Writing can be the gateway to deeper levels of understanding yourself, to the parts of you that you've yet to discover.
Finding time to be with yourself can feel challenging at times. However, it should be an aspect of your life that you list in your top three priorities daily/weekly. Writing practices, irrespective of the format, can help you to see various sides of yourself; the vibrant parts, the parts that ache, the hollow parts and the parts of you that are yearning for more.
The Inner Explorer's Perspective
Writing has a way of expanding the landscape of your mind. New territory can be claimed as your own. For some people, writing takes them on a journey, through valleys and smooth lanes for others it can lead them down a carriageway of spiritual awakening and intimacy with God.
With each turn of the page, there is a new destination being added to your wellbeing GPS. You can write around it, under it, or in my personal opinion, you can write through it.
Wherever your pen takes you there is freedom. Freedom to choose the next stop-off point. Freedom to stop at a red light when things become overwhelming or intense. Freedom to speak your heart and mind without censorship. Freedom to show up on the page as yourself each and every time.
There are places within us we’ve never visited—rooms of potential, pockets of peace, and hidden chambers of strength. Writing becomes the lantern in those inner corridors, lighting what was once obscured.
- Prompt:
What part of me have I never truly explored, and what might I find if I gently opened that door?
- Affirmation:
I am safe to discover the depth and breadth of who I am becoming.
Scripture:
"The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart."
—Proverbs 20:27 (NKJV)
The Healer's Perspective
The beauty that can come from writing your way through life is that you are provide with ample opportunities to confront, process and ultimately self-soothe past wounds that either lay above or below the surface.
By creating a sustainable writing practice into your lifestyle you are able to have immediate access to active healing. The reason why I class it a s"active" is because healing is something that comes from doing. By creating a tapestry of words, sentences, paragraphs and prose pieces, you truly become the author of your healing journey.
Words can be bandages or balm. When we write with honesty, we allow the hidden wounds to breathe. It’s not just about healing what hurt us, but honouring the survival in our story.
- Prompt:
What pain have I carried in silence that is ready to be seen, softened, or surrendered through writing?
- Affirmation:
My healing is unfolding with every word I release in truth and love.
Scripture:
"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."
—Psalm 147:3 (NIV)
The Future Self's Perspective
With each journal I have written in, I have been introduced to versions of myself that didn't exist at the time of scribing them down onto the pages. It is interesting and empowering to see the progression of the life I have created for myself. In turn, it also takes me aback when I see the diversions of doubt that I would go on in particular seasons.
Being able to investigate, explore and heal areas of my life and my emotional, mental and spiritual identity has meant that each closing of one notebook created enough space to leap into a new one feeling more grounded and accepting of the new version I had come to be.
Your future self already knows how far you’ll come. She writes letters of courage back to you, urging you to keep going. Writing connects the present with the promise.
- Prompt:
What would my healed, whole, future self want me to know today?
- Affirmation:
Each word I write is a seed of who I am becoming.
- Scripture:
"Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it."
—Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)
There are layers to us, and enough pages in our journals to respond from a place of integral feeling, compassionate hindsight and fearless exploration.
I implore you to take then initiative to pick up your pen, open your journal, exhale and pour yourself out onto the page - with an effortless ease of wonder and understanding that this is the beginning of Day One of learning about you.
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