Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives

by Louise DeSalvo

Acclaimed author Louise DeSalvo draws on her own experience and the lives of others to examine the healing power of the writing process. In this landmark work, DeSalvo uses her twenty years as a teacher of writing to explore how the creative process can in fact be a restorative tool. She looks at the cutting-edge scientific research on the subject and presents dozens of anecdotes of famous writers and beginners in the field to illuminate her theory that writing can repair pain--and keep our demons at bay. In Writing as a Way of Healing, DeSalvo also develops a detailed program of exercises that shows writers and nonwriters alike how to "open up" to themselves through writing, write regularly in a relaxed way, and achieve a state of personal acceptance through writing. DeSalvo's techniques will provide a solid foundation for writers to benefit both physically and emotionally from telling their stories. DeSalvo writes with remarkable insight of a wide range of writers who have found that their work helped them to heal, including Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Kenzaburo Oe, Djuna Barnes, Peter Handke, Jamaica Kincaid, and Mark Doty. In these pages, we become familiar with writers' stories of healing: Isabel Allende deals with the anguish of sitting near her comatose daughter's bedside by beginning to compose a letter to her that eventually becomes the memoir Paula. Henry Miller, despondent when his wife, June, left him for another woman and contemplating suicide, instead works through the night on a story that details his life with June. This brief outline, written during a time of Miller's sharpest despair, serves as the inspiration for his greatest novels. DeSalvo illustrates how writers can find solace in their work if they ensure that they have a safe environment and a deliberate plan to approach the writing process. She also discusses what went wrong for writers "at risk" like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, and she warns of the danger of using writing as a call for help instead of seeking help. According to DeSalvo, the way to responsibly write, to heal, is to make an effort to understand our experiences as we write about them. The healing power comes from the reflection on the pain we are living through. In this inspiring book, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. Based on her twenty years of research, DeSalvo show how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. She draws on the journals, diaries, letters, and works of dozens of famous writers and students of the craft to illustrate how people "change physically and psychologically when they work on projects that grow from a deep, authentic place." With insight and wit, she illuminates how writers, from Virginia Woolf to Henry Miller to Audre Lorde to Isabel Allende, have been transformed by the wiring process. Writing as a Way of Healing includes valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inspire both experienced and beginning writers.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Journaling, Memoir, Mental Health

226 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 1999

About the author

Louise A. DeSalvo (born 1942) is an American writer, editor, professor, and lecturer who currently lives in New Jersey. Much of her work focuses on Italian-American culture, though she is also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar.

DeSalvo and her husband raised their children in Teaneck, New Jersey before moving to Montclair to be closer to their grandchildren.

She also teaches memoir writing as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.

DeSalvo's publications include the memoir, Vertigo, which received the Gay Talese award and was also a finalist for Italy's Primo Acerbi prize for literature; Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, which was named a Booksense Book of the Year for 2004.

DeSalvo is also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar. She has edited editions of Woolf's first novel Melymbrosia, as well as The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, which documents the controversial lesbian affair between these two novelists. In addition, she has written two books on Woolf, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making.

One of DeSalvo's most popular books is the writer's guide Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Cass · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished this book, which I started on April 22 of this year. That’s a long time to spend reading a 216 page book, isn’t it? I thought I would review it, but in the moment, I have decided not to. I’m going to write something else instead, and what I am about to write is a direct effect of reading this book. In fact, I could hardly make myself finish it, because this idea gripped me with such compelling force that I had to keep drawing myself back to the page. And now I struggle to begin.

I have, several times over the past few years, struggled to write about my father. Part of the Mary Monologues was about him, and I have written a couple of poems about him, but I have never truly come to grips with him, his life, his death. I’ve felt the emotions and the turmoil, but I have not tried to organize that mishmash of confusion into a narrative that I could integrate into something useful, something I could process. Today, as I was finishing DeSalvo’s book, my mind continued to wander to the trunk in my room. Inside that trunk are photo albums. Several, I don’t remember how many. There are albums in there that hold pictures of my father, albums that my step-mother gave me not long after he died. I haven’t ever really studied them, and have looked at them only briefly since they came into my possession.

I think it may be because by not looking, I could choose to continue to not remember. We have discussed before, you and I, my faulty memory. But I know that my memory can be triggered by pictures. That in fact, if I want to remember something now, I stop and take a mental image of what is happening at this moment. It has, I think, been easier until now to think of him as someone who was never truly part of my life than to admit that I might have had, and then lost, something very precious. The truth is, I don’t know what I will find in those albums. I do know there are at least two images there that I can talk about, because I can see them just as clearly as if I had them in front of me.

Anyway, I had planned to write this summer, but I had no idea what about until today. I have a couple of collaborative projects going, but I’m also pretty sure that this will be the summer I pull all the writing I have already done about him together into one piece. And it will be the summer I pull those photographs from their acidic PVC albums and mount them on proper paper. It will be the summer I let myself tell me the story of My Daddy. There are parts that will be very ugly. Such is life. There is anger as well. But I hope I also find beauty and laughter. Mostly, I want something whole and something true. A piece that says: this is what happened when I was six, when I was seven, when I was 12, and when I was 43, 44, and 45.

