Savannah Watson

In a lot of ways, I have always found writing to be cathartic and healing. I have always been one to bleed on the paper in order to process the things I’m thinking, feeling, and experiencing. Mostly because it’s always felt like the safest place to bleed. I tend to have a hard time opening up to others verbally, especially when I was younger and didn’t feel as though I could safely open up to others, but writing took away some of the discomfort and self-consciousness of sharing. Even if no one read what I was writing, it was still “sharing”; it still allowed me to get some of it out instead of bottling it up. Which is a huge step.

I have found over the years that my personal life seeps into my writing surprisingly deep. Even when I write fiction, some characters carry pieces of my personality, my fears, my desires, my own past experiences, or my traumas. I think that’s natural for a writer; I mean, who do you know better than yourself? And it’s far easier and more authentic to write about what you know versus what you don’t. I also think it’s healing to do this, like a form of therapy. You can work through things without necessarily realizing you’re working through anything but a plot. With more control too.

On top of finding my life blending into my writing, I have also often found myself circling back to specific topics, things from my past and present that come up often in my mind. A good example of this is mental health. I frequently write about mental health struggles and trauma because these are things from my past that resurface from time to time. And instead of shoving them down, I let them out on the paper. Even when it is daunting to share that private, very personal piece of myself, I want to share it. I want to acknowledge those feelings in myself, and I want people who may read it and may have felt the same things to know they are not alone. Another great example is love… I write about love (loving others and self-love) a lot because it is something I have struggled with and now value so highly in life that it is constantly on my mind.

I think there is a lot to be said about how writing can heal the writer. When you integrate yourself into your characters, integrate your experiences into your works, it can help you process and deal with those very things (good or bad). It can shed light on some of the things that matter to you, that bother you, and that you want to explore – things you may not have even realized. And in my experience, the more I write things about myself, even when it is blended into fiction, the more understanding I feel in these pieces of myself.

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