The Power of Writing
Our lives are rich with stories, and those stories shape how we see ourselves and the world. Writing about key experiences through safe, guided exercises can help us heal old wounds and make sense of both the past and the present.
For decades, researchers have studied how writing our personal stories can restore psychological wellbeing and support lasting change. The benefits of writing for coping with, and understanding, depression, anxiety, stress and trauma are well documented.
Writing can shift our perceptions, help us find new meaning and allow us to restory our lives. It gives us permission to feel, remember, articulate and reclaim. Expressive writing also opens our hearts and minds to the present moment as it is, not as a postscript to the past or a prelude to the future.
Writing Can Reframe Our Lives
Writing has been part of my own healing, and of my work, for many years. It began over twenty years ago, when I turned to writing to help me through a difficult time. That experience led me to a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. During it I was drawn to research on writing as a therapeutic tool, especially the work of James Pennebaker, whose studies showed the power of expressive writing for people who have experienced trauma.
When I began encouraging clients to write as part of therapy, I saw how helpful and inspiring this kind of self-enquiry could be. Writing remains a regular part of my sessions today, often combined with mindfulness and self-compassion as a pathway to wellbeing.
In 2007 I started running writing workshops in Balmain, beginning with Restorying Our Lives. It was a six-week program introducing writing and mindfulness as therapeutic tools. Listening to what clients regularly brought to therapy, I saw the need for workshops on common themes: loss, grief, shame, low self-esteem and uncomfortable relationships with our bodies. Over the next 14 years I offered day workshops including Writing Through Shame, Writing About Loss, Written on the Body, Getting Out of the Man Box, and Journal to the Self® techniques based on the Journal to the Self Workbook®.
In 2014 I was accredited as a Journal to the Self Facilitator® by the Center for Journal Therapy in Colorado, USA.
I no longer run live workshops, but you can still write with me.
Free on YouTube: Restorying Our Lives – Picking Up the PenWatch on Youtube
During Covid I created this free 10-week program to introduce you to expressive writing. Through short exercises, it helps you reframe and restory your life. You can work through it at your own pace on my YouTube channel.