9d • Writing Sparks
A Tool for Healing
Hi writers!
I wanted to share a chapter from my book Surrender Your Weapons: Writing to Heal, that explores a few areas in which I've needed healing and a few ways in which I've tried to heal.
Spoiler Alert: writing wins!
Has writing been a tool in your healing? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below!
🔱 A Tool for Healing 🔱
I am a recovering addict and a codependent emotional eater who has struggled to manage money. I’m a perfectionist with low self-esteem and impossibly high standards. I’ve had tumors, diseases, surgeries, and miscarriages. Several of my body parts have been sent to pathology. I have experienced loss, grief, heartbreak, anxiety, depression, existential angst, and the dark night of the soul. I’ve hated God and I’ve been sure God hated me. Healing, for me, is a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual full time job. One I’ll never really be able to quit.
I have tried and used 12-step recovery meetings, therapy, prayer, meditation, yoga, Rohun, past life regression, hypnosis, EMDR, mandalas, A Course in Miracles, church, synagogue, satsong, acupuncture, reiki, goddess dance, and witchcraft to try to heal my original and ancient wounds.
All of these have helped and a few have even stuck, but the most consistent healing force in my life has been writing. Expressive writing. Free writing. Journaling. Keeping a diary. Whatever you want to call it. Writing has saved my life.
Much has been written about the research-based positive healing impact writing has on the immune system, as well as the mental, emotional, and physical health of the writer. I’m thrilled scientists have evidence and numbers, but anyone who has used writing in their life consistently already knows. Writing heals.
Of course, I have fought the writing process, too. Hard. To avoid writing I’ve taken up professional scrapbooking, stained glass making, basket weaving, crochet, addictions, bad jobs, and bad habits.
And still, writing has been the healing modality of my life that I’ve returned to again and again. Writing can be a weapon if we use it against ourselves, but it is also a powerful medicine, an antidote to whatever our poison may be.
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A Tool for Healing
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