When the Words are Locked Inside

Tragedy.  Seems like it is everywhere we turn these days.  There have been numerous posts on social media recently about students experiencing trauma and how teachers can support them.  There are posts about the trauma teachers experience while trying to support their students.  Stress levels are high.  I've posted previously about writing therapy and I've found it to be extremely helpful in my own life and in the life of my students past and present. However, there are days for all of us that the words just won't come.

I've found myself recently sitting down to write and feeling as if the words are locked up inside of me and I cannot find a way to put them down on paper.  My journal sits open on my lap full of blank pages most days.  Perhaps by writing down my pain, my fears, my anger and anguish, it makes it real and concrete.  Perhaps it's that my feelings are a jumbled mess and I cannot sift through them well enough to put them down on paper.  For whatever reasons, I sit and stare.  

What do we do as teachers when students just don't have the words?  How many times did I tell a student to write in their journal when they were experiencing trauma and loss?  Yet, here I am experiencing some of my own and I find I'm unable to write.  I was frustrated with the student that stared at the blank page and did not pick up their pencil.  I told them to just start writing and the words would come.  They were frustrated with me for prescribing writing as the cure, unable to face what words might come, likely afraid to be raw and real.  

I write today with realization and a caution.  If we prescribe writing as a medication for what ails a student's life we run the risk of making them feel frustrated and feel like a failure for not being able to produce something of value, or something at all.  Writing can be a source of therapy.  Writing can be a method for exploring jumbled feelings about the world around us.  Writing should never be the only method for experiencing these things.  By implying that it is we can cause some students to avoid writing and we remove its power.  

If I could go back in time and talk to that student sitting at their desk with their journal open to an empty page I would tell them that it's okay.  It's okay when the words seem locked inside.  It's okay when they don't come.  It's okay when we want to hold them inside a little longer and puzzle them out in our heads and hearts.  It's okay not to want to always write about it.  It's okay because they will come in time and until they do there are other ways to relieve stress and to experience loss and to just be sad or scared or angry.  Sometimes we just have to be.  It's okay to just be.

As for me, I'm going to close the empty journal and make some hot tea and just be.  The words will come in time.