HEALING THROUGH WRITING

Many famous writers suffered with mental illness, such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Earnest Hemingway. Hidden within many people who suffer with mental illness is the ability to write. You can use this ability to help you heal and reach recovery. Even if writing is not your strong point, you can still use writing as a process of healing by journaling or writing for yourself.

Writing about your struggles with mental illness and describing what you have gone through can release deep emotions. It can free your soul of pent up feelings and can help you rediscover yourself. The process of writing about my mental illness and the harassment I received in school released feelings I had been holding within me for many years. While I write I cry, I get angry, I grieve and then I let go of all those buried emotions.

I'm writing a memoir about the harassment I received in school and how I found love, comfort and acceptance at our family garage. Writing the scenes about the abuse at school has brought back many painful memories and is allowing me to find closure. I pour all of me into those memories, and in the process I open up forgotten pains. By opening up these emotions, I allow my past wounds to heal, buried emotions to be released and new strength to be found.

Writing my blog is not just to educate and to reach out to others who have mental illness, but it is also healing for me. It helps me deal with the struggles I have faced and I still face. I put all of me into each word of my blog. I spill out my heart and soul, and by doing that I find strength, release and most importantly, relief. My blog also reminds me of the things I need to do to stay within the light.

Our own writing can also show others how to help us heal. My blog posts educate my friends and they use my blog to help me when I am struggling with the symptoms of my illness. I tease my friends about using my blogs against me, but I am glad I have taught them how to be able to support me.

So, write to rediscover yourself, to release emotions, to heal past pains and to reach for the light. Even if you never share your writing with anyone else, it is still healing. If your struggling with your illness write to get your trapped feelings out and share them with someone who can assist you in finding help.

For those who write to share with the world, writing about your experiences also educates others and shows people with the same problems they are not alone. By putting my story into words I have found the light of recovery stronger and old wounds have healed and are still healing.