Writing your thoughts down on the page begins the healing process.  While this communication with yourself and your Higher Power makes you vulnerable, it’s those written truths that are vital to recovery.

Elizabeth Gilbert is a master story teller and quite effective at explaining how someone can heal by writing.  In her best-selling book Eat, Pray,Love Gilbert makes visible her journal writings and explains how she uses these writings to defeat the goons of Depression and Loneliness.  Here’s a sample of her journal writing reprinted by permission of Viking Press:

“I am in trouble.  So what do I do for tonight is reach for my most private notebook, which I keep next to my bed in case I’m ever in emergency trouble.  I open it up. I find the first blank page.  I write: “I need your help.”  Then I wait.  After a little while, a response comes in my own hand writing: I’m right here. What can I do for you? ….And here recommences my strangest and most secretive conversation.  Here in this most private notebook, is where I talk to myself.   …. I have found that voice again in times of code –orange distress, and have learned that the best way for me to reach it is written conversation.”

While the movie version starring Julia Roberts was entertaining, there is a lot more to learn from reading her book, especially what she writes in order to manage her depression, which can be found in Chapter 18, pages 52-54.

 Credit line: From Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert, copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Gilbert. Used by permission of Viking Press, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC