BREAKING THROUGH RESISTANCE

One of the difficulties of writing a memoir is going back in time to relive, and describe in detailed scenes, bad times in my life that I would prefer to leave behind. But there is no leaving those times behind. They are loud and solid ghosts that haunt me night and day. I know that I must face them and write my way through them if I am ever to let them go. I have read Pennebaker and Progoff. I am a certified journal instructor having worked through the training at the Center for Journal Therapy with Kay Adams. I have no doubts that I need to do this. And yet resistance is an invisible but strong wall that keeps me from the page. I once had a therapist who said you have to go through all the fires in your life, there is no way to go around them. But I am stuck today.

But I think I've found a way to crack the resistance and that is through art journaling. I need to journal my feelings in paint and collage to get them out. I need to write things I want no one to see and then paint over the words. That way they will be out of me and yet immune to the eyes of those who may one day search my notebooks for secrets better kept concealed.

I am hoping that in an hour or so I will have gotten past this wall and can then continue writing my story.

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