Writing for five years: a recap

October of 2015 was when I self-published my autobiographical novel "Clara Thinks to Us". I realised, years later, that I wrote it out of fear of death. I wanted to write about the part of my life that I haven't spoken to my children about. The boys were in their early teens then and Kyra was just a preschooler. If something would wipe me from their lives, like it had done to a dear friend recently (that was the trigger), they could have a reference book to go to for answers.

Probably I was starting my mid-life crisis then. The shock of my dear friend's sudden and early death certainly brought up many questions like "is this it?", "there is so much I'd like my children to know about my past but they are not interested", "my children only know me as the nurturer, the house manager and the mum. Will I ever get the chance to show them another side of me?".

That is why I started writing about me. I didn't expect it to be so cathartic and even therapeutical. In the process, I discovered hidden feelings in me that I didn't know were there. I started this blog because I wanted to share the wonderful healing power of writing.

At some point, I started writing anonymously and I wrote content for other blogs. I wrote for money and I wrote for therapy. I also wrote for pleasure.

Writing and networking

Putting ideas out there has brought me close to people who think alike. It has also kept some other at bay. It definitely made it clear who my true friends are. 

My life as an author

My beginnings as an author were very timid. I didn't consider my work was good enough for me to call myself an author or a writer. Writing in a second language and with an academic background in Science did not help my self-confidence. Then I started reading books by people somehow connected to me. And I found typos in their books that were published professionally. 

My current place

I have assumed that I am a writer because I write and I am an author because I published books. It is not about book sales, reviews or official presentations. I envision a TEDTalk one day soon. In the meantime, I keep writing and I keep connecting with people who can relate to my work. I heal from my traumas and those of my ancestors. Writing is a soothing balm in my life. 

Public projects

I started working with Nora on her blog Under Heat and Pressure a few months ago. It is about ancient feminine wisdom and related topics. I have recently published my latest book in Spanish, Jose y Juan, on printed format. 

Anonymous purpose

When there are disabilities or challenges that affect the lives of our loved ones, writing anonymously is the only way to be able to express how we really feel about things. In writing anonymously I am protecting my loved ones and growing as a person through situations that must remain private. I have over a thousand followers under my pen name and the community will keep growing because people can truly identify themselves in this particular universe of challenges.

Your Turn

Have you tried writing? You can write a letter to a loved one next time they hurt you. You can burn it if you don't want to send it.  Make sure you include a paragraph where you describe what you expected from them or how you would like things to be between you. You can write in your head, by thinking while you walk. Imagining that you are journaling is an excellent way to organise your ideas and come in touch with your emotions. You can write a letter to yourself as a child, to a dead parent or to your boss. Try it, it works.

Writing helps you unveil those secrets you weren't even aware of

We inherit trauma and family secrets. Yes, epigenetics is the science behind it all. Plus spiritual or holistic alternatives agree. Family constellations, shamans, healers and psychologists have revealed healing through "facing our demons". We can't remember the origin of some of our fears and traumas from a few years ago. Imagine having to deal with all the ancestors crap.

Well, unfortunately, family secrets from our ancestors come back as nightmares, phobias, obsessions, vocation and tendencies we cannot explain. We are not just born in a certain way, we are born into a particular story: the story of our family. Family constellation expert, Shavasti or John L Payne as an author, explains how people have been keeping secrets out of shame, guilt and fear since faced with the morality of religions.

Going back only one or two generations, cancer was as taboo as talking about sex was. Many women today had no idea that they were at risk of breast cancer because their mothers never told them what Aunty X had died of. And then there are all the cases in which one of the ten siblings killed someone or went to jail or the grandparent who ruined the family or the darker coloured grandmother. So many topics that have been kept as secrets from the descendants.

Every secret carries energy. The person who decides not to talk about it carries this energy constantly with them. If the person dies without sharing the secret, the energy is attached to the descendants. This can be explained in terms of activated genes through epigenetics. In the same way as memories are inherited, fear and attitudes can be passed on to the descendants too.

Writing is an excellent tool to release the energy of the secret. Even if you write under a pseudonym, once you hit "publish", the secret is released. It is healing for you and your descendants. Remember creative writing is a way to discover thoughts within you that you didn't even know were there. Some of them could be inherited family secrets.

