The Healing Power of Writing- Guest Blog
Lynn Jaffee, a free-lance writer of health issues and well-being, suddenly became a writer about the grave illness of her 27-year-old son, Andrew. At every turning point, journal writing helped Lynn immeasurably on her journey.
Here is Lynn’s story: It’s strange; I only began keeping a journal for a week or two before my 27-year-old son Andrew got sick. Looking back now, it seems to me as if the universe was saying that this is a time in my life that I would need to remember, and I should write it down. It was the first of many coincidences that occurred during the illness and after the tragic death of Andrew.
The truth is that even though I’m a free-lance writer, I’m not much of a journal keeper. I started writing things down in what would become my journal because I was taking a month-long solo road trip from Minnesota to explore the Southwest. My first entries were lists of the places I wanted to be sure to visit, food to bring, and camping items that I didn’t want to forget. Once I actually packed up my car and began to drive, I wrote about my hours on the road, the places I hiked, and a list of birds I spotted along the way.
And then on Day 9 of my road trip, I wrote in my journal, “Up at 5 am. Drove from Alamosa to Boulder. Andrew is at the hospital. Can’t process this now.” It was another coincidence that just as he was getting sick, I was in Colorado, where Andrew lived. I could get to him fairly quickly and I had nowhere I needed to be for several weeks. But that day, Day 9 of my road trip actually became Day 1 of a much bigger, life-altering journey, which was my son’s terminal cancer diagnosis and his death fifteen months later.
Looking back, I realize that my journal morphed into a place to download my feelings and frustrations. I wasn’t regular with my entries, but when I needed to get something out, I wrote it down. Some days I screamed on paper; other days I looked for strength. It helped me get through the shock and sadness of being faced with the fact that my husband and I were losing our son. However, over the months of caring for Andrew, I noticed that the tone of my entries changed. There was still some screaming on paper, to be sure, but there were also descriptions of small miracles, kind acts from friends and strangers, and astonishing things that happened during that devastating time. My journal became a forum for pep talks, hope, and ways to cope. I wrote to get myself through.
After Andrew’s death, I stopped writing for a while, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps the overwhelming work of grief was so great that I didn’t have the energy for much else. I also remember my brain being scrambled for months on end. I couldn’t concentrate, I forgot where I was going some days and I was completely preoccupied all the time. That was my brain on early grief, and there was just no room for writing.
About a year after Andrew’s death, I turned to journaling for a second time. In a conversation with Andrew during the last weeks of his life, we talked about his writing. He had a degree in creative writing and was a good storyteller. However, he hadn’t really found his true voice until he got sick. During his illness and pain and loss, Andrew’s writing became profound and honest. He bared his soul eloquently in a way that brought strangers to tears.
During this particular conversation with Andrew, I repeated what others had said, and what I knew to be true: his words should be published. I knew it would be up to me to give his voice a format after he was gone, but I was struggling with what that format should be. I realize now that his words needed to ripen and that I had to experience his passing and my overwhelming grief before I could even read his words again. But I ultimately realized that I needed to tell my story along with his.
So, I turned back to my journals and started writing once more. I wrote Andrew letters, I wrote about my pain, and I even wrote about times that made me laugh. I tried to make sense of the last months of his life and how to make sense of a life without him in it. Did writing help? In a way it did, because once something was down on paper, I could let it go just a little bit. Knowing that what I had been feeling existed somewhere else meant I didn’t have to hold onto it quite so tightly.
I also began writing what would become the book I promised Andrew I would write. I wove entries from Andrew’s diaries and updates with my own stories. I went back through my journals, fought through the illegible handwriting of Andrew’s journals, and I began to write the story. I realized that if I was going to write about the journey of losing Andrew, I had to go deep into what was and still is supremely painful. In order to do so, I wrote in chunks. I’d work through a story, sometimes sobbing out loud and stopping several times to blow my nose. When a piece felt done, I walked away for days or months. But I came back—not so much like a moth to a flame, but as a thing promised that needed to be completed. Reading what I had written made me cry all over again. When I felt done, I literally set aside what would become Love Pain for the better part of a year. I simply needed to let it rest, and I needed to step away.
Months later, I came back and found that I could finally look at what I had written with a critical eye. I picked it apart, and then an editor picked it apart again. When Love Pain was finally complete, when it was published, I felt lighter. I had done what I told Andrew I would do. But doing so was also therapeutic for me. Counterintuitively, moving toward the pain and describing it in writing actually helped me process all that had happened. In the aftermath of Andrew’s death, I suffered from post-traumatic stress, in which certain places, songs, or memories would trigger overwhelming sadness and anxiety. However, by voluntarily dissecting those difficult days and moments in my writing, I’m not so afraid to go to that place of such sorrow in my head. I can now choose to go there and wrap myself in the sadness, or I can tiptoe by those memories and visit that sorrow in detail at another time.
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Lynn Jaffee is a free-lance writer, acupuncturist and author. After decades of writing about health and well-being, Lynn turned her voice to writing about loss and coping with grief following the cancer diagnosis and death of her adult son, Andrew. Her latest book is a collection of stories called Love Pain: Stories of Loss and Survival can be found here.