Journaling My Way Back Home
By GGS Guest Writer on Nov 08, 2009 with Comments 1
I never thought that I’d develop Multiple Sclerosis at age 40.
I never thought that it would give me the courage to leave a job that made me unhappy. And I certainly never thought that I could heal my chronic illness through journaling.
One March, based on a stellar performance review, I got approval to transfer from my company’s highly pressured customer service area to the really-where-I-wanted-to-be marketing department. But management kept delaying my transfer, telling me that I was needed in customer service “just a little while longer, just a little while longer, just a little while longer…”
At that point, I had been living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for seven or so years and was intimately familiar with my body’s workings. When it spoke, I listened. I knew I was beginning an exacerbation—that is, a flare-up of symptoms—and as an added distraction, my hormones were providing me an unending menstrual period. I needed less external stress. Rather than use my remaining energy to quarrel with management, I quit.
Now what was I going to do with my life? What could I do? Most importantly, what did I want to do? One day, driving into the post office parking lot, wondering what my next career move would be, I heard a voice say, “Well, you could always write.”
Hmmm, I thought. And I thought nothing more of it, until another MS flare-up kidnapped the right side of my body (my right arm just hung limp at my side) and I needed to teach myself how to write with my left-hand. Writing turned out to be what helped me heal my chronic illness. As with many instances in my life when I become clear on what I want, the universe had provided me what I needed.
Around that time, I happened to meet a hypnotherapist at a holiday party who introduced me to Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way,” a book about discovering and recovering one’s creativity. At first, I wasn’t sure its writing exercises were going to work because I felt very sure I had no creativity in my possession. But once again I deferred to my experienced left-brain who thought the book’s “Morning Pages” writing routine would help me achieve my southpaw writing goal. And so I began the drill.
The daily Morning Pages process entailed writing three handwritten pages of whatever. No thinking, no topic sentence, no outline, no spell and/or grammar checking. Just writing. So each early morning, after doing my stretching exercises so I could get out of bed, I headed downstairs to my dining room table. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. For weeks and weeks and weeks.
Within the first month, strange things started happening. Interesting words, phrases, sentences just appeared. Like the name of my eighth grade boyfriend, Bob Page, and my childhood amusement park, Kennywood. Soon I started hearing rhymes and writing poetic ditties for the first time ever. These “messages” prompted me to explore my childhood memorabilia box that my parents had given me. It contained my essays, report cards, letters, first diary, prize ribbons, all the way up to and including clippings from my first real job as a weekly newspaper editor. Making a new career out of writing suddenly didn’t seem so far off. But what to do next? I needed to develop a plan, so I contacted my pages for some guidance.
I modified my Morning Pages practice, making it more a dialogue and less a straight data dump. I asked my pages questions: “Where do these feelings of intense self-loathing come from?” “Who told me that?” “How did I ever think that?” and with lots more writing, I felt I was confronting the past and clearing away the clutter of negative thoughts and memories that were stuck in my body.
And it got nasty, too. As I was reconnecting with my inner writer, bizarre entries and voices showed up, like “Writing is so selfish,” “You have nothing to say that people would pay to read,” and “Writing is just for creative people.” I was scared, frustrated and confused. I couldn’t figure out why doing something I loved was so emotionally agonizing. I got my answers in Emily Hanlon’s book, “The Art of Fiction Writing,” where I learned about inner critics. Since I can deal with anything once I’ve identified it, I gave it a name – Mic (My Inner Critic.) Many Mic writing discussions later, I know myself better and have adjusted the way I manage myself and him.
Today, I invent different types of writing methods, like ten or twenty minute missives and gift myself with newfangled papers and pens. No matter what, I write something in my journal every day, especially when I don’t feel like it or whine about not having anything to say. I feel as if journaling has brought me back home, to the joyful and creative person I was before I let My Inner Critic call the shots.
My Journal is my best friend and its name is me. It has been, is, and will be my therapy to better explore and understand who lives in my body, restore my self-esteem and cure the zillions of dis-eases I’ve helped create.
Mari L. McCarthy is the owner of Create Write Now (www.CreateWriteNow.com) where she guides women in setting up and keeping a Journaling for the Health of It ™ Personal Journal Practice for curing their dis-eases.
