Journaling from heartache

Journaling from heartache for clarity, freedom and hope


Do you journal? Or do you want to, but aren’t sure how to start? Perhaps your mind is muddled with all that life has thrown at you. The days are long, tedious, and your current heartache has brought you to a place of despair.

In all the murkiness, it’s hard to see the benefits that writing can have on your life. Yet, writing is a beautiful tool and used often, it can alleviate some of the confusion that plays in your mind and heart. By incorporating writing into your daily routine, you will see what a healthy life-sustaining activity it is. All you need is time, a pen and a journal.

First off, writing brings clarity. When you place a few lines about your situation or your emotions down on paper, you are then able to clarify what’s transpiring inside. While your thoughts might be a mass of uncertainty as you go about your day-to-day responsibilities, seeing your written words produces lucidity. From there you can ponder upon what is going on, how you feel and what you want to happen. Emotions can be bottled, but pouring them out onto paper unleashes them so that your journal can carry them for you. Sometimes reading your very words brings a better knowledge of what your real situation is about. Writing allows you to state your struggles black on white.

Writing produces freedom. If you can write with honesty (your mother or English teacher is not looking over your shoulder to censor what you want to say) and let your unfiltered words onto the page, there is freedom. I recall how freeing it was to set a time each day to write what I wanted. My four-year-old son had just died and there were days that putting one foot in front of the other was all I could do. Yet, my mind was a constant stage of emotions, anguish and yearning. Knowing that my journal greeted me at the end of each day was like meeting with an old friend. I wrote with abandonment, without editing and without worry that anyone would read my words. And yes, some of what I wrote was downright truthful and not nice, but it sure freed me.

Writing shares hope. As you see growth in your writing and in the situations you are dealing with, you can choose to let others know what you have learned. Much of our heartache is like bleeding on paper. Yet, in time, we might cultivate our thoughts and actually produce an article or poem to share. One person’s pain and what she has learned from her journal entries, can transform into an article about how to help someone else going through a divorce, death, illness or job loss. While journals are private, what we choose to share can profit the lives of others. Like leaves on a wet path, your journey can have portions of beauty others can glean from and claim as their own.

Let writing unveil its benefits to you as you embrace it as a tool for clarity, freedom and hope!

~ Alice J. Wisler would love for you to join her new wriitng course, Journey Through Life's Losses. Sign up today.