The Healing Power of Writing
can you
see my smile this is the town
where i lost my smile and at that time
i thought i would never get it back
it was valentine’s day 2009
when i learned that the man i loved the
man
i had only just married was going to die
that day was a beautiful day the sun
shone bright
and the air was sweet with the fragrance
of frangipani
and the view outside the hospital was a
postcard
it was the sun that had caused the
melanoma
to form on my husband’s head
the sun that makes the world a happier
place
had brought darkness to our lives
that afternoon i did two things that
helped to save my own life
first i tipped the gin down the drain
and then i went out and i bought myself
a pocket-sized
journal the idea i wish
to share with you is that that journal
became
my life saver it was as if i had
my own personal therapist in my pocket
available to me 24 7 free of charge
and it can be your life saver too
because you don’t have to be able to
write well
or even to spell in order to benefit
from the healing power of writing
that afternoon when i instinctively
reached for my journal
i didn’t know that there exists a body
of research
that confirms the therapeutic benefits
of personal writing all i knew was that
as a teenager i had
drawn great comfort from writing a dial
diary
this time i was crossing a different
kind of threshold from
newly married to newly widowed and i had
no
idea what came next i was in free fall
and writing gave me a sense of being
able to hold on to the pieces of myself
as i was falling apart
and as all of our carefully made plans
for a life together
fell apart just like that you see
it was the eve of our adult gap year i
had long service leave from my academic
university position
our bags were packed and we were ready
to fly to south america in a week’s time
we never boarded the plane we never
danced the tango in buenos aires
and we never climbed machu picchu
instead
my husband johnny went on
the journey of no return and i
went on the most important journey of my
life
the inner journey the year was 2009
and smartphones were still in their
infancy so the only thing i had in my
pocket to distract me
was my little diary and in my
desperation to get away from my
pain i took up swimming and running
i turned into forrest gump i ran like my
life depended on it
and we’re all familiar with that feeling
of wanting to run
away from our emotions and of wanting to
numb
our pain in fact right now during the
global pandemic
guess what’s booming liquor stores and
netflix
and i’m sure some of you here just like
myself will have contributed to that
boom
in fact when i tipped the gin down the
drain i did actually keep a bottle of
red wine
because i couldn’t imagine doing this
without
numbing myself but at the same time i
wanted to be
present to the tsunami of emotions that
was coming
my way
the idea i want to share with you today
is that
writing by hand is
a way of slowing down so that you can
become
present to your own story as it is
unfolding
because in the end we cannot outrun
our emotions they will always eventually
catch up with us
writing is a way of bearing witness to
your own story
and the blank page is a safe space where
you can show up
authentically to speak your own
truth and that is life changing
we’re all narrative beings in fact our
identities
hinge on the stories we tell about
ourselves
think about it how do you introduce
yourself to a stranger
at a dinner party and how does that
differ from the way you would
introduce yourself to a new work
colleague
but sometimes we forget that we are in
charge
of the stories we tell about
ourselves and when things are really
difficult we tend to cling
to the victim narrative and we say poor
me
why me and life is so unfair
and yes life is unfair
a year later valentine’s day
2010 i was in townsville in a motel room
by myself
and i had been in that room every
evening for three weeks
as my husband slept in the hospital
and that evening i found out something
that broke
my heart into a thousand pieces
my husband johnny had been unfaithful to
me
since our wedding day
and if that hadn’t been enough three
short weeks
after the funeral i was asked to
evacuate my home
ahead of a category 5 cyclone
cyclone yasi the largest cyclone in
australia’s
living memory devastated mission beach
and suddenly an entire community was
grieving
and my inner devastation was mirrored
back at me
in the devastated landscape
and i knew that this was a very
dangerous moment
where i could easily go down on my own
journey of no return
i was standing in a flattened banana
field holding my phone into the breeze
trying to get connections that i could
call my mother on the other side of the
world
when it suddenly hit me that it was up
to me to write a new story for myself
and to bring the smile back to my face
you see my mother was born on the eve of
world war
ii in nazi germany and my grandparents
were
too poor to send her to school and my
mother has remained
trapped in that victim narrative all of
her life
and she’s told herself the story of how
she is the dumb one in the family
the one unworthy of an education
and it breaks my heart that she held
herself
back from stepping into her true
potential
i didn’t want to follow my mother’s
example
i wanted to be the hero of my own story
and writing showed me that the difficult
times
the moment you cross the threshold of no
return
the obstacles to be overcome
those are the important turning points
in our lives that shape the arc of
our personal stories
in order to become the hero of my own
story
i had to forgive my husband and so i
