The Search (Reposted From The Urban Mermaid)

I have just recently been introduced to Emily Lisker’s wonderful blog, The Urban Mermaid: http://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com. I recommend it to all of you. She’s been writing it since 2006 so there is so much of merit to find there as you wander through her posts. This is Emily’s musings on writing as a path to healing:

The Search

I was thinking of what I could say about the search. I think for me the search became conscious when I got so depressed I wanted to die. That was when I was in my mid 30’s. At that time I was very dark for months at a stretch. A friend suggested I write stuff down in a notebook just to get the verbal chattering out of my head, onto the page. She recommended I scribble words each day when I first got up, before I over think it. I did it for days, weeks months and years. I got hooked and the notebook became a friend. I think writing stuff out helped me more than all my years of talk therapy and gave me both an outlet and an inlet. To this day it is a tool to cut loose on the page and to help me find my center. I call it my spittoon. The time I spend with my notebook is a bit like a Quaker Meeting and meditation combined. Perhaps giving myself permission to explore and listen each day is the hardest part. We must remember that no matter what we still have freedom in our minds. It has been a slow process of peeling the onion.

Love to you all,
Jeane