Give Sorrow Words #WorldMentalHealthDay

When I started this blog, I deliberately chose to write about how my cancer experience had enriched my life (rather than admit any other darker truth). I wanted this blog to be all about hope – I only wanted to hear that things would turn out okay. And when I finished treatment, I wanted to be that survivor  – the one with the story of hope for other young women.

But as I struggled to come to terms with infertility (a legacy of cancer treatment) and the death of my beloved mother from a brain tumor, I could no longer write that cancer was a life-affirming, positive experience. Cancer robs you of so many precious things, fractures your spirit, and shatters your hopes and dreams.

And yet we should not stay stuck in this place forever. We need to find a way to journey from our dark places toward the light. How we do this will be different for each of us; but do it we must.  

For me, writing about my experiences and being part of a caring, compassionate and wise blog community has helped me enormously. Knowing that there is a place where I can write from my heart, a space where I can shed my mask  is empowering for me.  In the words of Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down The Bones: “I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I’ll ever have.”

Give Sorrow Words

“When we write, we create, and when we offer our creation to one another, we close the wound of loneliness, and may participate in healing the broken world.”

Pat Schneider

A cancer diagnosis is devastating. Translating emotions into words makes them less overwhelming. We begin to understand them.  As Shakespeare eloquently put it nearly 400 years ago, “Give sorrow words.” Through writing, we can rediscover a sense of wholeness within ourselves. We might stumble upon emotions and feelings that would have remained hidden forever if we hadn’t given them voice through our writing.

Authentic writing, the kind that emerges from the depths of our being, exposes our vulnerabilities—what writer Michael Lewin aptly terms our “places of woundedness.” Blogging within a community of kindred spirits helps counteract the isolation we often experience. It inherently carries the seeds of community and connection, which are often missing in our lives and play a vital role in maintaining good mental health.

So my message to you on this World Mental Health Day is to keep shedding light in the darkness. 

Keep telling your stories.

 “When we begin to see our suffering as a story,” Anaïs Nin wrote in her famous diaries, “we are saved.”