You Have Every Right to Not Be Silenced: Writing Your Way to Healthy
Traumatic experiences often come in bundles and with the careful application of silencing by abusers. You have every right to speak up. Your silence is not required.
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There are a number of ways you can write about your trauma in order to release it and begin your recovery. You can share this writing or keep it private. Either way, the act of writing breaks the silence imposed upon you by those who'd like you to believe you should be ashamed or afraid of what you have survived.
Today, because we are between holidays (and because I am fighting my own silence), I want to share three tips for safely breaking your silence with writing.
1. Write to destroy.
This method is my favorite. I give myself a time frame (20-30 minutes) and write everything by hand. I don't worry about language, grammar or the tears that inevitably smear my words. I am writing to LET. IT. OUT. I am writing for my eyes only. When I'm done, I read my words, touch base with how I feel and burn that shit to the ground. As it burns, I let it go.
2. Write to communicate.
I shared a script I use for compassionately communicating my needs and boundaries. You can find it here. This type of writing works very well as a letter and offers the reader the opportunity to respond in kind. You certainly don't need a reader to use this script. When I'm keyed up and can't figure out why, I run through this script multiple times back-to-back to get to the true root of my agitation. Once there, I am often able to let go and move on without having talked to anyone but myself.
3. Write to recover.
It's easy to slide under the grand overwhelm of existence. Writing for recovery looks like maybe heading under the blankets with a flashlight, running through tips one and two above, and then reframing your experience to an ultimate neutral or positive. Look, we aren't always going to come away happy. The goal is to come away relieved. With the feeling that something has been released and we are on our way to the steps of healing. This type of writing requires believing that you deserve a different ending, and that you can give it to yourself either through a reframe or through writing your story the way it should have been. In doing so, you witness yourself in your traumatized moments and become the presence you needed.
Sometimes all we need is a witness.
Whatever path you choose, tell shame to go away. You deserve a happy ending. Write one.
Happy writing!
images from pixabay.com
Very great way of putting it. We write to destroy the demons in our heads and outside, we write to destroy the silence we and other people impose on us, we write to recover our life and sanity because the world is a mad, mad world.
Thank you for this wonderful post.
Thank you for this amazing comment. I'm glad we share in our belief in the transformative power of writing!
Nice work man.
Much appreciated.
Nice☺
Thank you!
Sage advice. It seems when we sit to write, we give focus and take control rather than continue to allow these painful memories to insert themselves randomly during other activities where they distract and compound the trauma. Giving them attention and acknowledging them can be difficult, but I agree that it's an important step into gaining victory through the pain they caused. Whether we burn them, share them, or lock them away for future reevaluation, they become under our control to some degree where we have captured them and can then study or destroy them as we choose to come out the other side with a strength that we wouldn't have had if they'd continued to just haunt us during our vulnerable moments. Wonderful truth and much appreciated.
Exactly! Writing is a way to reclaim personal power. Thank you so much for your thoughtful reading and response.