“Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence.”
Writing is healing. You don’t need to set out to heal yourself; it happens naturally as you allow yourself to write your truth. In life story writing, you think of the events of your past and write them down. The next step is bringing to the surface the emotions and deep-seated feelings that cling to the events. When you allow yourself to feel like the five-year-old child who was punished time and again for not being perfect, you can now, from the vantage point and distance of time, understand and forgive your parents. Perhaps their own parents also punished them for not being model children. You can let go of the burden of carrying past hurts and move forward, lighter and freer.
This scenario is repeated over and over as you write your life story. All the events of your life will take on a new meaning as you bring them to light. Who you were yesterday is not who you are today, nor is it who you will be tomorrow. Allow yourself to “write through” your life and become fuller, deeper, and more accepting in the process. In doing so you need to remember James Birren’s quote from his book Guiding Autobiography Groups for Older Adults: “ … autobiography is not designed to be used as formal therapy since it is not actively directed toward the cure or amelioration of a disease or a social or emotional problem. It does, however, have therapeutic value as a by-product that occurs naturally.” He mentions the healing powers that can manifest through the reconciliation of long-standing issues. By looking back at a traumatic part of your life, you will see it from a different perspective. It suddenly may seem less important now.
Research shows that writing down your thoughts can be healing. James Pennebaker, in his book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, writes:
When people write about major upheavals, they begin to organize and understand them. Writing about the thoughts and feelings of traumas, then, forces individuals to bring together the many facets of overwhelmingly complicated events. Once people can distill complex experiences into more understandable packages, they can begin to move beyond the trauma.
This often happens in our life story classes. Students are first hesitant to share embarrassing personal stories. Invariably they find that their classmates are rarely shocked, and this places the shared information in a new light. Maybe I’m not alone in this, they think. They hear stories containing equal candor and depth from classmates and are able to listen with full acceptance. They nod along and think, It could have happened to me.
Pennebaker has found that the immune system becomes stronger through disclosure writing. “People who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding traumatic experiences evidenced heightened immune function compared with those who wrote about superficial topics.” You may also experience a catharsis after writing about some of your deepest memories.
As we write about difficult life events, we place trust in ourselves. For the first time we may be taking our trauma past the thinking stage and putting it into a more tangible form, i.e., words that we, and possibly others, can read. This can make us vulnerable.
In her book The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story, Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D. discusses the narrative arc of healing. She writes, “When we need to heal a wound that has been festering, we begin in the chaos of darkness, pain, grief, and anger.” She adds, “The arc of healing takes us from pain to awareness and then to a new energy of being who we really are.” This process is the psychological journey. Tristine Rainer, in her book Your Life as Story, recognizes the mind-body healing connection. “For although therapy is seen as a healing science and autobiography as a literary form, there have always been intimate links between psychotherapy and the restorative powers of personal narrative.” It is human nature to understand our place in the world, and to do this we must sometimes place ourselves in the trust of others by sharing our stories with them.
James Birren often uses the metaphor of a pothole when describing the tears that sometimes flow when a student shares a painful memory. We may think of a past event and not feel the pain until it has been written and read aloud. Then we feel as if we have slipped into a pothole.
There are psychological risks to writing your life story. The sudden resurgence of long-repressed memories may take you by surprise and rip open old wounds. You may have thought you had moved past that messy divorce or the foreclosure of your dream house. The love you had always wanted from your parents still haunts your psyche. These are topics that are difficult to understand and challenging to write about.
Sometimes we write down our traumatic thoughts and can’t let them go. We stew and simmer in our words and feelings. This is a reminder of our investment in that past, painful memory. If this happens to you, keep in mind that energy in any form, even negative, is reaffirmation of life. Healing happens when you examine your past and present feelings linked to a particular trauma and let them go. What happened? What did you think about it then? What do you think now? Has anything changed? Then ask: Where do I go from here? You can write yourself through the memories and then finally release them.
Never forget that while you are delving into your past, you are at the same time moving forward. You are healing. No matter what you decide to do, be honest with yourself. Don’t take yourself where you don’t want to go. You can become lost in reflection, with certain memories playing over and over in your mind. You can always stop and move on to another less traumatic life event, or you can decide to ask yourself questions about this one, the one you can’t seem to move past. Here are some points to help you when you become stuck.
Writing your personal life story can be therapeutic. It gives you the chance to revisit memories: the good ones that make your heart sing and the not-so-good ones that may still be painful.
We have all overcome tragedy in our lives. Some of us still struggle. Take a few moments and list five life challenges you have faced. Check off whether these have been resolved successfully.
Now choose one of those challenges, and write down just the facts of what happened. Be as specific as possible, and write down only the events of the memory. Read over what you have written, and write down every feeling that wells up inside you in response to this memory. Don’t censor your writing. Let the primal feelings of hurt, betrayal, and anger rise to the surface, and write them down. Once you have gone through this exercise, you may feel better. You have purged yourself of pent-up emotions.
It’s up to you to decide if any of these challenges will become part of your written life story. If they do, have the issues involved been resolved to your satisfaction? If not, is there anything more you can do? Remember that you are the author of your story, and it is up to you to decide what to keep and what to let go.