, fragility, and hope without rushing you to "heal" Simple materials – Works with pencils, crayons, charcoal, or anything you have at home
**13 compassionate weekly practices** – Each chapter includes guided exercises, reflection prompts, and permission to grieve authentically.
Inside you'll - How to make the first mark when you feel paralyzed by grief - Practices for expressing heaviness, rage, tenderness, and longing through simple gestures - Why repetitive mark making mirrors the circular nature of grief - How layering marks creates space for what needs to stay hidden - Gentle exercises for grounding when loss makes you feel untethered - Ways to carry continuing bonds forward through creative expression This workbook grew directly from Caroline's experience of covering gallery walls with instinctive marks, then painting over them with emulsion—each layer acknowledging grief while allowing life to continue. What remained beneath the surface never disappeared; it simply became integrated into the whole.
Perfect - Anyone grieving the loss of a spouse, partner, parent, child, or loved one - when talk therapy isn't enough - Those who don't identify as "creative" but need emotional expression - Grief counsellors and therapists looking for client resources - Anyone seeking a daily practice that honours grief without trying to fix it Grief is love with nowhere to go.
Let it flow onto the page. Your marks matter. Your grief matters. You matter. ---
Caroline Perkins is a contemporary artist working in abstract figurative forms. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and QEST Scholar, her work explores the body, memory, and emotional truth through mark making and layered expression.*
After losing her husband, contemporary artist Caroline Perkins stood frozen before a blank canvas, unable to paint. What she discovered instead changed the healing power of simple mark making—instinctive gestures made without plan, judgment, or artistic skill.
This isn't an art course.
This isn't traditional therapy. This is a 13-week journey of authentic emotional expression through marks on paper.
Mark Making Through Grief offers a gentle, grounded practice for anyone navigating loss. Each week focuses on a different landscape of grief—from the weight of sorrow to moments of unexpected hope, from rage beneath the surface to the tender act of carrying love forward.
What makes this workbook No artistic experience required – If you can hold a pencil, you can do this practice. Blank pages for your own mark making – Space to express what words cannot say.
Born from lived experience – Created by a Royal College of Art graduate and QEST Scholar who used this exact practice to process her own profound loss
Honours the complexity of grief – Acknowledges anger, darkness, fragility, and hope without rushing you to "heal" Simple materials – Works with pencils, crayons, charcoal, or anything you have at home
**13 compassionate weekly practices** – Each chapter includes guided exercises, reflection prompts, and permission to grieve authentically.
Inside you'll - How to make the first mark when you feel paralyzed by grief - Practices for expressing heaviness, rage, tenderness, and longing through simple gestures - Why repetitive mark making mirrors the circular nature of grief - How layering marks creates space for what needs to stay hidden - Gentle exercises for grounding when loss makes you feel untethered - Ways to carry continuing bonds forward through creative expression This workbook grew directly from Caroline's experience of covering gallery walls with instinctive marks, then painting over them with emulsion—each layer acknowledging grief while allowing life to continue. What remained beneath the surface never disappeared; it simply became integrated into the whole.
Perfect - Anyone grieving the loss of a spouse, partner, parent, child, or loved one - when talk therapy isn't enough - Those who don't identify as "creative" but need emotional expression - Grief counsellors and therapists looking for client resources - Anyone seeking a daily practice that honours grief without trying to fix it Grief is love with nowhere to go.
Let it flow onto the page. Your marks matter. Your grief matters. You matter. ---
Caroline Perkins is a contemporary artist working in abstract figurative forms. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and QEST Scholar, her work explores the body, memory, and emotional truth through mark making and layered expression.*
53 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 7, 2026
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