When I was younger, writing was my only outlet. I didn’t have many friends, and I wasn’t comfortable sharing what I was going through with just anyone. The closest thing I had to social media was the online BBSes on school computers (if you know, you know…)

So I dumped my thoughts into various spiral-bound notebooks with psychedelic covers acquired from the local dollar store. That is, until my father discovered them. They later led to me being kicked out of my house as a teenager (a story I’ve told before, but will not rehash here). It was because of the trauma around those journals and my own words being used against me that I vowed never to write plainly again.

My writing evolved to become incredibly cryptic. Stories with characters who carried the burden of whatever my nervous system was trying to process. Poetry that looped in circles using grammar that never made sense. Sometimes just pages of nonsense words. The writing shifted from a way to process my thoughts to a way to get lost in their vastness.

During those times, I became even more reclusive and secretive, more afraid of anyone ever truly knowing how I felt or what I was thinking. I often think this is when I truly embraced my ability to glamorize my existence. The artist who loses themselves in the art is a tale as old as time, yet it doesn’t make it any easier to find your way out.

And then I just stopped writing altogether.

It wasn’t until years later, after a crap ton of therapy and an entire pandemic, that I decided to start writing again. Fun fact, I got COVID before it hit the news (at least I think). There are reasons why I got it so early that I’m not at liberty to discuss, but let’s just say I caught something that required me to be quarantined in my home and have a nurse make daily phone calls to check my status all around the time that news of some mysterious illness spreading across the world was hitting the media.

As my unexplained illness progressed (remember, there were no tests for it at the beginning), the isolation and uncertainty about what was happening or where it was leading were almost too much to handle. I was lucky enough to still be able to have video sessions with my therapist, who encouraged me to keep a diary to get my spiraling thoughts out of my head and onto paper.

So I found myself writing again. Plainly this time. “I’m afraid I’m going to die.” You can’t get much plainer than that. (Spoiler alert, I didn’t—die, that is.) It also brought me back to my spirituality and eventually led to starting The Alchemist Papers project.

A book I’ve referenced a few times in my posts had an unexpected local reference about why writing helps relieve trauma. Apparently the research for that happened right here in Austin, TX.

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes that, as far as he knows, the first test of using language to relieve trauma occurred in 1986, when James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin turned his intro psychology class into a lab.

He asked students to choose a deeply personal, highly stressful experience and then write about it alone in a small cubicle for 15 minutes a day, four days in a row. Some wrote only the facts, some wrote about whatever was going on in their lives, and some wrote the facts plus how they felt and what it did to them. The students took it seriously, and many of them wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone.

The group that wrote both the facts and the feelings did best. Van der Kolk says it improved their mood and gave them a more optimistic attitude, and the students themselves mostly talked about understanding themselves better. One of them said, "I never realized how it affected me before."

Two things I want to call out from this study:

First, Pennebaker didn’t start out against the idea of keeping things to yourself. Van der Kolk says he had “a healthy respect for the importance of inhibition,” which he saw as “the glue of civilization.” In his eyes, privacy wasn’t the problem. He simply suspected that people pay a price for trying so hard not to know what they already know.

Second, van der Kolk doesn’t overstate the facts. He says we still don’t know whether language is always essential for healing, and studies of writing’s effects on PTSD symptoms have been disappointing. When he asked Pennebaker about this, Pennebaker noted that most studies had participants write in groups, expecting to share their work. He said, “The object of writing is to write to yourself, to let yourself know what you have been trying to avoid.”

And to address the elephant in the email, why the hell am I sharing such personal things with you? All of the research says that the writing that truly helps is the kind nobody ever actually reads. So does this even help me?

Yes and no.

Thorn Mooney, a Witch of more than twenty years who leads a Gardnerian coven, says the same thing in The Witch's Path. I referenced her book on my Instagram page a couple of days ago. She tells you to keep a magical journal, then tells you not to share it because "having an audience alters our behavior," so "resist the urge to start a blog or social media account for this purpose." The point, she says, is "not to turn yourself into a writer."

I actually don’t disagree with her. What you’re reading here, and for the most part on my Instagram, is how I interpret spirituality, tarot, psychology, and magick through things I’ve already processed. Most of what you’re reading isn’t me processing in real time—at least when it comes to the heavy shit.

But I also think it’s important to share the stories of how we overcame (or, in some cases, didn’t) so we can all learn and grow together. Knowing you’re not alone, that someone else has experienced something similar, and seeing how they handled it is incredibly empowering (at least to me), and that’s the backbone of what I share here.

Van der Kolk describes a free-writing practice that I like a lot, and it's easy to do under a waxing moon (the full moon is Sunday).

Van der Kolk also warns that this could go either way. Your object could bring up a difficult memory. So if it starts to shift somewhere you’re not ready for, please stop and take that to someone you trust (preferably a therapist).

If you made that list of names back in September, you could use it here too. Pick a name from it and write a letter to them, or about them, for fifteen minutes. Remember, nobody has to read it.

Before I sign off, I’d like to inspire you with a few more lines from the poem from the oracle card I pulled for this week:

The whole poem is on the Poesis site, and the deck is here. I can’t tell you how much I adore this oracle deck. And no, they don’t sponsor me, and no, I have no brand deals with them. I just genuinely adore it.

I'm grateful I get to do the healthy version of this now, and that I can share it with you. Sending much love and many blessings to you and your loved ones, here and beyond, as we move into the Samhain season.

xo,
Chad

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