Writing for Healing: A Guide for Cultivating Personal Growth
Introduction
Journal writing is the main component used in this guide for the purpose of inner healing, developing writing projects, and helping to build projects of any sort. Writing is not uncommon as a method for any of these purposeds, particularly for the purpose of inner healing. There are studies that show people who use journal wriring as well as other tools while going through an internal healing process and/or a physical healing process has shown improvement in their mental and emotional states of being. You do not have to be a writer, poet, or an artist of any kind to do the exercises suggested in this guide.
This guide is divided into three parts. Each part is to be as journal writing experiences that can either remain in the jounral or be used as a template for a creative or business project.
A. Part One: Enter the Mind, the Heart, and the Soul
1A. Write Your Journey. Dedicate one journal to seven (7) major changes in your life or events/experiences that stand out to you. Write in as much detail as you can about each of these changes/experiences/events. This will take longer than one session in your journal. Do not confine yourself to certain amount of hours, days, or months. Yet, you should know that this could be the only journal wriritng exercise you do a long time. Do not be afraid to get as detailed as possible. This is more for you in the beginning anyway. The experiences can be joyful and/or sad. For instnace, you could highlight when you got your first home after living with your parents, first committed relationship, a time when you were being discriminated against, or if there are any experiences of abuse, or a birthday bash that you keep recalling. Choose seven of them, if you have seven. If not, you can just work with the number you have that comes to mind.
2A. Soul Searching. Connection to the soul is important for many people, perhaps, it is for you also. With this section, you can focus in on experiences with and/or study of religions and spirituality. Share what you can here too. Perhaps, your experiences haven't been pleasant, write about it. Perhaps, you've transitioned from one religion to another, write about this also. What about experiences in your life that don't have anything to do with a religion, but you would consider them spiritual, such as going from processed hair to natural hair or traveling somewhere that had a prfound efect on you. Spend time here as well. Dedicate one journal to this and plan on being there for awhile. Make your goal to fill up that journal on these topics.
3A. Mental and Emotional Patterns. Dedicate at least one journal to this experience. You will fill up the journal with journal writings that are streams of consciousness or whatever is in your head the moment you sit down. You can time this type of experience, but because we live in a world that is structured by time, you may be more concerned about time than what's coming out of it. Write whatever is there without judgment. Keept his private if you do not want anyone to see the possible crazy things that may come out of your head. The point with this type of writing exercise is to look at how you think and possibly why you think the way you do. So yes, you will revisit each journal entry before you move on to the new day of journal writing. In addition, you should include how you feel too. Is there a recurring pattern of feelings cropping up? If you allow yourself to write about it, when you revisit the entries or meditate upon what you've written, you'll notice the recurring patterns. What's the point? If there's a recurring negative pattern goingon mentally and emotionally, you can deal with it, now that you've identified it. \
B. Part Two: Enter the Realm of Inspiration
1B. Braincalming. You have great ideas! You speak them to a friend, to a co-worker, on the bus, or at the coffee shop. You get home and don't write them down. Most people call this brainstorming, yet, with this guide you are calming your brain of all those great ideas. Write them out in stream of consciousness style for this exercise. Categorize the braincalming sessions. "Ideas for Home", "Ideas for Artwork", "Ideas for My Business", etc.
2B. Clustering. This is a brainstorming exercise that can be used for braincalming as well. It is often taught in high school and college for gathering information for essays or research papers. Write one word in the middle of a page in your journal, circle it. Then, draw a small line in any direction, add a word that's related to it as far as that initial idea (remember, you're working with an idea here for a project or your personal grwoth), circle that word too. Go to the main circle or using the one you just created, draw another small line, write another word related to it as another idea or expansion of that idea, and circle it. Research this exercise on Google or MSN or any other search engine to see an image of what's being shared here. Type in "clustering ideas" or something to that effect.
3B. Imagery and Other Visions. Here for your journal and ideas, you can use pictures, artwork, and other images to help you express your ideas. Draw them out too using your writing journal or a drawing journal/sketchbook. Use your pictures and artwork you find as cutouts and tape or glue them on the pages of your journal. Ok, this sounds a lot like scrapbooking, but it's not so much a keepsake you're making here, as it is a portfolio of ideas to help with bigger projects as well as continuing the cultivation of inner healing/personal growth.
C. Part Three: Four Seasons of Creativity
1C. Spring. For your fiction writing needs, check out he piece on www.poetrysoup.com/me/tameko13 titled, "Creative Writing for Healing." It's a guide for writing short or long fiction, which is broken downin into four parts.
2C. Summer. For your memoir/autobiobiography writing needs, check out the piece by me in the articles on the PoetrySoup site. It's easily searched on Google. It's called "Writing for Healing: A Summer of Soul Journaling."
3C. Autumn. For your poetry writing needs, check out my article titled, "Practicing the Traditional Form and Use of Haiku Poetry" here on PoetrySoup.com. You can also check out this website, YouTube videos of poets, or a site called ShadowPoetry.com which features many styles of poetry. There are many books on writing poetry as well at local bookstores and online bookstores. Don't forget your local library!
4C. Winter. For your perosnal essay writing needs, check out the follwoing ideas. The basic essay is written in five parts for the beginner: Introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs (the bulk of the essay), and a conclusion paragraph. You do not have to confine yourself to just three body paragraphs, but it's a start for the noivice/beginner. Check out personal essays written by Nikki Giovanni, Gordon Parks, and Alice Walker just to name a few.
NOTE on perosnal essay writing: You can help your process using an outline: Introduction, keypoint for each body paragraph, and concusion/summary ideas. This helps with focus of the overall written piece.
In conclusion, be sure to research poets, such as, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Saul Williams, Black Ice, Bassey Ikpi, asha bandele, and many others. For fiction writing, research Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, Richard Wright, Pearl Cleage, Walter Moseley, RaShonda Tate Billingsly, and many others. Reseearch parables, including those that spiritual and African and African-American folktales as well. For writing songs, listen to your favorite singers/musicians and take note through active listening on how the song is written,also look up song lyrics on the Internet to see them typed out on the screen. There are many reerence materials available to you, especially heree on the Internet. Any of it can be used for the purpose of self-healing through journal writing and other types of writing for your creativity neeeds.
Recommended Books
1. This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Moseley
2. Walk Tall: Affirmaions for People of Color by Carleen Brice
3/ Sacred Woman: 94 Days of Journal Writing and Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Mind, Body, and Spirit by Queen Afua
4. <i>One Day My Soul Just Opened Up</i> and <i>Tapping the Power Within</i> by Iyanla Vanzant
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