How Writing Has Healed My Life
Why I believe everyone should explore writing
21 September 2019, I was in a pretty miserable state.
A month prior I had lost my job. It was crushing my soul to work for someone again anyway, but I felt like I needed the financial security. In retrospect, getting fired was a giant gift, but at the time I couldn’t see it.
I had also just returned from what was meant to be a magical trip to the UK but had turned into lots of arguments with my boyfriend. Because I lost my job I had taken out another credit card to fund the trip, so I was stressed about money. And I wasn’t in a good headspace for socialising with all the people he wanted me to meet. I had sprained my ankle and could barely walk. All I really wanted to do was relax and explore the countryside. Plus I was only there for a week so it all felt so rushed and pointless. In hindsight I shouldn’t have gone, but I was more concerned with what everyone else would think if I didn’t, than what actually felt good to me.
I’d been living on the Sunshine Coast for 18 months and had barely made any friends. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t like our house, it was big and scary and I was alone a lot of the time while the boys worked away. I felt like we were too far away from anywhere I wanted to be. And public transport was so inconvenient so I barely went anywhere. I was lonely, miserable, and felt like the world was against me. This was just where I needed to be to propel me to change.
21 September 2019, I decided to start a journal.
I know it doesn’t sound like a big thing, but to me this was monumental. Throughout my life I’ve always loved to write, and if I wasn’t writing my head was stuck in a book. I had journals and diaries for everything. Most moments of my life have been captured in writing.
I was also the nerd in school and uni that actually enjoyed doing assignments. Especially essays. Writing was my outlet.
But somewhere along the way I stopped. After uni I became embedded in the corporate ladder climb. I was always tired, stressed, and eventually depressed. I lived for weekends. I discovered drinking and partying, I chased boys. I traded reading for watching tv. Instead of connecting with myself, I was constantly looking for ways to disconnect, to numb myself, to switch off.
When we moved to the Sunshine Coast I decided I didn’t want to party anymore. I didn’t like living with boys, I didn’t like the people they would bring home. This resulted in me becoming a bit reclusive. Whilst I had given up most other vices, food became my biggest emotional support. So I also gained a lot of weight. I pretty much kept to myself and just kept blaming everyone else around me for my misery.
21 September 2019, I decided enough was enough
I saw one of the coaches I look up to online promoting a resource with 111 journal prompts. And I felt like I really needed this. So I purchased the prompts and immediately started journalling again.
As well as following the daily journal prompts. I bought a separate gratitude journal and started recording things I was grateful for every single day. Once I stopped obsessing over all the negative aspects of my life, I realised I actually had so much to be thankful for.
I mean, helloooo, I live on the Sunshine Coast!
A few months later my life had totally turned around. Within a month we moved into a new house. One that I absolutely adore which is surrounded by beaches and cafes. Within two months I had a car, a super cute BMW convertible nonetheless. Within three months, I had started to look after myself better. I was eating well and walking daily and getting results.
8 December 2019, Deep down I was still struggling
By chance I just opened my journal up to this page so it felt important to share. Whilst I looked happier on the surface, inside I was still struggling. The prompt for this day was “What am I afraid people will see if they look too closely”.
The beginning of my response — “that I’m not really happy or confident. I try really hard to be, I know I have so much to be grateful for, and I know I need to stop living in the past, but this time of year is especially hard…”
I went on to talk about how I still felt so lonely, I missed the social aspects of this time of year. I wasn’t where I had expected I would be when I quit my corporate job 3 years prior. I didn’t like that we were about to have so many people staying at our house and my routine was going to be ruined.
I was working at a restaurant, which was great at first. But I didn’t love the night work and I was always too exhausted to actually work on my business on the side. I felt like I’d gone completely backwards.
It just goes to show, that even when people appear to have it together on the outside. Unless they let you in, you never truly know what’s going on inside.
I was also applying for BDM jobs because I thought having lots of money and a ‘prestigious’ role would make me feel good again. The pay levels on offer were never as good as what I used to earn at the bank though. And I got rejection after rejection so I was starting to feel pretty down about myself. In hindsight, these rejections were the universe reminding me this was NOT what I came here for.
I was going to interviews pretending I wanted these jobs, when all I really wanted was for my business to be successful again. To reclaim the sense of freedom I felt when I first my bank job.
11 April 2020, Investing in myself
It seems I wasn’t the only one desiring a reset button. Collectively people all over the world were done with feeling overworked and under-appreciated. And suddenly we were given a huge chance to gain back our time.
While most people were looking at lockdown as a time to binge watch Netflix and drink. I saw it as a huge opportunity to fully focus on my business again. I invested in a membership program with a coach I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time, and I fully went for my goal of launching my course.
Here’s another journal entry I just happened to open up on.
“My calling is to help women realise how special they are just as they are. They don’t need to change or conform, or feel less than…the reason I feel so strongly about this and so capable of helping others with this is because I’m finally overcoming all of this. I’m finally realising who I am, I’m loving who I am, and I’m inspired and in flow and I want more people to feel as amazing as I do.”
How huge is that shift in attitude!
How writing has healed my life
Those were just a few random excerpts that I happened to open up on, but it just goes to show how much can shift in a small space of time. And if you truly want to change, anything is possible.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s still been plenty of moments in the last few months where I’ve felt incredibly low again. Moments where I doubted myself and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Moments where I remembered things from my past that I wasn’t so proud of. Moments where I’ve felt deeply upset with what’s going on in the world. But I know all of this was part of my healing process. And I’m so grateful for these moments.
I realise now, pain is not something to shy away from. Feeling is important. Feeling is healing. And as much as I’ve realised the importance of shifting my feelings through my body with movement and sound. For me, writing is still one of the most healing things I can do.
Writing gives me a sense of comfort. When I write, especially in my journals, I’m not thinking. It’s all intuitive, free flowing. Writing is my creative outlet, it’s my connection to source, to life, to love. When I write I release. I also come up with most of my greatest ideas.
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
~ Louis L’Amour
After years of neglecting my writing, it feels so good to be surrendering to it again.
It’s been almost a year since I picked up that first journal and turned writing into a daily habit. At first it was a struggle, I would set a timer for 20 minutes and sometimes I would run out of things to write before the time was even up. Now, I free flow and I can sometimes write for hours.
Every entry contains part of my heart and soul. Every entry is me speaking my truth. In voicing my deepest thoughts on my private pages, I started to gain the confidence to share more of my thoughts publicly as well.
My social media content started to become far more powerful. And eventually it led me here to Medium. Before I struggled to find words. Now I have so many words and I don’t know how I’m ever going to get them out fast enough.
One day I want to write a book.
I have endless notes with half written posts. So many ideas for posts. So many things I want to say, stories of my own, things I’ve discovered, things I’ve researched, things I’ve experienced. Every day I come up with so many new ideas.
Writing has been the portal to unlocking my creativity.
To connecting back to my soul. To reinvigorating life into my body.
Writing has truly healed my life. And now, I can’t imagine a life without writing. Whether you think you can write or not, I believe everyone has a story worth sharing. And everyone can get better at writing through practice.
If you’re scared to share it with the public, start with journals like I did. You never know where it may lead you. All I know is, had I not taken up this practice again, I don’t know where I would be right now.
Write for yourself, and before you know it you could be writing for the world.
“You can make anything by writing.”
~ C.S. Lewis