How Journaling Can Help You Move On After a Loss or Uncertainty Crisis

(CNN) – Nobody was more surprised than the poet Maggie smith the fact that write yourself a few words of encouragement every day during the breakup of your 18-year marriage will help you feel better.

Those little missives, notes to herself tweeted daily, they resonated deeply with readers, who printed them, turned them into wallpapers, hung them on cork boards and refrigerators, and even turned them into knit embroidery.

That response from people who wanted to preserve Smith’s meditations led her to publish “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change“The success of the book led her to publish the continuation.”Keep Moving: The Journal“, a 52-workbook to cultivate hope and renewal, on October 26. With passages, prompts and blank pages, his latest publication is the formal embodiment of the DIY approach that some of the followers of Smith had already been practicing, using their words to invite them to write through their own challenges.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that a drowning person could throw a rope at another person,” Smith explained, until readers convinced her otherwise. The proof is seen on the page.

This conversation was edited and summarized for clarity.

CNN: A key part of your message is that even tough times bring opportunities. How can we open our consciousness to the good that so often accompanies the bad?

Maggie Smith: I want to admit that it is not easy or intuitive to be grateful for the good parts of the difficulty you are going through. Sometimes it can seem like a grievance when well-meaning people ask you to look on the bright side. You don’t have to jump straight into positive thinking after bad news, pain, or grief. We all deserve a little time to feel sorry for ourselves. But then what?

Writing is one of the ways that I can bring out those good things. If I sit down to write a list of all the things that disappoint, infuriate, and frustrate me, it will be a long list. But then I also have to take responsibility for writing the other list: the “yes, and …” list that reveals the opportunities presented by the difficulty.

CNN: Writing has been your vehicle since long before your divorce and the pandemic. You say that you do not have a daily writing practice, but you have still managed to create the space to find your way and get out of difficulties through writing. What might encourage others to engage with the questions in this journal, some of which are difficult?

Smith: In the introduction I say, “Do what works for you.” I built this journal with 52 questions. You could set a goal of answering one a week for a year. Choose which day and make it a self-care ritual. You could put it in your work bag to open and flip through any page when you have a little free time.

Or, if you want to dive into it and read it thoroughly, you can read it through in a week. The objective is open. My hope is that the diary helps people to awaken something in their brain.

I think one of the keys to both productivity and self-care is giving ourselves permission to do it however we want without harboring any guilt. Punishing yourself for not keeping a journal goes against the purpose of keeping a journal that helps us overcome challenges.

CNN: One of my favorite phrases in the journal is: “You deserve the compassion that you extend to others.” What do you mean by that?

Smith: Sometimes we are repulsed by what we perceive as self-pity. But self-pity is treating yourself with the same care that you would give a friend – or even your enemy – if they came to you carrying what you are carrying.

If someone said, “I’m going through a terrible divorce,” or “I lost my job,” or “I’m so depressed that I can’t even take a shower,” you wouldn’t say, “What’s wrong?” Or “If you were another kind of person. , this wouldn’t have happened to you. “Or” Get hold of yourself. Look what a beautiful life you have. “But we sure tell ourselves.

Much of “Keep Moving”, both the book and the journal, is about taking time and treating each other with more kindness. After all, no external positive reinforcement can overcome an inner voice that, frankly, lies to you. It is essential to examine that inner voice and get their attention when they are not honest.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand how terribly hard you have been on yourself when you see it in ink on paper. Imagine that you tell a friend or neighbor what you wrote about yourself. You never would. So why are you telling yourself?

CNN: You say that repetition reconfigures the brain. What has been your experience with writing as a vehicle for healing?

Smith: Sometimes we think of the mind as something floating, but the brain is a physical entity that we can rewire with our habits. You can literally change the way you think by committing to positive rituals every day, whether it’s meditating, taking a long walk, or writing.

CNN: Studies have shown that writing about emotions can not only help heal stress and trauma, but also boost the immune system. Research says that taking notes by hand is more effective than taking notes on the computer for storing information, as typing “produces less deep processing.” Does any of this resonate with your experience?

Smith: That science makes a lot of sense to me. Since I don’t know how to type, the urge to write arises as the urge to grab a pen and a piece of paper. There is power in seeing the words in my handwriting. Even from a distance, I know they are mine. Even the sound of my instrument on the page is part of my process. That little scribbling sound as you furiously press the pen to the page is palpable, sensory, something real, and it’s not alone in the ether. That attracts me.

I didn’t used to think of myself as a journalist, but today we all have to find different paths to self-care.

CNN: People facing different destabilizing changes, be it death, divorce, job loss, chronic illness, sobriety problems, have contacted you to say that they have found comfort in your words. Why do the concepts of “Keep Moving” fit so many different life experiences?

Smith: We can all benefit from reframing the difficulties to see the possibilities. If we only tell ourselves a negative story about what we are going through, big or small, it is easy for us to get stuck in that story and pigeonhole ourselves in other areas of life.

Life involves constant reassessment and recalibration. Even “capitalized” changes, such as death, divorce, or certain diagnoses, involve smaller changes nested within larger ones. “I stay in home?” “What about children?”

Change is a constant. The goal is to find a way to overcome difficulties with a feeling of optimism or hope, teaching us to see even unwanted changes not as totally destructive, but also as places of creativity.

– Jessica DuLong is a Brooklyn-based journalist, book contributor, writing coach, and author of “Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift” and “My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work that Built America.”