Yet More Validation to Writing My Stories of Abuse
The benefits are coming in:
Not only has writing about my abuse experiences been a healthy purge, a catharsis, but I see validation in my blog stats:
People are connecting with my posts, printing them, downloading them as PDFs, e-mailing them, sharing them, subscribing. (And not just for these posts, but for others as well, such as the ones on NVLD or introversion.)
In real life, I took two poems I wrote about my blog stalkers, this and this, to Writer’s Club in the past 6 months. (Yes, my blog stalkers have read them.) They were barely beyond the first draft, just something scrawled in an afternoon.
Yet people loved them, found them beautiful. Those who have experienced abuse and narcissism, connected with my poems, said they were correct in describing it. A few weeks later, one person even said she’d been thinking about me and the poem I brought in. (Too bad she hasn’t been back since, because she seemed like a potential friend.)
In a recent workshop, one middle-aged man, who was abused as a child, said that he is now encouraged to be more open in his own writing about what he has been through.
Such writing really does have value! We are not being “victims”; we are expressing ourselves, and thereby helping others as well. This helps us all get through the pain, move past the abuse, and move on with our lives, far healthier than if we had pushed it down and ignored it, pasting on a happy face.
The very posts which inspired my stalkers to laugh and to threaten me, are bringing comfort and validation to thousands.
And that makes my stalkers’ cut-downs, threats, denials, minimization, invalidation, derision, all just a bit of meaningless fly buzzing in the background.
So what if they constantly check what I write? Who cares what they think about any of it?
What I care about is what I see here in my stats, the evidence that my writing is indeed helping people, bringing comfort and validation to others. It brings meaning to my writing and joy to my heart. It is also very healing.
Because when you:
- write in your own personal journal,
- or write on a blog,
- or write letters about your stressful situations to a friend,
- or send emails to your therapist,
- or write your own songs,
- or write poetry,
- or write short stories,
- or write to your other insiders about your thoughts and feelings of today, or your memories of yesterday,
- or write creative comforting stories for your little ones,
your writing will benefit you and your health.
–Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation, The Therapeutic Value of Writing