Writing for Healing : The Art of Journalling

There are many facets to my healing. I learned, about five years ago, that my health would never recover to its former glory and i mourned how flippant i had been about my health, imagining it would always carry me along, it would allow me to keep reaching burnout, recover, reach burnout, recover until retirement when I would then raise merry hell. I had repeatedly put the world beyond me first and listened to my own needs very rarely. I am not uncommon in this work ethic and I truly believe we learn the 'work til you drop' mentality as being the only true way to give your very best early on in life.

I still, on one level, believe it and still push myself too much sometimes and find myself trapped in a burn and bust cycle until my inner voice shouts loudly enough and stops me.

When my healing started, I concentrated very much on my body - physiotherapy, yoga, swimming and Qi Gong - all helpful and important in keeping my joints supple 'Keep oiling the joints' my physio would say.

I have over the years realised that my body, mind and spirit are very much intertwined and so, in order to be at my very best, I need to work on healing all three. I know I am not going to fully heal and that my health needs to be kept in its current state rather than becoming worse, but keeping myself buoyant, mindful, productive and creative will keep my mood positive, my purpose meaningful which in turn helps reduce tension, level out stress and blood pressure, reducing strain on my spine and also seems to dampen down my nerve twinges and migraines - all brought on with ME and Fibromyalgia.

It has taken a long time to get to this place which is not where I want to be, but better than where I was five, three, two years ago.

I'd like to share, this week, one thing that has helped me find balance: journalling. I joined a fabulous writing group last year while learning about the Gainsborough based group Stepping Stones, primarily a theatre group for adults with mental health issues.

Members live with a range of mental health challenges, from Bipolar Disorder to depression to anxiety and back, and Stepping Stone Theatre cover a myriad of issues shared along with strategies to improve mental health daily. Throughout Lockdown, they've run a twice weekly radio show to suport its members and I tune in whenever I can. The group I joined was their linked group Scribblers, which provides members of Stepping Stones with a platform for writing. Being a part of this writing group was enlightening for me. While helping me to improve my writing each session, I found that many of the exercises helped me to understand and tackle some of the issues I was facing. One thing that was encouraged was to write about the issues being encountered by ourselves, testimonial writing, sharing experiences good and bad as a pathway to healing.

At first, I wrote to report on such topics such as my health changes, the ways the NHS supported me through surgery, medications and many different therapies, and my own weekly issues, in the hope that someone reading it would either learn something or gain strength in knowing they were not alone. My weekly journalling became my weekly blog, often inspired through my writing group sessions.

Writing this blog has been part of my weekly routine, on and off, for about twelve years and is the adult version of the diaries I wrote as a child. As journalling is now part of my daily routine, it provides me with a range of topics I can draw on for my weekly blog. Scribblers' wise woman, Kate Hull-Rodgers is full of mantras and I particularly like this one which she drills in to us at the beginning of each session: 

Don't get it right, get it written.

This absolutely gives us the permission to explore, to just write and see what comes forth, some write poetry, some write recipes or instructions, others write prose while others create diary entries. My ever-growing collection of journals are packed away in a box under my bed - I'm not sure why yet but I certainly mean to keep them and hopefully they will prove to be useful again one day.

As is quite evident from the dates of my blog entries, my target to publish a weekly blog is not always met and often, this lowers my mood, makes me feel worthless and weak which has often taken me out of much of my writing for three or four weeks at a time. I'm learning to see these peaks and troughs as just part of my life which I know is helping with my healing. I acknowledge I'm not going to publish the blog that week and then try to let it go. This acceptance is still a work in progress. When I can feel positive about the little things I can do, I become more focused and I do write more quality content.

Journalling for wellness is practised all over the world and is a recognised positive practice for wellness. By writing for twenty minutes a day and recording the stream of ideas, thoughts and concerns that come in to your head, this over time becomes almost sacrosanct. I find it very soothing and sometimes unleashes nothing of any importance - it might be last night's dream or something silly that had happened that morning as part of the writing. But it also helps to have done a few little bits of what I call my housekeeping first - writing social media posts for my own and other groups I am part of which often translate in part in to my daily journalling focus. When I do write down concerns and my thoughts that may be on an inner loop, I can look at them objectively, almost as an observer and this helps me to understand them. Scribblers works with many different journalling techniques As I've learned more about the art of journalling, I've discovered there are actually a many different styles of journalling, prescribed by professionals to bring about different results. I'll explore more of these with you next week. Words have power and by writing, we can unlock all sorts of hidden treasures.

By my second coffee, I have put my calming music on, usually courtesy of Spotify; today I'm listening to a Peaceful Guitar playlist to counteract the buzz of my morning morphine. Yes, we're trying morphine again. Watch this space. Other times it might be something like Carly Simon or Brahms to balance my mood - on my crackling record player or one of my many aging CDs. 

And then I write. The earlier I can start my journalling each day, the more productive I seem to become. I'm learning, through an eclectic variety of therapies and advice channels (more to follow) that I must carve this time out for myself every day. Without it, I flounder. Self care is essential for us all and sadly it's taken me almost half my life to work that out. But enough of on that. Onwards and upwards!

My blog post this week of course has to be dedicated to the wonderful Kate Hull-Rodgers who with incredible selflessness, supports many people through her Scribblers groups and Stepping Stones Radio that she runs with her husband Bill. She has taught me, most definitely, that: