A Life Hack for Finding Completion

Johanna Stamps gives light to the missing ingredient many of us have in our grief and delivers a simple tool to help us move forward immediately. 

When I visited my mentor’s rural retreat in May, they had a skillfully placed hide-a-key that looked like a simple part of their irrigation system. Unless you knew it was there, you would completely overlook it.  

The door of grief has a similar hidden key. It’s right there, in front of us, but we will overlook it — every time — if someone doesn’t tell us that it’s there. If you know it’s there, the door of grief is magically opened, and new paths are revealed. 

If you’ve experienced a major loss, then you probably know the heartbreaking thoughts like these:  

“I could have made them feel more comfortable in their final days.”  
“I wish I had said this one last thing.”  
“I wish I'd had the conversation with my boss earlier.”  
“I wish I had gotten counseling with my ex-husband before it got bad.”  

We wish that things could have been better. We wish that things would have done more. We wish that things would have been fixed. 

When completion doesn't seem attainable 

The difficulty is this: Our concept of grief is that completion is lost to us. 

For years, I’ve discussed grieving intentionally, but it’s only recently that I’ve discussed completion. Completion always sounded too far-fetched — more of an idea than a practical activity. Creating that space for intentionality after the loss of my marriage was groundbreaking for me. For a few hours every week, I listened to what my spirit needed at the time and used creativity to carry out an action.  

When I experienced it and began speaking about it, people asked me to replicate it for them, and in a very raw way, I did what I could. It was only years later, after all the training and study, that I understood what I was doing for myself.  

I was creating avenues of completion to my places of deepest pain and most horrific thoughts.  

Creating avenues of completion

In the last few years, I’ve discovered the work of John James and the Grief Recovery Method. For over 30 years, James had been practicing this concept of completion and drawing people forward in their grief using creativity and practicality. Diving into this research has added so much context for me.  

To illustrate this concept, however, I want to introduce an exercise that I experienced at an afternoon retreat in November. This is something you can use immediately, whether or not you are in the throes of grief.  

After a fast-paced morning, I came into the retreat with the normal mental checklist, ideas, and things I would like to do differently. After some calming exercises, the facilitator asked us to start a mind map. At the middle, we wrote, “Busy Mind Map.” The extensions were the thoughts currently on our minds.  

The next instruction was then to extend each arm of the map and write a prayer that corresponded with the thought. The experience was nothing short of magical. As each of the thoughts were transformed into a prayer, the thought was put to rest, and I could focus on the next tasks of the retreat.  

I had a new way of understanding prayer. Now, I couldn’t help but think about what else I could do to find the completion I so badly desired.  

Oh, and as an aside, if one of your thoughts is gratitude, it is both a complete thought and a prayer. 

For many, a full December is like a force of momentum pushing you into a busy January. Maybe this past Christmas wasn’t such a silent night. Perhaps you were with family, and things were said that echoed memories of your childhood. Maybe it was a tough time financially, and you didn’t get a chance to give in the way you have in the past. Maybe your year at work didn’t end on a high note, and you were wondering if your job was still going to be there when you go back in the new year.

If that’s you, I’ve included the Busy Mind Map diagram below. Do the exercise now, and see what is taking up that precious real estate in your mind and spirit.  

A quick note about formulating a prayer:

First, determine what your desire is concerning the thought and write a prayer based on the desire. Here’s an example:  

Thought: You didn’t complete that big task you wanted to do last year, so now you’ll never complete it.  

Prayer: Please help me to find peace in the midst of this project and bring new life to or lead me to what is most important.  

After you finish the Busy Mind Map, take a moment to relish the quiet in your mind. Before going to fill your mind with other thoughts and ideas, take the time to feel the stillness.  

This is an extremely simple activity that can be replicated daily if you want. Maybe it is leading you to think about what else you are carrying, perhaps deeper down, that needs to find an avenue of completion.  

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Copyright 2025 Johanna Stamps
Images: (top, center) Canva; (bottom) copyright 2025 Johanna Stamps, all rights reserved.