Feeling Stuck? Write.
In addition to helping you work through emotions, writing can also give you a way to visualize the life you want.
By Sara Kennedy
Who likes to write?”
Twenty-four faces look back at me as if I just asked them if they wanted to cut off a limb or crawl through a desert. A few brave hands go up.
For the last 17 years, I have started my Composition class this way. It’s a dangerous question. I know the odds are stacked against me. For the most part, my students don’t come to me liking to write.
Chances are, you don’t like to write either. But stay with me, because as you heal from a divorce or as you move through any other challenging time in your life, writing can be an important tool for healing and self-discovery. It can help you gain more clarity about the stories you tell yourself, about who you are and the events you have experienced. And it can help you create new stories about the life you want, too.
You don’t have to love writing or be good at it for it to help, and the research is clear that it does. I don’t necessarily love running — my muscles burn; I’m out of breath; it’s sweltering hot — but I do love the feeling I have when I am done. The sense of accomplishment. The clarity of mind. The ability…
