Writing As Therapy - Another Example

I found my way towards lucidity and a useful life through writing back in 2010. You can read my pieces under Pretrial Detention for that story. I maintain writing is a means of therapy and I will keep posting items buttressing my position - and that I hope they will encourage you to write.

The following comes from is from Atticus Books's “Writing is a Way in Which I Take Care of Myself”: An Interview With Chelsey Clammer:

KS: The essay “Carving Out a Community” reads as a kind of craft essay for community-building, both in theory and practice. How much of this book was written in the context of this community-building practice more generally? For you, what does that community look like now?

CC: For me, the book is looking at the ways in which we are “human” to one another—both in those terrible and beautiful ways. So, part of being human is forming a sense of community. I don’t know if the book was specifically written in the context of community building, but I do feel like the essays together create a statement about how we can help see each other through our traumas, how we can recognize harm done to us and the harm we do to others, and then how we can move through and beyond that. For me, community looks like people who are just in love with supporting other people while also taking care of themselves. I feel like writing is a way in which I take care of myself because it helps me to process everything I have experienced. Then, through sharing these stories, I hope that a sense of community can form from that. All we have in our lives are the stories that create who we are. Each person is a story, and as we share those stories in any form—whether that’s through a written narrative, music, art, whatever your chosen route of expression is—we start building a sense of community.

Writing does not mean publishing, writing means you get what's in your head out on paper. It is much easier to deal with there.

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