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Doing a Rewrite on Your Very Bad Day
12 Prompts to Inspire Change from the Power of Your Own Words
We all have bad days. Anything can trigger it. A tough day at work, an argument with your spouse, or simply a day that began without coffee.
But, if you’ve experienced a life changing event like loss, divorce, or loss of a job, it knocks you to your knees. You thought it couldn’t happen to you, and then it did. Those are the moments that literally change the way you see life.
I had one of those life changing events several years ago. My vibrant, healthy, very much alive 16 year old son woke up with a fever and was dead the next morning. The sudden illness turned out to be a deadly form of bacterial meningitis. From life to death in 24 hours, that damn fast. I thought I could never survive.
Then a friend gave me an empty notebook, and said, “Write, just write.” The first blank page was so difficult. I could only put down one sentence, “My son died and my life will never be the same.”
The next day, I wrote a paragraph, and each day after that I found words erupted as the depth of my loss became more real. Writing became my well of sorrow, pouring tears of ink onto paper. And for a little while, I could let my emotions rest.