wrote him a letter
that he would never read but the act of
writing that letter
freed me from the story suddenly the
pain
the anger the hurt were on the pages
of my journal and my heart was becoming
free it took many letters because i had
to tell him
many times what a bastard he had been
before
i could finally tell him that i did
actually forgive him
and i also wrote emails to the women
he had been with and i did email the
final version
the one where i could tell them i
forgive you to these women and some of
them wrote back to me and one of them
thanked me for allowing her to find
closure
and then she wrote me a long email about
how she had suffered
when her own husband had been unfaithful
and so then i wrote back to her
consoling the poor thing and then she
wrote back to me
and i went hang on a minute this is not
really serving me
and so i stopped that conversation
and i started a conversation with my own
heart
telling myself that i was loved
self-compassion is one of the
superpowers
writing made me discover along
with gratitude on that dismal day when
we were told
that there was no cure for johnny’s
cancer i had instinctively
captured the sweet fragrance of
frangipani
and the sunshine outside the hospital in
my journal
i didn’t know then about the benefits of
a gratitude practice
but i had instinctively yearned to
include something
positive about that terrible day
writing a gratitude journal is as easy
as writing down
five things at the end of your day that
you’re grateful for
and there’s always something to be
grateful for
and it is what will put the smile back
on your face
but we are harsh storytellers of our own
stories we tend to dwell on the negative
the wrong turns taken the shattered
dreams
the missed opportunities and we allow
our inner editor to sabotage us into
thinking
that we’re no good the idea i want to
share with you
is that writing is a simple and very
effective way
to release those negative self
narratives that can hold us back
and it is a way of slowing down to your
own inner dialogue so that you can
change the script
and that you can change your own
narrative into a healthier
narrative because in the end it’s all
about
how we tell the story of our own lives
from the raw materials that life gives
us
for me it was grief that made me
discover the healing power of writing
but grief has many forms and i’m sure
many of you here will have experienced
the different shades of grief
your children leaving home or watching a
loved one go down the rabbit hole of
addiction or mental illness
or divorce that can be grief on steroids
or global pandemic grief
affects each and every one of us
but going through grief i learned that
our western culture
is grief adverse we are raised to
stoically
armor up and get through the difficult
times
without showing our emotions
but the truly brave are those who allow
themselves to feel their difficult
emotions
the truly courageous are those who allow
themselves to be vulnerable
those who hadn’t grieved told me to get
on with it already
maybe you should stop using his name
because you know it’s five months
already
but the thing is you don’t get over
grief you get through it
and my journal was there to listen to me
page after page journal after journal
until one day i was able to let go
of that story turn a page and write
a news story for myself and i didn’t
return to my academic
university position i now teach the
healing power of writing to people
all over the world and let me tell you
you don’t have to be feeling depressed
or miserable or have gone through a
traumatic life event
to benefit from the healing power of
writing
there’s great joy in connecting with
your creativity
and that moment when you discover your
own voice
on the page is empowering
it allows you to own your own story
because writing is a way of cultivating
an
ever deepening dialogue with yourself
and the most important relationship in
your life
is the one you have with yourself
so i invite you tomorrow why not start
all it takes is 10 minutes and i’m sure
some of you here will say
i don’t have 10 minutes i don’t even
have time for breakfast
so then think about it how often do you
mindlessly scroll through your instagram
feed the news feed
and just like that 10 minutes are gone
and we all do it we look at the lives of
others
we send emojis to strangers but how
often
do we stop to look at our own lives
and to send ourselves words of kindness
and so tomorrow before you do anything
else with your phone
use it as a timer set it for 10 minutes
and then just write without stopping to
edit
or to think just write like nobody’s
watching
and you’ll be surprised what can happen
when you allow to lead the pen to lead
the way
it’s a way to outsmart your inner editor
and it is a way to look at life
through the lens of wonder and or
and that is what will bring a new
perspective on your own life
and there are many ways to do that you
could start with a simple brain dump or
maybe
you want to write about your goals for
the day or maybe you use a writing
prompt
five things i did i saw this morning or
today i feel
or the smell of freshly brewed coffee
and the memories that evokes in me
and then just keep going and that’s when
the magic happens
trust me so i want to leave you
with these thoughts this thought today
a regular personal writing practice
is as beneficial to your well-being
as a daily walk or a regular yoga
practice
it will make you feel focused calm
and connected it’s a great antidote to
stress
and it is available to each and every
one of us
at the cost of pen and paper
you