Towards the end of last year, I signed up for Cardiff University’s Writing for Wellbeing course. ‘Great!’ I thought, always keen to learn new skills for my coaching. Ten weeks’ worth of new skills to add to my CV. ‘Boom! Sorted!’
What I hadn’t considered much when I sent my application off was what the actual process would be like. How much I would have to give of myself during the course. How much I would benefit in my whole life, not just my CV. I was ticking a box and looking forward to learning again. Then everything changed . . .
Between signing up and the course starting, my adored stepdad David suddenly became seriously ill. I moved in with my Mum, wearing a mask for the first 36 hours while we waited for my COVID test result to come back. In week two of the course, David moved to palliative care. In week three, he died.
I cancelled all my work as Mum and I faced our grief and the mountain of paperwork that comes with a death, but I carried on with my coursework. Not always on time, but I did the best I could in the circumstances.
Looking back at my reflective journal from that time, I’m shocked and sad to see how awkward I was even mentioning that my stepfather was gravely ill. I actually wrote that I was worried it was attention-seeking – on a wellbeing course! Oh, how easy I find it to see a lack of self-care in others, and how hard in myself.
The writing exercises we were given each week gave me a structure to explore how I felt in a place that was safe and private – a place between what was in my head and what I put on the page. It was an outlet for emotion when I really needed it. Lucky timing? The strands of the universe coming together? Whatever it was, it came at exactly the right time for me.
I have always written things down when I need to settle my mind – diaries, journals, letters, morning pages . . . and now I have some specific exercises from the course that I can add to my bag of tools. I gained the new skills I was looking for to add to my CV, but I also acquired so much more than that – healing through writing at the time I needed it most.
When people come to me to work something through – overwhelmed, heads too full to process their world, or a big decision to make – we often spend time writing it down in different ways. There is something incredibly powerful about the process of putting something on paper and then looking at it. It helps to give you distance from yourself and that distance can often help to bring clarity.
Writing is so much more than words on paper.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash