Category: writing therapy

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Henri Nouwen on writing…writing therapy! :)

Writing Reveals What is Alive in Us

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: “I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.” Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.”

Text excerpts taken from “You are the Beloved”
by Henri J.M. Nouwen
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Creative processing… :)

Hey everyone,

It is a disturbing time in many ways right now, but also there are positives coming out of this horrendous worldwide situation. I think on the whole people are appreciating their relationships more, and, for some, they are expressing things they haven’t before. It has made me realise a lot of things. Made me see certain relationships that are important to me, that I didn’t realise the significance of until they were taken away, for a brief time.

It is interesting. I feel a lot of things will change through this pandemic. In some ways, I hope and pray that we realise the essential things in life and how this short life should be lived to the full.

My brother died at age 37 and I was very close to him. After he died I realised that I didn’t want to waste my life doing things I was meant to do, instead of things I felt called to do, or had a passion for.

I have always known I was a writer since I was a young child. I fell in love with words from the moment I learnt to read and write them. I fell in love with story as well. I wrote and drew comic books and drew pictures, wrote stories and made pop up books. So for me, I knew following the death of my brother that I needed to write every day of my life .That is my purpose, I know that for certain. I must admit it took me a couple of years to really embrace this, and I enrolled in my masters to focus on writing. I had wanted to do that since I had graduated from my first degree. Doing a masters allowed me to focus on writing, which my life had only partially allowed me to do. Since then I have written and published my first novel, Where the Sun Rises which took me 3.5 years and thousands of hours of research to write, even travelling to the Israeli and Syrian border.

That was an amazing experience and it is a novel I really believe in. Check it out if you’re interested. 🙂 It is about the real life phenomenal women who fought in Syria.

Anyway, in the past months I have written 54,000 words of my new novel working title, Sarah Johns. It is about a foreign correspondent from Sydney who is in my first novel. Now that I have written 75% of the novel and I am at a certain point where I know what is going to happen but the details are not set in stone. This is how I prefer to write, I know how it will end but not all of the details. It helps me to be inspired to keep going and exploring the idea, characters and where it is going.

I am thankful in this COVID time that I have had the time to write a first draft of this novel, as often we don’t have the time do we? I am extremely grateful for this. I am grateful for my family and friends as well and for health. I hope you are all keeping safe and staying well! Love to you all.

Kind regards, Suz

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Reflections…

Hey guys, I just wanted to share this about finding my brother’s journals yesterday while I was moving house. So, my brother died 10 years ago. He was an alcoholic but also a loving, funny, sensitive, creative man. He was my closest brother, I spent all of my childhood with him. I loved him more than anything and I tried to help him be free from his addictions, for years and years. I learnt that you can’t help anyone from these things they have to want it themselves. You can’t help people to save themselves, they need a higher power and their own will.

But yesterday, I found these journals and I read these painful, painful writings he had done over the years. It was very difficult to read them as they expressed his deepest thoughts. I stopped reading them after a bit as it seemed wrong.

But I realised that my brother had discovered writing therapy and I am so grateful that he had that, that he could express his inner most thoughts and feelings and he didn’t hold back.

So many men need to do this. It is completely safe and it can help men to get rid of negative emotions.

I am so sick of people saying men are not emotional or as prone to feeling things like women. It is simply not true. This is possibly why men die by suicide three times more than women, they are told that men keep their emotion in and men don’t feel things. That is crap. So, the men (which is all men) who have normal emotions and feelings of isolation, loneliness, or depression they think they are not normal. They are.

One of my students, Josh Bontje died by suicide some years back. He was such a lovely person, and I could tell kind and sensitive. This has to stop. We have to encourage men and boys and teenager boys to open up and also I am hear to say, guys use writing therapy as well! My brother did and it got him through many years of feeling quite desperate. He could have chosen a better path but that is his story, and his life separate to this, but please, please, please use writing therapy, write down your deepest feelings, and what is happening. You can get rid of it. But if you write it down we know that it will be released from your unconscious.

I am sending a lot of love out to the young and older men who suffer from depression and anxiety, my brother did. And you know what, not even having a chronic condition but just the normal feelings of sadness and worry as well. My brother did not always express his feelings, sometimes he did with me but not all the time. I know he did with other people sometimes as well. But he used writing therapy and it is a wonderful, free tool you can use to be free from negative emotions whatever they are. 🙂

My book Freedom Writing talks about this, so if you are interested it is available on amazon and many other outlets.

But have a look on here as well, I have information about writing therapy.

Go well, stay well and remember we all have feelings and there’s nothing wrong with emotion! Kind regards, Suz

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