After my son died, I filled journals with emotions, questions, woes----basically, lots of pain. Most of the pages were not ones I wished to share with anyone. Even though I felt I was losing my mind, fading from who I used to be, and finding the future scary, writing gave me comfort. Journaing brought clarity, and sometimes even solace. To help me on my rocky journey, I also devoured books about grief from memoirs to tomes on writing. It was in Louise DeSalvo's book that I met James Pennebaker.
Who is James? In a nutshell, he's a professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose studies have shown the value of expressive writing when dealing with turmoil. James' work piqued my interest.
In one six-week study, he had half his class write about trivial things and the other half write about wounds and the more sorrowful parts of life. At the end of the study, those who had written deeply were healthier. Pulse rates, heart rates, etc., were checked before and after the study to prove this.
James writes: “If keeping a secret about a trauma was unhealthy, it made sense that having people reveal the secret should improve health. As a social psychologist, I was concerned with having people talk about their secrets to another person because of the complicated social dynamics that would likely result. Consequently, I decided to have participants write about the most traumatic experience of their lives or, for those in a control condition, write about superficial topics.”
I knew writing worked, but because of James' studies, the value of writing as a tool for healing has become more "scientific" for me. The findings from his work are evidence I can use when I advocate for writing as a means of healing. It's not just me telling others writing works because it worked for me (and continues to do so), but there is research that validates how effective what I call "grief and loss writing" is.
My "After Daniel" journals were safe places to unleash all the feelings bottled in my heart. These tear-stained epistles now sit in my closet in a large canvas bag given to me by Sascha, a twice-bereaved mom, poet, and friend. These journals represent my journey of healing, and are one of the reasons, like James, I believe in the writing-health connection.
Writing through life's traumas is good therapy!