The releasing of inherited secrets is another great reason to start writing today. Don't you think?

Writing anonymously: how to start a new community of followers when pain strikes

There are situations in life when it is better to write only for those who will not judge you or tell you what to do. There are challenges you face that require empathy and unconditional support. Not all your readers will be able to offer this if you disclose too much from the other parties involved.

Writing anonymously is a great way to drain anger, disappointment and publish that letter you will never send. It is in a way similar to writing about those feelings of pain and grief that involve people in your family or close friends and then destroying what you wrote. In publishing anonymously you have the advantage of the input from others who are going through the same challenges. It is also a way to feel that the way you deal with your suffering can help in the recovery of your readers.

How do you start a new community of readers 

A fantastic place to start the community of readers that will benefit from your writing is Twitter. Create a handle that is relevant to the challenge you are facing. For example @SingleDad or @DivorcedAndAngry. Search for a relevant hashtag and start following and retweeting from those whose content resonates with you.

It is impressive how much support you can find. There are communities for every life challenge you might be facing. #Autism #Unemployed #DivorceSucks #SingleParent

Some people will have a personal profile with their real names but they will follow you back if they see you are a real person behind a pen name and a saying profile photo.

Create a new blog

Creating a new blog here on Google's Blogger is as easy as 1,2,3. Just find an available domain name, related to your Twitter handle and start writing and sharing your articles on your anonymous Twitter account. I wouldn't call it fake, it is a pen name to protect your identity, aka your sanity and the reputation of those you love. 

Important: Make sure the template you choose for your anonymous blog doesn't reveal your Google profile. 

Happy Writing Anonymously to Heal!

V.

You REALLY attract what your fear: Write to overcome it

Three years after writing my autobiographical novel, the reason WHY I wrote the book has become clearer: I was afraid of dying so I killed myself in the novel, at 88.

Once I completed my first book, Clara Thinks to Us, I created this blog as a way to explain my incursion into authorship. Heal by Writing was a title right on target. I was indeed healing from an autoimmune condition, expressed as food intolerances. I was intolerant to so many kinds of food that I thought "If I don't heal, I will surely starve to death".

I am now free from food intolerances. I know I have ONE intolerance that will be impossible to overcome because it is determined by my genes, so I avoid it and I can manage all the other limitations to have a balanced and healthy diet. I am now sure I will not die in the short term from starvation due to intolerances.

You truly attract what you fear

I have recently experienced what I feared most: infidelity first hand. I am a child of an unfaithful spouse and I went through all the counselling that came with overcoming such an ordeal. I thought I had it all worked out. I had a plan B for when it happened. I had warned my spouse since before we committed that I wouldn't be able to overcome such betrayal. And we took measures to prevent it. But if you FEAR it you ATTRACT it. Law of Attraction, they call it. 

It hit me today when I thought of how I'm not afraid of having a car accident. I'm always placing myself in the percentage of the population who always manages to avoid clashes. And I haven't had an accident since someone bumped into me when I stopped suddenly at a red light in my birth country, Venezuela. I was 18. It's been over 30 years since then and I haven't had another car accident. 

I also placed myself in the minority who succeed in a developing, corrupted country like Venezuela. I placed myself in the minority who manages to marry a foreigner and never return to chaos. But I didn't place myself in the subset of the population where there are no infidelities. I just feared it would happen to me. So, once I discovered writing as a means to HEAL, I wrote different scenarios about my fear. 

Creating scenarios

• My best case scenario was my Novel of Hope in which infidelity did not happen. Alexis was faithful to Clara for over 27 years. 
• I created happy endings for friends whose marriages were breaking previous to my own infidelity experience. I wrote a series of books in Spanish, Mejor Sola. 
• I imagined what I would do in case the infidelity symptoms I was experiencing at home corresponded to the pathology. I wrote a book in my head.

Facing reality: facing your FEAR 

Once I had unequivocal proof that I was facing infidelity as a spouse, after I had experienced it as a child, I proceeded to implement Plan B. Everything happened very fast because I had already considered all the possible options in my head. 

Even though my fear had become a reality, I was prepared to face it. I knew I could find a hopeful outcome in ways I had imagined in my books. But I had not imagined the turn of events that could occur in the face of reality. 

Writing truly helped me face my fear and process it in an efficient way. I might even write a book about it one day. Do you think it could help you or others? Let me know in the comments.

Left home long ago? Seek connectedness in writing

Today’s concept of home can be blurry for some of us. In some cases, home is a place far away from your birth country. In today’s world, you can be displaced voluntarily or against your will from what you considered home until the time you decided to leave or were forced to do so.

It takes time to assume that you have been adopted into a new land. It involves learning from your new countrymen some of their customs and traditions. You do it out of respect and to be able to join in their celebrations. Meanwhile, your past rituals on anything from cooking to spending time with the extended family are left behind.

The novelty of your adoptive homeland at the beginning might fulfil your social and personal needs. As time passes by, though, it is very satisfactory to reconnect with your roots. One way in which you can achieve this is by remembering stories that reflect the happiness of your past. Make a list of what your birth country or previous homeland offered you. Writing a gratitude letter to the friends and relatives you left behind has a very powerful effect on your wellbeing.

Ripples from creative writing

I was very happy to learn that my first cousins - with whom I haven’t met in 15 years because I have refrained myself from visiting my birth country due to insecurity - were talking about my books during a family gathering. This was one of the many family gatherings I haven’t been able to attend due to being away from my previous home.

One of my first cousins I had not heard from in YEARS sent me a direct message commenting on how hooked she was with a book that I wrote three years ago. She said another one of my cousins had given her the book. She was pleasantly surprised and wanted to read more of my books. 

Three times a winner

It is the third time that a close member of my extended family connects with me again after years of being disconnected, after reading my first book. Somehow reading my autobiographical novel brought them close to me again or for the first time. Maybe the fact that I opened myself up in a book allowed them to discover the real me, and any misunderstanding was forgiven.

Your takeaway

If you are living away from home, I invite you to write about the happy moments you lived there. Share them with the people who are part of your story. And let their reading do the rest.

Editing is also cathartic: Let it out, then delete

Writing is cathartic without a doubt. Creative writing is a valuable tool for healing and self-help. Sometimes it is wise not to publish what you have written during those sessions in which you let it all out. Once the 15-20 minutes have passed you stop writing, then you read what you've written and lastly, you must decide what to do with it. You can throw it away, burn it, or change it.

Editing is necessary before publishing a hurtful piece or sending an angry email. Especially when it can cost you your job or the affection of someone you love. In spite of removing the aggressive part, that bit that felt so good releasing from within you as you wrote, once it's on the paper it remains there only if you decide on that option.

What else can you do? You can:

• change it into a more polite form
• delete it and leave only the expectation you wish to communicate
• disguise it by swapping genders of characters or changing the context

Either way, you will have taken it out of your mind and body. Writing your mind to an annoying colleague is cathartic and there is no need to let them know how you really feel about them. Have you tried this? 

The beauty of creating a story and family gatherings

Whether you like it or not, the end of year forces you to slow down and get in touch with your inner feelings. I managed to get some extra attention from my teen children and was able to express my ideas swiftly thanks to what has come out of my autobiographical novel.
No, they haven't read my book. I know they will when the time is right. Still, I was able to express my frustration on certain issues in an objective way and they listened.
Writing about your worries or frustrations helps eliminate the emotional charge that may shield your listeners from getting the real meaning of what you want to communicate.

Were you disappointed during a family gathering this end of year?

No worries. Write about it and heal. Or think about it as if you're telling the story to a third person. Here are two possible scenarios: 

1. You were aggravated by someone's behaviour and wish you would have said a few things but you refrained yourself out of politeness. In this case, write away or think away. Let it all out. No one has to read what you were thinking. But letting it out and putting it on paper or visualising yourself actually saying what you felt like saying, allows you to change your perspective and, therefore, your perception. 
2. You were disappointed in yourself for missing out on a golden opportunity to communicate something important to people who are important to you. If this was the case, show compassion towards yourself. Write the story the way you would have wanted it to unfold. Feel pride in yourself for having the courage and the sharpness to behave in an ideal manner. 

This exercise will prepare you for next time or it will give you the courage to program a meeting or send a message or call the person involved in a near future. 

