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A Guidebook for Healing Through Writing
What words on the page can start to do for your soul and your mental health
I’ve been a compulsive journaler for as long as I can remember.
Looking back, I’m not sure what twelve-year-old me thought that she would find within those pages — but I think that she was onto something.
When I look back on my journal entries from when I was fifteen and sixteen years old, about halfway through high school, I can see that I was really starting to wrestle with some things.
“All the noise in my brain. I clamp it to the page so it will be still.”— Barbara Kingsolver
What was love? Friendship? What was my place in my family? Why was I feeling so insecure?
I was stumbling across the truth that the research robustly shows. We are changed by the things we experience. Life-altering events in our childhoods can lead to difficult bouts with depression and anxiety down the road. It can also exasperate issues like addiction and the gamut of unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Part of me thinks that my constant talking to myself was a little maladaptive, but the truth is that nobody in my life was ready to have those conversations yet. I…
