If you’ve read even a few of my posts, you’ve probably figured out that I find writing therapeutic. It can bring order to the swirling chaos that is my mind at times, and allows me to step back and let God reveal the hope – which I love sharing with YOU.
Excited to have recently joined the Defying Shadows team, and have my first post published this week:
Writing as Therapy
Purpose
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. During fourth grade, I had to win the golden pen! I experienced the thrill of seeing my words in print when I won honorable mention in a newspaper Christmas story contest, and received a $50 savings bond. And the pen! You’d think I would’ve stayed motivated. I mean, come on, what writer doesn’t want their words where others can read them? And to get paid in some way? Even better!
In my teens and early adulthood, my fiction was… um, self-indulgent. And bad. I’d start out with all these words and scenes and feelings. Angst, passion, conflict. But no resolution.
It may not have been worth reading, but it was worth writing… Read more at Defying Shadows.
It may not have been worth reading, but it was worth writing. #writingastherapy Click To Tweet
Unknowingly, I began using writing as therapy in my teens.
Power
Putting trauma in words can give us power over it. What seems monstrously overwhelming in our minds can be shoved into tiny letters on a page. Poet Bruce Wiegl, who fought in Vietnam as an eighteen-year-old kid, says that writing about trauma allows you to externalize it, control it, own it… Read more at Defying Shadows.
Putting trauma in words can give us power over it. #writingastherapy Click To Tweet
Perspective
Writing helps put things in perspective. I don’t know who first used the crow on the windowsill as a metaphor for our circumstances compared to God, but imagine that through your window you have a beautiful view of a majestic mountain. A crow lands on the sill. When you look at the bird, it dwarfs the mountain, and may hide it completely. Too often I let things obscure my view of my BIGGER-than-a-mountain God. I get overwhelmed… Read more at Defying Shadows.
Writing helps put things in perspective. #writingastherapy Click To Tweet
Check out my article about several types of therapeutic writing on Defying Shadows.
Memoir-writing is one of the types of Therapeutic Writing I discuss in this post. Here are a few published memoirs I recommend:
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