Healing Letters

Every other Saturday I attend a workshop with a friend of mine. When she started the first one around Easter she called it “Healing Through Journaling”. I saw the announcement on Facebook and almost scrolled past it. It caught my eye but instantly I thought to myself “I never go to those things.”

But then I asked myself, “WHY don’t you ever go to those things?” It was a good question and one I needed to answer. The truth was that usually, Dan wants my time. I thought he would feel it a frivolous waste of time. For HIM it might have been.

This is my year for ME though. This is the year I said I would start to do things for me. I want to find out who I am. This is to be the year I change my life and start to take care of me and do what’s best for me. So I went to the first of the three workshops. I brought a sister and some of her daughters. The following week I went again and the week after that too.

I was hooked. The concepts that Eva was presenting were not new ones to me. I have been writing in journals and diaries my whole life. She was encouraging using writing to bring out the pains and secrets hidden deep within us. Writing can be very healing physically, mentally and emotionally.

Writing Has Always Been A Part Of My Life

I’ve never NOT written. It’s been a part of my life since I learned how to form letters. I’m not even really sure when I began to write in journals and diaries and used them to unload my most painful emotions. The earliest memory I have is receiving a little red diary with a key for Christmas one year. I think I was in 8th grade in school so I would have been about 12 or 13 years old at the time.  I didn’t know it could be a tool for healing my emotional woes.

It seems I don’t write as much when times are good. Maybe I should focus on that more. But I know when times are bad, when there’s something hard on my mind or my heart, I have to write. I have to get it out somehow and writing is the safest place to do it.

Writing Letters To Heal Emotions

A couple of weeks ago in the workshop, she asked me to write letters to a couple people she knew were giving me a hard time emotionally. Of course, these letters would never be sent out or seen by anyone else. They were a way to get my emotions to the surface and out for healing. Surprisingly I jumped right in and discovered there was a lot to say. There’s STILL a lot to say that I need to express. I’ll have to write a couple more letters.

But there was an unexpected revelation for me when I wrote one of those letters. It seems that in the back of my mind, somewhere down deep inside, I was blaming this person for helping to cause the death of my beloved father. I hadn’t realized my mind had gone that way. It came out in the letter as I wrote some other things.

Why Write The Letters

And that is the purpose of writing these letters. There are things we want to say to people but we know it can cause more drama and heartache to say them aloud or to that person. Yet, we are entitled to our feelings no matter what they are. We still need to find a way to release these feelings whether they are good or bad. Keeping emotions inside can cause serious health issues physically as well as mentally and emotionally.

This week Eva asked me to write a letter to myself. I haven’t started it yet. Where do I start? I don’t know how to start. But maybe that makes this the most important letter of all, because the harder it is to write the letter, the more healing may come from that letter.

Who should YOU write a letter to?