I wouldn’t put writing at the top of the list of things that generally spring to mind when thinking about wellness. Yet for me, reading and writing has been the biggest contributor to my wellbeing, and without my pen/paper/keyboard, I’m not sure what I’d be doing with myself.
In Melissa Febos’ book about her devotion to the practice of personal writing, she declares that ‘there is no pain in [her] life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.’ We all experience pain in this life. Suffering is a fundamental aspect of the human condition, and to different degrees, we will all confront it during our time on this planet. Like Febos, I became a writer because it helps me to survive. ‘Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative’ is just one of the texts that gives permission to writers (female, in particular) to express their inner worlds through their work. Stories can save lives; relating to a character in a book is one of the most accessible, therapeutic experiences that someone can have. Getting lost in a story, out of your head and into someone else’s, is the sober and underrated break from reality that is much needed for our mental wellbeing. Supposedly every man is an island, but when we read and write, are we ever truly alone?
Last year, and early in the ideation of ‘Write for Wellness’, the course that I co-founded to celebrate and encourage confessional writing and it’s therapeutic power, I read a book called ‘Sacred Stacks’ by the librarian and writer, Nancy Kalikow Maxwell. In it, Maxwell says “Like religious institutions, libraries perform a sacred function in the transmission of a more enduring culture, and provide individuals and the community with a sacred, secular space.” This is a quote that I have thought about tirelessly and it’s resonance with my belief in the power of books, reading and writing, is stronger than anything I’ve come across before. Using Maxwell’s language, I can get the closest to grasping an articulation of the sacred practice of writing.
Stories can be the greatest way to spread hope; whether that be reading, or writing them. I’m not a religious person, which is why Maxwell’s quote resonates particularly strongly. I don’t go to church and I don’t subscribe to any one religion, but I really do try and have some kind of faith in the universe, in writing. Bell hooks’ ‘Remembered Rapture’ is the closest thing to a spiritual text that I know. In the first chapter ‘Writing from the Darkness,’ hooks explains that it was a childhood feeling of uncertainty, displacement and estrangement that led her to writing, “This was the condition of my spirit when I decided to be a writer, to seek for that light in words.” She goes on to speak of her earliest experience of writing a diary, of her dismissal by her family that her urge to write would pass if she wrote words that were to be kept to herself. The point where I can put my hand on my heart and agree, is when hooks asserts that the female-act of diary writing is an essential stepping stone to carve out identity and self-actualisation at an early age. “This precious powerful sense of writing as a healing place where our souls can speak and unfold has been crucial to women’s development of a counter-hegemonic experience of creativity within patriarchal culture.” In hindsight, Hooks is recognising that diary writing is a place where young women are able to critically confront the self, without judgement or punishment. With foresight, I can confidently continue to preach to young writers the importance of a personal writing practice. Confession is a starting point of radical healing, and like Febos who credits her memoir-writing as the point where she understood the path and progression of her heroin addiction, Hooks credits this confessional writing as the crucial factor that allowed her to gain a voice and share her story for others experiencing similar feelings “the diary as mirror was a place where that part of myself I could not accept or love could be named, touched, and then destroyed. Such writing was release.”
There is science behind the connection between our minds and hands when we write. Julia Cameron, the author of ‘The Artist’s Way’ encourages the writing of three pages of longhand writing every morning before entering the day. I have done this religiously for the past two years and seen, as Cameron suggests, ‘the pathway to a strong and clear sense of self.’ I have used the pages to access some inner wisdom and care that I hadn’t realised was within me before.
I began writing as a private act. I remember the moment in 2009, when I began chronicling my panic. I can’t pinpoint what exactly triggered that specific panic, and I certainly can’t remember what called me to take to the page to sort it out, but in hindsight that moment was possibly one of the most important in my life so far. I can remember where I was sitting, what I was wearing, and the sensation that overcame me while I wrote down the feelings I was experiencing inside. Had I known that it was the writing that was causing those sensations, then my road to recovery mightn’t have been so long and arduous, and had I not put those words to paper, I might still be on that road 14 years later.
The healing that I’ve witnessed as a result of my reading and writing is profound. Truly a gift that I have continued to cherish and grow with my years. It has provided me with energy, inspiration, empathy and insight and for that I cannot think of a wellness tool that can compare.