Rick Warren,best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life, said,“we shouldn’t hide mental illness.”
His youngest son, Matthew, a mental illness victim,committed suicide in 2013, having battled mental illness for years.
When Rick shared his tragedy, he said he received more than 10,000 letters of sympathy.
Sharing our pain lifts the load making our loss more tolerable.
I would like to talk about some of the benefits of writing.
Dr. Molly Harrower Gaines, psychiatrist and author of Therapy in Poetry wrote“Long before there were therapists there were poets and from timeimmemorial man has struggled to cope with his inevitable, inner turmoil.One way of so coping has been the ballad, the song, the poem.Once crystallized into words, all engulfing feelings become manageable, and once challenged into explicitness, the burden of the incommunicable becomes less heavy.”
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have quoted her when I hosted my own cable talk show and when I spoke to local groupsbecause her words helped me to grapple with my own emotions when I was literally going off the deep end during my nervous breakdown in 1981 after one too many moves.
There’s just something about writing your thoughts down that relieves pent up pain and then when you dare to send your words out for publication, being publishedlends dignity to your pain and the more you write you polish your skills and give others the courage to write because we will all undergo difficult periods in our life when we need to relieve our pain and reach out for support.
Had it not been forGod, for faith, and for the ability to draw others into my life, I can’t imagine what might have happened to me.
It’s just like theErma Bombeck told mein a letter “it’s not the money you make writing but knowing your words have touched people you’ve never met.”
That’s the jest pf why writing is important.
Writing not only bridges gaps but acts as a safety valve to keep us from going off the deep end.There’s nothing like writing to relieve emotional pressure that wells up inside.
Someone has said that “the key to happiness is having someone to love, something to do and something to hope for!”
What a magic mix
I am just so grateful for being me — for being able to cope in the midst of storms!
But for now I know that“We are angels flying with only one wing and we can only fly embracing each other.”
We can’t make it alone nor would we want to. Writing is one way of connecting — of giving others the courage to open up and pour out their own problems.
It’s just like George Eliot wrote “Oh, the inexpressible joy of feeling safe with another, being able to pour out all that’s in our heart, knowing the gentlest of hands will sift out the chaff and grain together and keep what is worth keeping and blow the rest away!
No matter what happens to us it can be used as a tool to help another struggling person if we only reach out.
Write. It’s good for your mental health.
Contact Sarah at [email protected]