| Writing can be intimidating. After all, you’re staring at a blank page attempting to fill it with something profound, something that will move your reader, something that will drop them into a transformative experience right alongside you. That’s a lot of pressure!
How do you overcome the terror? Write a letter. In fact, two of my favorite prompts when I’m searching for essay topics are: write a letter of gratitude to a person who “saved you” and write a letter to someone who wronged you (or someone you love). I’ve written several essays using letters as a springboard, including a few penned under a pseudonym to protect the not-so-innocent.
But even if letter writing doesn’t serve your essay writing endeavors, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that sharing your deepest thoughts with another person—even if it’s only imagined (i.e., never sent)—is remarkably healing. It liberates your throat chakra, which at least in my case, is frequently compromised, despite the fact that I’m a writer (it turns out I’m also a people pleaser).
Unfortunately, when your throat chakra is blocked or out of balance, all sorts of bad things happen. The reason: Your throat chakra is your voice. It’s your vehicle for communication and self-expression. And when it’s out of balance, it can cause you to be highly critical of yourself and others. A blocked throat chakra can even lead to physical ailments like TMJ, gum disease, and thyroid challenges (um, that’s me).
So, to honor my throat chakra, I’ve begun writing letters to people who are dead, those who I haven’t seen in decades, those who hurt me, and those who have shown up for me in unexpected ways. I even wrote a letter to myself penned by my youngest son, a technique I learned years ago that resurfaced while I was reporting a story for The Washington Post about cultivating self-compassion as it relates to mom guilt.
The reason this works, says University of Canterbury Researcher, Lisa Emerson, Ph.D., is because we tend to be kinder to other people than we are to ourselves, even if it’s imagined.
Write with Bravery (and Abandon)
When I went to Brave Magic, a creativity retreat, with Cheryl Strayed and Liz Gilbert a few years ago, Liz talked A LOT about letter writing. Then she instructed us to write letters to our fear, our power, our joy, and myriad other “parts” of ourselves. It was almost like a mini-lesson in Internal Family Systems (check out this link for more on that therapeutic approach).
Even though I was over it by the end of the weekend, it was clear to me that letter writing can be remarkably healing, almost like therapy. I discovered that writing letters allowed me to connect with myself, develop self-love, and occasionally let myself off the hook. So maybe it’s no surprise that Liz advises writers to figure out who they’re writing to/for before they put pen to page.
When someone asks, “who are you writing to/for?” Most writers answer with a demographic. “I’m writing to middle-aged moms,” or “I’m writing to disenfranchised members of the LBGTQ community.” But Liz? Liz says that whether she’s writing a memoir or a novel, she always writes to an audience of one: A specific person.
So in that sense, writing an essay is almost like a more polished version of a letter you would write to a friend. It works because most of us don’t think when we write a letter. We just write. In fact, when my son disappeared for almost two hours a few weeks ago, I wrote an essay about the experience that emerged from a VERY long text message I sent to a friend.
In the future, I may even record my side of a telephone conversation with a friend. The reason: I often have a-ha moments when I’m chatting with one of my besties. I make connections that I wouldn’t be able to make on my own, and even use words and phrases that make for powerful prose. |
