Healing

There's something about writing something down.  It becomes a permanent record of your thoughts.  It is physical evidence of a life lived, an opinion held, a difference made.  Don't we always ask people to "put it in writing" as a method for cementing a decision or agreement?  The written word reveals and is binding.  It makes the invisible visible.  

Lately I've been trying to write daily.  It is important to practice my craft even on days when the words won't come.  There are days like today when I truly feel like a writer and I pound away at my keyboard for hours.  There are days like several last week when I don't want to put the words on paper because I am experiencing emotions difficult to put into words.  But, regardless of how I'm feeling, I've been committed to write something every day.  

The last week of our summer institute we began our writing into the day with a prompt about scars.  I wrote instead about an open wound I was nursing.  That wound is still open but I am finding that writing about it has helped me to begin healing.  There's a way to puzzle through life with words and there's a power in sharing them out loud.  Life is difficult at times and sharing it with others or just with myself and a pen and paper helps ease the burden.  I can write my thoughts and emotions down and read them and have a conversation with myself about their validity.  I can make a plan for facing them or dismissing them.  By committing to writing daily I am constantly reminded of the power of the written word.  

I wrote a blog post last year about my aging father.  Those words came back to me today as we celebrated his 91st birthday.  The words are still true and helped me work through my feelings as I have watched my father become my grandfather.  I was comforted by re-reading them today.  I am tempted to say that having my parents for as long as I have makes me blessed beyond words but I really think I've been blessed with the words to document it all and to share my thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  Being able to write things down and share them is a gift.

There are times I write for myself and I puzzle through life.  There are times I write to share.  There are times I attempt to write to impress.  There are times that my words, like my tears, simply fall on the page.  We all write for various purposes and various audiences.  I hope that I can allow my students room to write in this way and can help them design a classroom where their students have freedom to write for many reasons in many ways.  

After all, writing has the potential to help heal and we need that more each day in our world.