The Empowered Writer Path: Healing
While I love all the stages of the Empowered Writer Path — the healing stage is my specialization. I hesitate to call it my “favorite” stage because it is often the hardest and most intense of all the stages — but it’s where the most growth happens, in my opinion. And even though it’s hard, it can feel the most rewarding of the stages as well. So let’s dig into what the healing stage has to offer us.
What is the Healing stage?
I mention specializing in the healing stage because so much of the work I do in the world revolves around this stage… especially as it relates to writing. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that several of my writing workshops and programs are built at the intersection of healing and writing. But what does this stage actually look like?
Essentially, when we break down this stage, it looks like using the power of words to facilitate healing and growth. There are so many ways this can happen. I’ll list a few, but truly, the possibilities are endless.
Expressive Writing and Journaling — at its most basic, expressive writing is the act of putting down your feelings, thoughts, and connections of your past and present on the page. It’s a bit different from free-form writing or journaling in that the questions or prompts you’re working off are directive and guided.
Example: In expressive writing, you may start with the prompt: “What emotional upheaval am I dealing with right now? Have I dealt with this kind of upheaval in the past? How did I respond then? How am I responding differently now?”
Life Writing — This category encompasses forms of writing such as personal essays, vignettes, personal stories, etc.
Example: Have you ever heard of the wildly popular essay series called “Modern Love?” Their website states that it’s: a weekly column, a book, a podcast, and a television show about relationships, feelings, betrayals, and revelations. But it started as a yearly essay contest in which people submitted their stories about relationships. So many writers have stated that writing their essays for the contest helped them heal an aspect of their relationship through writing about it.
Memoirs — This category doesn’t need a lot of explanation, as I’m sure many of you are familiar with memoirs. It can be an incredibly healing experience to write down the story of your life to process and make sense of it. By its very nature, memoirs require that you re-examine and explore parts of your life to make sense in the present day.
Example: One of my all-time favorite memoirs is Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. In his memoir, he exemplifies what it means to take stock of a life lived thus far and how that has impacted the person he’s become. He doesn’t shy away from writing about some of the more difficult times in his life and how he processed those events positively and negatively. He also isn’t shy about telling his readers that he hasn’t figured everything out yet, but by writing about the lessons he’s learned, he’s healed many of those unanswered questions he had as a young man.
Fiction Writing — Obviously, this one belongs on the list as it’s my holy grail of the work I do in this world. I won’t spend a lot of time talking about the logistics of how writing fiction to heal works because I have many articles already written, and we go into depth on this in my workshop. What I will say here is this: make no mistake — writing fiction can be as healing and offer as much growth as the rest of the writing approaches listed in this article. I happen to believe it can be one of the most powerful ways to heal.
Example: I’m going to point you to this article I wrote about the healing powers of fiction writing.
Bibliotherapeutic Writing — This category is often thought of in the academic sense where people analyze or review books, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about taking the time to write about a book and how it has shaped you. Often, through this kind of writing, we find healing in someone else's words. We discover connections and patterns from our own lives wrapped up in the story or writing from others. This kind of writing is deeply personal and intimate and is always based on the writer’s interpretation of the book and the gifts they gleaned from it.
Example: I wrote this article after reading My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell and was stunned with how much healing I found in writing about the book and my thoughts surrounding the controversy and events that take place in it. I’ll also point you to this article which I compiled from a bunch of submissions from folx on stories/books that have helped them heal.
Storytime
It stands to reason that I’m so adamant about using writing to heal because I’ve experienced it for myself. And here’s the thing — oftentimes, I didn’t exactly know I was healing as I did the writing. As I’ve studied and researched using writing to heal, I now understand so deeply why those particular writing pieces were healing. I want to give you a little inside look into a few of these pieces and how I healed through them.
My Victim Impact Statement
I’ve talked about this piece of writing in other articles, but to briefly recap — during the last conviction hearing for my abuser, previous victims were told we would be able to read our victim impact statements. Turns out, we were blocked from doing so. (You can read my statement in this blog post) However, writing that impact statement provided me with so much healing that had been missing from life. In the statement, I write about how my abuse has affected my family and me. I wrote about the things that were taken from me due to the abuse. I wrote about how I’ve overcome obstacles in my life despite the abuse. Writing the things I hadn’t had a chance to say felt extremely cathartic.
How I Found the Write Path Essay
Back in 2014, I was invited to contribute to an anthology called How I Found the Write Path. It compiled letters from writers about how they came to writing and what it’s given to them. Writing this letter was such a healing moment for me because, in my letter, I write about how I didn’t have the belief in myself to be a writer until I crossed several different milestones in my life. I wrote to the child version of me who wanted so badly to be a writer and didn’t believe she could. Writing this letter showed me that I’ve had what it takes all along. I just didn’t have the belief in myself to go after my dreams. The anthology is free, and you can find it here.
Journal to the Self Certification© Program
One of my most unexpected sources of healing came from the material I was required to submit for my Journal to the Self Certification©. We were required to submit our expressive writing responses to some of the prompts we were taught to use throughout the program. It was during this experience that I understood the power of expressive writing. Simply by using focused and directed prompts, I found myself writing about past hurts that I had either ignored or pushed away. One particular prompt gut-punched me as I wrote about the loss of a dear friend. I hadn’t dealt with the emotions surrounding that experience, and writing about it forced me to address the grief and the emotions.
Until They Burn Novel
You knew I was going to add this one to the list, right? I’ve talked ad nauseam about my novel, Until They Burn, and how I’ve healed through writing it. After all, it is why I developed my Writing Fiction to Heal workshop and method. So I won’t bore you with recounting all the ways — I’ll just direct you to this blog post which outlines a lot of the ways I healed through writing this novel.
What are some ways to enter the Healing stage?
I’m going to reiterate here what I tell my clients and students:
The best way to start to heal through writing is to start where you are.
General Entry Points
Ask yourself:
What emotional upheaval am I facing right now?
What about this upheaval is bothering me most?
Can I identify what I need to work through this emotional upheaval?
What do I need for support or guidance right now?
What’s on my mind that I want to excavate further?
Why is this on my mind?
What about it, specifically, is on my mind?
Can I make any connections between this topic and something from my past?
There are a ton of guided journals/workbooks that could give you a jumping off point with prompts or questions to get you to dig deeper into that healing work.
My resources
My Writing Fiction to Heal workshop is at the top of my list. In this workshop, we intentionally set out to heal a past trauma or wound through the process of writing fiction to heal. Learn more about the workshop and the next launch.
My Journaling Workbook Bundles are compilations of 100+ prompts in each set. They are guided by themes and include a wide range of topics from self-introspection to creative projects and writing exercises. These are fantastic starting points for healing through writing. Volume One is free for my newsletter subscribers (and clocks in as the largest of the bundles — 200 pages!) so sign up to test it out. You can find all the other workbooks here.
My Write to Heal self-guided course is an introduction to expressive writing and is intentionally built to help you learn how to use writing in this way to heal.
Have a specific topic in mind but not sure how you want to approach healing from it? Consider having me build you a customized journaling workbook. These are tailored to fit your needs and goals and are a great way to get something built just for you.
The Write Minded Community was built entirely around the four stages of being an Empowered Writer — we take the principles and turn them into activities, discussion, and support. You can sign up for a free month trial to see if it fits what you’re looking for.
