Writing can be healing

 Wherever you grew up and whenever you grew up often writing about your experiences growing up can be helpful. Why?

Because as you think about what you experienced growing up or even in your teens or 20s you have a different perspective (especially if you are over 30). 

But, it is also true that writing down your experiences (whether it is a diary) or just notes you are taking about your life in general or whatever it is you are trying to process, can be very helpful in your life.

I started writing (as I have said before) when I was 8 years old and an only child and I had just been given a .22 rifle and bullets that I was allowed to keep in my bedroom in Glendale California where I went to Horace Mann Grade School then in 1956.

My cousin in Seattle who was 8 years older than me and likely the oldest cousin born to my Dad's oldest brother died in a car accident at age 16. This was so disturbing for me experiencing this level of mortality through the death of my oldest cousin that I began to write and to doodle in my Spiral Notebooks that I often kept for school. But, often when I wrote I might use my school notebook or just start a new spiral notebook around that time.

So, because I was always very intelligent and aware of my life I often wrote down what I was experiencing after about age 8 just to make more sense of what I was experiencing. Growing up any time isn't easy for a variety of reasons. However, growing up before the 1970s was especially dangerous and many children died or were seriously injured by one method or another.

For example, in the 1950s no one wore seatbelts at that time except for complete eccentrics who put them in their cars or trucks because of having survived a car or truck accident.

So, seat belts weren't required until the very late 1980s or after depending upon what U.S. state we are talking about.

So, for example ,there could be 10 to 13 deaths of teenagers in one open seat hot rod racing with a 15 or 16 year old new driver at the wheel with kids scattered in trees and telephone poles all along a highway then. This happened several times by the way because daring someone to do something often got someone killed then. There was this sort of suicidal bent more to life in the 1950s more than now because World War II just happened and many parents were just kind of nuts from World war II and the Great depression.

So, writing about your experiences can be helpful in making more sense of all the things that happened to you during your life and it can also be very healing too.

By God's Grace