Feel, Heal and Deal: Writing for Life

By Kiesa Kay

I have been writing for healing all my life. In kindergarten, as the school year ended, my little heart clenched because the safe space of school would be disappearing for the summer. My teacher gave each of us a notebook, and she told us, “This summer, and any time, you can sit down under a tree and write some letters.”

I did exactly that, and soon the letters became words, and the words became sentences, and a huge flow of feeling began. When I wrote, I could control the narrative. When I wrote, I could tell myself, in my own words, the things that had felt too scary when they happened to me. Writing meant someday, somewhere, somebody might read what I had to say, and it made me feel so much less afraid, and so much less alone. Maybe nobody in my everyday life would listen or hear me, but through writing, I could tell myself, and sometimes I would imagine a grown-up me reading what I’d written, too.

When my cousins came by, I played tag and went swimming, played canasta and dived into the lake. We often had dance parties, with fresh fish and potato chips, and in between the times both horrific and happy, I sat down under a tree and wrote some letters. Many years have passed since then, and still, I keep writing, dancing, singing, painting and coloring my way through the horrors of life and the horrendous memories. I pick up my fiddle and play. In school, band and choir and plays saved me; in life, I found comfort in creative self-expression every day. Many people have asked me how I survived seventeen years of torture in childhood with such a full and happy heart, generous and loving and compassionate. I didn’t grow cold and stern, or mean and ugly, or bitterly judgmental. Through creative expression, my heart and soul stayed alive. In those times when my body was trapped and hurting, my mind had the memory of the scent of sweet grass and the taste of tart mulberries. The beauty of the lake balanced out the bruises on my body.

In 1989, I wrote my master’s thesis and subtitled it Using Creativity as a Healing Tool. Now, more than forty years later, I’m teaching workshops online on Transforming Trauma through Creative Self-Expression. Learning to play really works.

People don’t always survive what has happened to me. Many of us end up shattered, ready to give up, ready to stop saving our own lives over and over and over again. We get so tired, with the well of love inside us so dry, and we don’t know where to turn. If we have a creative outlet – painting, writing, dancing, making music – we have something to do at 4 a.m. when the memories wake up and start slinging darts at our hearts. I keep a notebook and pen next to my bed for those 4 a.m. moments, and I pick up that pen and keep writing, keep writing, until the fears fade into daylight.

One friend fiddles; another friend dances. A third friend paints, and another one sculpts. Find a way to create something, and you will find a way to survive.

When the Inner Critic begins to chide and chastise, simply shrug and remember who you really need to be: Alive. Creating. Whole. Free. We aren’t creating for an audience, though we might get one. We aren’t creating for pay, though we might get that, too. We’re creating for the pure joy and love of bringing our own bright, shining truth into an often-difficult world. When we find each other, we find hope and strength for our own survival, and it’s the creative, living voice inside us that we reinforce and strengthen every time we take the time to listen to our own stories, and start to share our truths. It isn’t important to be good at something; it’s important to do it. Now, you will know I really mean that if ever you hear me playing my fiddle; a noisier squawking you never heard than me on the fiddle, but every time I pick up that instrument and start playing, a little piece of my soul starts seaming together and soaring. I tell myself: Don’t be sore. Start to soar! Somehow, that helps.

So far I’ve helped nine people take their stories from conception to completion, and I believe that every voice heard, every story spoken, every life brought to light will be one more step toward building compassion and healing here. It isn’t only for you that your truth needs written, spoken, danced, felt and heard; it’s for every survivor who needs to know that it’s possible to endure and reach that thriving time. The problem, of course, appears to be that there’s no end goal, where suddenly pain never happens again. The spiral staircase of recovery means revisiting the pain, but the more alive and creative you feel, the less often you visit that pain, and the less often that pain visits you. Plus, having a way of expressing feelings takes those feelings out of spinning and spinning around in our heads. The spiral staircase of healing continues, and the spinning in confusion stops as the tangles unwind.

Here is the link to the first of my online workshops, and they happen every third Thursday at 3 p.m. EST. Transforming Trauma: The Healing Art of Writing - Survivor Space  and here again is the link for the next live stream Transforming Trauma: Baby Steps - Beginning Your Memoir - Survivor Space. I want to share all the tools in my toolbox. I want to know how you’re doing. My email is healingartofwriting@gmail.com.