Writing as Healing

Writing can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories…By writing we can claim what we have lived and thus integrate it more fully into our journeys. Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others, too.

— Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, “Writing to Save the Day”

Writing—drawing, too—is a way to make sense of life. It covers the breadth of experience, from the darkest of darks to the brightest of brights. It is full-bodied, a rich, pungent wine.

Like wine, it can’t be written all at once. A sip. The swirl. Swallow or spit. Some words aren’t ready to be expressed. They require some more time in the dark. Pressed down to a moment of tranquility. Perhaps they’ll appear in a journal, perhaps not. They will not make to the published post or poem. They aren’t ready for the transmutation.

The words still offer healing. It’s good to express the abstract emotions of love, anger, sorrow, and frustration. Getting those words onto the page drives out the sentimentality that can overcome the ones shared with the public. Sickeningly sweet wine may be good in the privacy of one’s own home; it’s really not the best thing to serve the dinner guests.

They deserve the best wine, and that sometimes means it’s the final wine brought to the table. That’s fine. Good, even. It means the words are not the angry ones first felt after the loss of a relationship. They are words that have achieved their fullest expression with the stomping of feet and in the dark, private pages of a journal.

When they’re brought to the public, they are transformed into something life-giving, lifesaving. The people who drink them express wonder at the novelty and the memorable, almost indescribable flavor. They drink them to their very last drops.

Looking for a journal where you can record your thoughts? Check out Write Right’s Emergency Hope Kit on Amazon.