Healing through writing

[deborahjross]

I just finished reading Louise DeSalvo's wonderful book, Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (Beacon Press, 2000). Now, there are a lot of books about journaling as either therapy or spiritual development, or just plain self expression. This books tackles a much tougher issue: how writing can help us heal from major trauma, from unendurable abuse. Not just any free form writing, but a very specific way of honoring and integrating what happened and how we felt. Benefits are supported by research -- not only psychological but physical as well.

If this sounds all very well, consider this paragraph, which really went zing for me: DeSalvo writes about all the things she did not know, growing up, about what it means to be a writer:

I didn't know that if you want to write, you must follow your desire to write. And that your writing will help you unravel the knots in your heart. ... I didn't know that if you want to write and don't, because you don't feel worthy enough or able enough, not writing will eventually begin to erase who you are.

Erase who you are. Yes, it will, it can and it does. I sat there, in that shiver that says This Is The Absolute Truth.

I am not sure I am called to write in the particular way DeSalvo describes, but this I know. That unless I write the stories that are in my heart and unless I write them true, then I will slowly lose myself.

Comments

[manawolf.livejournal.com]

That is indeed spine-shivering.

By the way, Otana and I have agreed - could you hold on to the car funds for now? We don't want to commit to a new vehicle until we're certain we can afford the insurance. Maybe we could stick it in The Fund where it will gather interest instead of just sitting around?

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Sent you email on this. Not to worry, it's handled.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Unless we understand that our voice, like our life, is as meaningful and significant as anyone else's then we are diminished day by day by the self fulfilling prophesy that we have no worth.

'Writing' can mean many things, many different means of expression, but telling your life is important to each of our self esteem.

In our story(ies) do we find and understand ourselves.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Yes, we humans are a story-telling species, nurturing, connecting with and healing both ourselves and our listeners/readers.

So often, I don't know what I really feel until I say or write it, especially write it. We all speak in first draft, so I sometimes have to flop around and say a lot of things that aren't right in order to get to the thing that is right. Writing seems to compress that process, although even then, I can never escape the Doom of First Draft.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

'Life is a first draft'. Now that explains a lot.

Would reincarnation give us the chance to rewrite? How many lives would we need to be get it right?

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Depends on who you ask. Then, of course, you get to go on to bigger and juicier things.