Journaling My Way Back Home
I never thought that I’d develop Multiple Sclerosis at age 40. I never thought that it would give me the courage to leave a job that made me unhappy. And I certainly never thought that I could heal my chronic illness through journaling.
One March, based on a stellar performance review, I got approval to transfer from my company’s highly pressured customer service area to the really-where-I-wanted-to-be marketing department. But management kept delaying my transfer, telling me that I was needed in customer service “just a little while longer, just a little while longer, just a little while longer…”
At that point, I had been living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for seven or so years and was intimately familiar with my body’s workings. When it spoke, I listened. I knew I was beginning an exacerbation—that is, a flare-up of symptoms—and as an added distraction, my hormones were providing me an unending menstrual period. I needed less external stress. Rather than use my remaining energy to quarrel with management, I quit.
Now what was I going to do with my life? What could I do? Most importantly, what did I want to do? One day, driving into the post office parking lot, wondering what my next career move would be, I heard a voice say, “Well, you could always write.”
Hmmm, I thought. And I thought nothing more of it, until another MS flare-up kidnapped the right side of my body (my right arm just hung limp at my side) and I needed to teach myself how to write with my left-hand. Writing turned out to be what helped me heal my chronic illness. As with many instances in my life when I become clear on what I want, the universe had provided me what I needed.
Around that time, I happened to meet a hypnotherapist at a holiday party who introduced me to Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way,” a book about discovering and recovering one’s creativity. At first, I wasn’t sure its writing exercises were going to work because I felt very sure I had no creativity in my possession. But once again I deferred to my experienced left-brain who thought the book’s “Morning Pages” writing routine would help me achieve my southpaw writing goal. And so I began the drill.
The daily Morning Pages process entailed writing three handwritten pages of whatever. No thinking, no topic sentence, no outline, no spell and/or grammar checking. Just writing. So each early morning, after doing my stretching exercises so I could get out of bed, I headed downstairs to my dining room table. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. For weeks and weeks and weeks.
Within the first month, strange things started happening. Interesting words, phrases, sentences just appeared. Like the name of my eighth grade boyfriend, Bob Page, and my childhood amusement park, Kennywood. Soon I started hearing rhymes and writing poetic ditties for the first time ever. These “messages” prompted me to explore my childhood memorabilia box that my parents had given me. It contained my essays, report cards, letters, first diary, prize ribbons, all the way up to and including clippings from my first real job as a weekly newspaper editor. Making a new career out of writing suddenly didn’t seem so far off. But what to do next? I needed to develop a plan, so I contacted my pages for some guidance.
I modified my Morning Pages practice, making it more a dialogue and less a straight data dump. I asked my pages questions: “Where do these feelings of intense self-loathing come from?” “Who told me that?” “How did I ever think that?” and with lots more writing, I felt I was confronting the past and clearing away the clutter of negative thoughts and memories that were stuck in my body.
And it got nasty, too. As I was reconnecting with my inner writer, bizarre entries and voices showed up, like “Writing is so selfish,” “You have nothing to say that people would pay to read,” and “Writing is just for creative people.” I was scared, frustrated and confused. I couldn’t figure out why doing something I loved was so emotionally agonizing. I got my answers in Emily Hanlon’s book, “The Art of Fiction Writing,” where I learned about inner critics. Since I can deal with anything once I’ve identified it, I gave it a name – Mic (My Inner Critic.) Many Mic writing discussions later, I know myself better and have adjusted the way I manage myself and him.
Today, I invent different types of writing methods, like ten or twenty minute missives and gift myself with newfangled papers and pens. No matter what, I write something in my journal every day, especially when I don’t feel like it or whine about not having anything to say. I feel as if journaling has brought me back home, to the joyful and creative person I was before I let My Inner Critic call the shots.
My Journal is my best friend and its name is me. It has been, is, and will be my therapy to better explore and understand who lives in my body, restore my self-esteem and cure the zillions of dis-eases I’ve helped create.
Mari L. McCarthy is the owner of Create Write Now (www.CreateWriteNow.com) where she guides women in setting up and keeping a Journaling for the Health of It ™
Personal Journal Practice for curing their dis-eases.
Filed Under: Your Adventures
Wow, thank you for sharing your story. I haven’t kept a journal in years, but I’ve been thinking about it again. You’ve given me motivation to go buy one.