Reading poetry is a healing experience for so many who search for comfort in the pages of a book. So is listening to a song or looking at a piece of art. Art and literature have a huge impact on our lives because they spill pain and beauty out into forms that make us feel whole again.
But how about writing poetry? Maybe you’ve always been an avid reader of it but never considered writing it. Writing is not reserved for the few—it is a tool that is available to us all. It can be something you share with others or something that you keep for yourself. Either way, writing is an excellent source of self-care. Here’s how you get started.
Write what hurts
Some of my hardest days were made a little lighter with a pen and paper. There’s something so powerful about trying to make sense of the pain we experience. When we write it down, we give ourselves a chance to let the wound heal. We bleed the words onto the paper and in doing so, we get a chance to face the pain head-on.
Write what scares you
Writing gives us a safe space to be honest about our flaws and our fears. A blank page of paper is an opportunity to address the very things that terrify us about the world around us and the world within us. Write about the injustice, about the situations that seem unfair and unfinished. Write out your frustrations. Let it out. Let it flow freely from your pen. It doesn’t have to be pretty, and some days, it likely won’t be. But it will still release some of the monsters battling for your mind’s attention.
Write what heals you
Writing will look different every day. What you write will depend largely on what is on your heart on a certain day or what troubles your soul. And some days, that may involve writing about the things that heal us. We may write about the wise counsel of a friend or the much-needed comfort of a song. Healing can come in a myriad of small and surprising moments. If we write them down, they can help us remember. We can remember the days that the load on our hearts was a little lighter. We can be grateful for the glimmers of hope we find in the darkness. And sometimes, when we start looking for them in our daily lives, they are more likely to shine into our line of perspective.
Write what changes you
Transformation is a creative process as well as a personal journey. When we write about the good, the bad, the mundane, we start to create our story. Each chapter is unique and has something else to say and to teach us, but each page is important. Each page and each word show where you started and shows a glimpse of where you are going.
You can look back and see how circumstances change over time, but more importantly, how you’ve changed. You can see lessons being learned and hearts mending with each flip of the page.
Writing is some of the best self-care I have ever found because it requires me to be honest with myself. It gives me a medium to spill out all of my thoughts: the raw, the painful, the life-shattering, the painfully beautiful. The writing doesn’t have to be cohesive or polished. It can be a reflection of a moment in time spilled onto paper.
Whether you’re an avid writer or not, we are all the perfect authors for the stories that shape us. Crafting our stories and making sense of them is an act of self-care we can all benefit from, whether we are ready to share our words with the world or not. Happy writing!
