Post #18 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing and Healing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Finding Healing through Writing
Today’s article on writing and healing is by Brancy Laperle. She shares how writing, specifically journaling, helps her separate the pain in her life from herself.
As with all of our writing and healing blogs we hope this helps you look as ways that you can use writing to find healing in your life.
Have you found that writing is healing? If so, we invite you to send us your story of how writing has been a form of healing for you. Some, like Brandy, find healing through journaling. Perhaps you found healing while writing your memoir. Maybe you have found other forms of writing that created a sense of peace or insight that you’d like to share with us.
Just email between 200-600 words (or longer if you contact us first) to: Matilda (at) WomensMemoirs (dot) com. We are interested in publishing your thoughts on writing and healing on this website — either with your name or anonymously, your choice.
WRITING AND HEALING
Brandy Laperle
I am an aspiring writer currently residing in Nova Scotia (Porters Lake). I have struggled with mental health issues for the better part of my adult life. Last winter I suffered a completely debilitating breakdown to which I did not know if I would return with my sanity intact. I did return, thankfully.
Throughout my recovery process, which of course is ongoing, I wrote several journals. Writing helped to keep me connected to my experience (as I felt that I was floating out into the stratosphere at times) and it also helped me to understand much more clearly what exactly was happening to me.
As the process of recovery continued, I became more acutely aware that what I was going through was much more than just an isolated ‘mental health crisis;’ I was having a spiritual experience.
I’m grateful that I managed to document my experience. The actual process of writing, putting words onto paper, is extremely therapeutic whether you’ve experienced some serious trauma in your life or not. This process is a way of purging that which feels so toxic and confused by getting those thoughts and feeling out. I often felt a much clearer understanding of what I was feeling and thinking once I saw the words there in front of me on the page.
By allowing the contents of your inner landscape to materialize into words on a page you also enable yourself to start separating from the pain within…you no longer feel like ‘you’ are your pain, but that it is a separate and distinct part of your experience here on earth. If I could look at a description of what was happening inside on the paper outside then I could more clearly understand that the pain and I were not one but two separate entities.
While journalling I almost felt possessed, like something was taking over and just naturally pouring out of me, in a way that was both relieving and effortless. Simply being able to journal enables the journey from confusion into clarity and therefore into healing.
Writing has helped me to articulate that which was stuck or blocked deep within.
We invite you to leave Brandy a comment in the Comments section below. If you have a story to share, please send it to Matilda (at) WomensMemoirs (dot) com
