An idea for release and generating catharsis.
Almost 13 years ago, I began to blog weekly. The exercise originated as my first New Year’s Action. To write more frequently – writing being a longtime love – I chose a day to write every week.
My Pathwalking blog was the result of this. It will be 13 years since I’ve been writing these at the start of 2025. While not my first love – that being fiction, specifically sci-fi and fantasy – writing about seeking my path in life has been deeply empowering, hugely healing, and helped me find focus and more intention in my life.
This would evolve into blogging on different topics 3-6 days a week. In time, this led me back to my passion, and since 2014 I’ve published 14 novels (and will add 2 more before the end of 2024).
Over the years I’ve found that writing brings me peace and joy. Catharsis. If you’re not familiar with this, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, catharsis is:
1a: purification or purgation of the emotions (such as pity and fear) primarily through art
1b: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension
2: elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression
Today I realized that along these lines, writing to heal is something I’ve been doing for years.
Healing is complicated
The word “healing” usually brings to mind recovering from an injury. A broken leg, a bandaged wound, impressive bruising, and the like heal before your eyes. But there are far more invisible wounds from which people need to heal than those you see.
Lots of people have had rough childhoods. Everyone experiences heartache, loss, and similar negatives. These traumas need to be healed just as much as a broken bone. Mental, emotional, and spiritual health are equally important to your wellness and wellbeing as your physical health.
Healing on this level is utterly complicated. Part of that is due to stigmas surrounding mental health, depression, anxiety, and so on. Some of it comes from far more focus on physical health than the other three elements. However, holistic and total healing involves mental, emotional, spiritual, AND physical.
There are self-help books, videos, and like options for you to choose from. Some people benefit greatly from antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and similar drugs. Therapy is intent on healing the invisible wounds and traumas in your life.
You and I have the power, however, for self-healing on all levels. I practice meditation, mindfulness, and keeping myself open to the world around me. Another thing that I do is write to heal.
Writing to heal
One of the main reasons I have continued blogging weekly – and expanded it as far as 6 days a week at one point – is to heal from my own traumas and wounds.
Some of these are really, really, really old. Shit that went down in my childhood. Many are quite private. For that reason, there are two other writing to heal methods – outside my blogs – that I employ.
The first is journaling. This can be serious writing to heal, as I share things with myself in a book nobody but me will see. The catharsis comes from the release of pent-up tension, discomfort, sadness, and other negative and uncertain emotions.
There’s also power in looking back at old journals. One of mine from the mid to late 1990s is angsty and depressing AF. Frustration, sadness, and a general sense of being lost stare back at me from almost every page. No wonder I was such a mess back then.
The second is writing letters you never send. While it’s true that you alone are responsible for your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions – you don’t live in a vacuum. Interactions with other people can spark good, bad, and indifferent sensations. Sometimes people you love are the most infuriating, frustrating, and painful to live with.
One way I address this is by writing letters to say all the things I want to say to those people but won’t. Why? Because many would be spiteful, hurtful, and mean. While that might make me feel better to get that off my chest, the end result will be feeling bad for being an unkind asshole.
Writing to heal via letters you never send is akin to screaming into the void or punching a pillow. It creates the same sense of release.
Release by writing to heal
Mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds often require a release. Letting go, however, isn’t always easy.
This is not the same as forgiving. When someone does something utterly shitty to you, it will create a wound. Like a cut to your skin that goes untreated, a mental/emotional/spiritual wound will fester. It’ll become infected and do more harm than if you release it.
Society focuses so much on things outside of the self that you lose sight of the self. Hence, you build up more and more tension, pressure, and stress that must be released. Writing to heal is a means to that end because of the catharsis that comes from it.
Even if writing in general isn’t your thing, a page of “FUCK YOU” written over and over again can release tension in your head, heart, and soul.
For me, creating fiction is a form of writing to heal. I love to read and find inspiration from books, movies, and TV to create my own stories. The process of bringing a character to life on the page makes my soul sing and brings me joy.
Cheesy? Sure, but why not? Writing to heal is a real thing and a tool you can employ at will. In a world overflowing with fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty, any avenue you can take for the release of stress, tension, and anxiety is worthwhile. Writing to heal is empowering for anyone and everyone.
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this: How are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?
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