Let me know if this resonates with you. I wish you all the best for 2018. Happy writing,

V.

Creating a story in your mind heals too

Do you wish you had the time to write but somehow never get round to it? You don't have to write down a story in order to create it.

The healing power of writing lays in the way it allows us to create stories based on our own awkwardnesses. Fiction allows you to create ANY story based on your own experience and make it take any turn you are too afraid to admit to yourself you wished it followed.

Creative writing is based on having a time and a space to put our ideas down on paper. When used as a therapeutical tool, you are allowed to destroy what you have written down, especially if you've let your anger loose. In the absence of time, you can still let your feelings out as you create the story in your mind, purposely.

I wouldn't suggest you harm a loved one in your story but I would definitely encourage you to stop them from doing or saying what hurts you. If it's too painful to write a short story about you and that person, get out of the story and write about characters A and B, inspired by this particular situation that feels too awkward to even think about. You will be surprised as to how much you can discover about your own feelings and about how you would feel if things were different.

In my own experience, I've felt the healing effect of realising that there was a lot of drama in my own mind. In some cases, the simple exposition of a situation can make you understand that what bothers you is no longer there or that you are a more mature person than when you felt aggravated the first time and you can let go of a resentment that only harms you.

Why don't you give it a try? Next time you take time to walk or you get stuck in traffic, don't allow your mind to wander. Take control of your own thoughts and deal with that issue that bothers you in a proactive way. Have that conversation you've been avoiding, create those circumstances that have been missing and let me know if you have felt the powerful healing effect of creating your own story.

Writing for divorcees

People going through a divorce were used as subjects in a research to analise the effects of writing on general health indicators such as blood pressure and heart rate.

A recent study by Bourassa and Allen (2017) looked at three groups of divorcees who were asked to write for 20 minutes on three occasions over a period of almost 8 months.

Alexis Blue of medicalexpress.com explains that there was a creative writing group, asked to write about their pain, a second group who were asked to write about their feelings within the framework of a narrative with a definite beginning, middle and end—essentially telling the story of the end of their marriage, and a control group, asked to write about their day-to-day activities without considering their feelings.

The results showed that there was no difference between the control group and the divorcees in the creative writing group, whereas the narrative writing group showed the best levels of blood pressure and the most variable heart rate, which are both a sign of good health.

The leading researcher Bourassa explains what makes narrative expressive writing good for the heart.

"To be able to create a story in a structured way—not just re-experience your emotions but make meaning out of them—allows you to process those feelings in a more physiologically adaptive way. The explicit instructions to create a narrative may provide a scaffolding for people who are going through this tough time," Bourassa said. "This structure can help people gain an understanding of their experience that allows them to move forward, rather than simply spinning and re-experiencing the same negative emotions over and over."

Read more at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-05-narrative-journaling-heart-health-post-divorce.html#jCp

In a previous study, five years earlier, asking divorcees to write about their feelings just hindered healing for them. They also looked at three groups, in the same research centre, the University of Arizona, and found that the health indicators from the groups that carried out either form of creative writing were worse off than those who wrote about mundane tasks. They explained it in terms of the repetitive effect of going over the reasons for the divorce and the painful feelings with creative writing, in people who were already keen to understand what was happening to them. For that group of almost 100 subjects, it turned out that writing about their daily activities took their mind off rumination over the causes of their marital separation. Read more at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-post-divorce-journaling-hinder.html

It is interesting how the results changed over a period of five years. This could be reflecting a more empathetic and open-minded world in which people do not need to ruminate on the causes of their divorce.

Would love to read your comments. Do you have experience with creative writing?

Reasons why you should write

Writing...

Is cathartic
Allows you to get in touch with your feelings. By describing your feelings you start to feel better.
Enables you to change your own perspective on a situation, past or current.
Makes it easy to visualise a better future or outcome.
Is as therapeutical as having a conversation with a good friend.
You can write things you want people to understand about you in the future.
People will pay to read what you wrote.
You'll get the chance to reach out to people you didn't expect.
Does not expire. What you write remains written.
Makes room in your mind for it to focus on solving other problems.
Is an inexpensive and rewarding hobby.
Helps introverts socialise by starting a conversation in writing.

It's all good!!

Let me know if you have something to add.

Cheers,

Verónica