"Writing Is My Therapy"

Source: saralou writes/Used with permission

Journaling, or expressive writing, is one of the most commonly recommended coping strategies for just about every issue you can imagine. Dealing with stress? Grief? Going through a bad break up? Chances are, you’ll be encouraged to journal about it.

Why does journaling have such a strong fan club?

Research has shown that expressive writing for about 20 minutes can help people feel less anxious and depressed^₁. Some studies have even shown a boost for physical health, demonstrating that people who journal experience fewer symptoms of chronic health issues like arthritis and lower blood pressure^2,3.

Even with these potential benefits, journaling can be easy to avoid. After all, sitting down and reliving your feelings can be exhausting and maybe even painful.

As uncomfortable as it can be, journaling requires you to confront tough emotions you are dealing with. That confrontation may make you feel worse, initially — but research is pretty clear that expressing rather than suppressing emotions is more beneficial in the long-term⁴. And, journaling has the benefit of being messy and unedited, since you’re only writing for yourself. Journaling can include writing down thoughts and feelings for reflection, drawing pictures, or writing poetry. You can adapt how you journal to fit what helps you express yourself best.

Studies conducted on expressive writing with people with cancer have shown that it may help with coping^5,6. I recently had the opportunity to talk with writer Sara Machnik to learn more about how she has used writing to cope with a diagnosis of breast cancer at a young age. Writing has helped Sara process her experience and help other young women with cancer through her organization Bloom Club.

You’ve said that writing has been a huge outlet for you. I’m curious how you discovered that.

During chemotherapy I was having a difficult time — I feel extremely isolated in my thoughts. I just started writing down my thoughts kind of randomly and it came out as poetry. I started writing poetry and quickly it became a morning activity I did every day and I felt like it was a way of releasing my emotions.

Do you remember making that connection? That this helped you process and feel better?

I remember struggling a lot during chemo and I was on the waitlist for support services, and I just felt like I had to be the one to take care of myself somehow and I didn’t know how to properly do that. Writing seemed like something I could do from my bed even though I was feeling crappy, so writing was something I didn’t need a lot of effort or energy for. I would keep a journal next to my bed, wake up, and just write. After some time, it wasn’t like I was happy all of a sudden, but it felt like a weight off my shoulders — like a release. And that was why I continued doing it.

I love that distinction. It’s not something that made you happy. Instead of it being a “cure-all,” it's been a way to make things less challenging or to take some of the weight off.

So, tell me about the Bloom Club.

I went through treatment by myself because we were in the middle of a Covid wave. Having to go through it alone was challenging but also being the only young person at the cancer center was isolating in itself. I connected with another young woman who lived near me on Instagram and we had such a similar experience with our isolation that we wished there was some kind of connection or support we could have. Everything was targeted towards the older generation. So over lunch, we decided to create something ourselves.

I found that when I attended other support groups, we were going around the circle talking about cancer and everyone was crying. I realized that if we created something, I wanted it to be joy focused and I didn’t want to sit around in a circle crying because I’d been doing that for a year. I wanted to experience adventure and fun with people who have been through the same thing.

We hosted our first Bloom Club about a year ago. We have local socials seasonally and we try and go on adventures together where we can experience joy — we call ourselves a “joy focused club.”

Are you surprised by where your writing has taken you?

During treatment, every single day I told myself that once treatment was done, all I wanted was to never talk about cancer again. And so it has very much taken me by surprise that I feel such passion and joy around being involved in the cancer community which is something that for a year I told myself I wouldn’t do. Life can surprise you in that way. I thought what would help me is to move on, away from the cancer community, but I have found more depth in the cancer community.

What I love about that is that that would have been a perfectly okay way to move forward, too, if that’s where you landed.

It’s a balance. I think there’s a time and a place in your healing process where you need some space from the cancer community. As much as I feel purpose from this, it can also be heavy. It’s a balance that’s still ongoing, that I’m still figuring it out.

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I don’t think there’s a cure or something I found that is “oh I’m happy now”, it’s just realizing there are a lot of gaps in cancer care and that humans who experience cancer are the ones who need to fill those gaps. And I view it that writing is my therapy and creating Bloom Club is therapeutic for me. I know how much I struggled and how much I wished something like that existed for me. So getting to experience connecting with women in their need feeds my soul. I feel like it’s my purpose now.

That’s lovely — you giving, then receiving, in a really beautiful way.

***

I am grateful to Sara for sharing her experience of expressive writing for coping with cancer.

If you feel like you have too much crowding your mind, get out some paper and see where your thoughts take you. It may be more helpful than you think.