Writing as self-care: How to honor heartache and still reach for hope

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I stopped journaling a few years back. Didn’t tell a single soul. Just tucked my journal into a drawer and turned my back like I wasn’t bothered. Like I wasn’t burdened. Couldn’t tell you the exact day it happened. Couldn’t pin down the date, even if I tried. I just know it was a gradual fading away. A gentle letting go, like a candle extinguished—burning, blazing, blown. Then gone.

It can be easier to look away from our despair than to face it head on. It can be easier to stay stuck in survival mode, pushing past and pressing on instead of slowing down and letting it all sink in: the stress, the sorrow, the feelings, the fear. But the heart can only take so many hits before it breaks.

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We hustle and grind our way through grief.  

Brushing our cheeks with bright blush and painting our lips in bold shades that hide the heaviness harbored in our hearts. We wake to new mornings only to hit the ground running, shackled with the weight of all our yesterdays. We carry trauma like a companion, wear our worries like a garment and stuff our feelings until they are layers deep and out of reach.

But the heart can only take so many hits before it breaks. And, as far as I’m concerned, this year has already come in swinging. We are, collectively, carrying a conglomeration of grief and fear. Wondering how to heal after global devastations, how to hold onto hope when dreams derail, how to pay bills in the midst financial uncertainty, how to be and breathe through all our apprehensions of tomorrow.

Find the courage to recognize, record, and release.  

Sometime around the start of this year, I finally went looking for my journal. It was a quiet morning, the kind that unfolds in the calm that comes after chaos. It was early, and the sky was dark and dense with a fog that was slowly lifting. The dissipating fog was a prophetic visual for what could become of my burdens, should I find the courage to recognize, record, and release them.

That morning, I picked up my journal and pen and began to write, once again. As ink flowed from my fountain pen, I poured out my heart on the page. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t an essay or an email, nor was it an article for all the wide world to read and see. It was from me and for me. It was about me and to me. It was a moment of returning, like a homecoming, of sorts.

But, I cannot claim this gift as mine alone. I am not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last, to find solace in the practice of peering within by way of words. Truly, the pen is a weapon to be wielded for and by all.

Maybe you consider yourself a writer. Maybe you don’t.
Maybe it’s grief that you’re carrying. Maybe it’s guilt.
Maybe you dread the year ahead. Maybe you dread the day ahead.
Maybe you don’t know how to hold the joy together with the sorrow.
Maybe you’re heartbroken or haunted by news headlines.
Maybe you can’t find your faith anymore.
Maybe you’re swallowed up in sickness.
Maybe loss outweighs the love.

It just might be time to pick up the pen again.  

However you find your heart today, believe this to be true: It might be time to stop hiding, to face your fears and name the nuances that you know. It might be time to release the resentment, to fight against the fog, to write your way through last year’s wounds. Whatever the weight, whatever the burden, whatever the reason for your resistance, now is the time to reach for your journal, to type self-care memos in the app on your phone, or to write out empowering affirmations.

Let us even join the earnest echo of our ancestors who, by writing words, left legacies that honored heartache while still reaching for hope. Who, for the sake of surviving, wrote as a way to grapple with their painful present while also grasping for healing, hope, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

My sisters, if you’re feeling held down, heartbroken, or hopeless, it just might be time to pick up the pen again. Return to the page to write, weep and rage—even if only for the sake of your own heart, mental health and peace of mind.

Rachel Marie Kang is the author of "Let There Be Art" and "The Matter of Little Losses." She writes in poignant prose on themes of culture, art and faith. Rachel lives in the New York metro with her husband and two sons. Find her work and words at rachelmariekang.com.