Mari's Journaling Power Blog | Journaling Journeys

Writing In a Journal Saved Me

Throughout the past two decades, writing in a journal has saved me. At first, writing helped me release anxieties and express thoughts that I didn’t dare to say aloud while my thirteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, fought a rare pediatric bone cancer. After Elizabeth’s death just one year later, writing gave me a way to express my maelstrom of grief, my devastation, and my brokenness. 

In time, my daily writing practice helped me recall times when my daughter was younger and well, and this helped to soften the raw edges of my grief. My journal writing began to include writing poetry, which allowed me to give form to the shapeless void of my despair. This was one way that poetry helped me to process my range of feelings, and I frequently expressed those as metaphors with the natural world. This process allowed me to find moments of comfort, rest, and peace. Decades later, I reread my journal writings and then wrote a memoir of my sorrows and joys, my despair and hope, my grieving and healing. Without being able to write about my feelings and experiences, much of what I felt over the past twenty years would still be bottled up inside.