I knew it would happen eventually, and I bought the scrapbook supplies last fall. I guess it’s time.

[Quinn Collard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. There was some good advice in here to be sure, and I thought it gave some good insight into the relationship between writing and mental health that I hadn't thought about before. I particularly liked the parts about writing as a general practice, not necessarily about writing about emotional pain specifically, and how it can help one do well emotionally.

But at the same time there was an odd thread of judgmentalness towards people with mental illness, which is not exactly what one would expect from a book dealing with emotional pain. The author seemed much more sympathetic towards people who have experienced specific instances of trauma (which seemed to be mainly who the book was written for) but do not have a diagnosed mental illness than people who are just bipolar or depressed. She said some pretty shitty things about Sylvia Plath (who's my favourite author and someone I'm very sensitive about) and said numerous times that she "didn't have a mother" because her mother was depressed and sometimes had a hard time taking care of her when she was growing up. As someone who's bipolar, reading things like that really got to me. I definitely expected more sympathy from someone writing a book like this.

Overall I thought it was a worthwhile read in spite of the parts that bothered me. I'm going to be taking some of the advice into consideration with my own writing.

[Amanda's · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book... frustrating.

I was hoping it would be filled with practical advice on how to write for healing, along with incisive questions to support the reader in beginning this journey. What I got were a few nuggets of advice hidden among pages and pages of dry anecdotal evidence of how writing for healing helped other writers (or didn't help them, if they didn't write for healing). The whole thing felt rather vague, waffly and very repetitive. I finished it, but I had to force myself to finish.

The practical advice I took away from this book:

1. Write about traumatic events in the past in detail.
2. Write about how you felt about them at the time.
3. Write about how you feel about them now.

And:

"Keep a process journal... to understand our relationship to our writing and the act of creativity... To comment on our writing - how it's going, how we feel about it, ideas we may want to examine, what we're excited about, proud of, looking forward to, what we've learned... Non-judgemental self reflective witnessing of ourselves as writers."

The quote which sums up the whole book for me: "Through writing, we change our relationship to trauma, for we gain confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle life's difficulties... We see ourselves as able to solve problems rather than beset by problems. We enjoy a heightened sense of self."

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I made it about 35% (into Part Two) before I put it down and decided I didn't want to bother reading more. I found Part One weirdly off-putting as the author repeated over and over, in slightly different and not-so-different ways, what the Exact Specific Only Type Of Writing That Is Therapeutic was.

[Rikelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It details how important journaling is. It is a great discussion about how writing can help you heal from the wounds that life invariably inflicts on everyone. Just writing and wallowing in your writing won't help you and could even be hurtful. It is when we use our writing to empower ourselves and to find lessons and hidden gifts that burdens bring we can find healing.

[Mary Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

March, 5, 2011 I just finished reading this again. I have read it so many times as can be seen in my previous review below.


Fantastic book. I reference this book a lot in my Masters/PhD work. It is so highlighted and dog-earred it's falling apart.

[Lindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent addition to any writer's book shelf. Written in a very supportive way for all to tell their personal stories with respect and transformational healing.

[Kendra Hovey]

I enjoy this book more and more every time I read it! It certainly helps give me the courage to write my stories.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book provided good how-to exercises and guidelines that one could apply whether you plan on doing long-term and formal writing or short, journal type entries. The first part of the book felt a little long and repetitive as it discussed the benefits of writing. The second and third parts seemed to flow at a quicker pace and provided more practical information for starting to write. I appreciated the guidelines and felt that they could be applied to any creative process or "work", not just writing. I also liked that she included stories about other authors' writing proceses, it was very validating to hear that writers I admire had their humble beginnings and struggles.

[Kate Arms · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of gods material in here about how and why writing can be therapeutic. The book intermingles the author's personal experience of writing her stories, theories about how and why writing can help heal wounds, and stories of other writers' healing work. The book is thought-provoking and inspirational. However, for anyone who wants to write their own stories that need healing or for folks who want to lead writers in workshops, there is not enough explicit instruction.

Many books were mentioned in passing in the text that would be good further reading, but not were not sufficiently integrated into the text. They would have fared better as lists of related or further reading, either as back matter in the whole book or at the end of chapters.

There are questions and instructions on how to proceed in this kind of writing included, but to put together a project using her approach would require digging deeply into the book and pulling information for sections where she has not laid things out clearly enough to be a practical guide without deep analysis of the book.

[Lynda Felder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that we really need convincing, but Louise De Salva begins Writing as a Way of Healing with proof, example after example, of writers who have used writing as a salve for their grief, illness, trauma and pain.



Henry Miller, despondent and suicidal because June has left him for a woman, writes through the night a piece he calls June, which outlines the famous books he would write over the next 30 years. (Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Sexus, Nexus and Plexus.)

Marcel Proust writes over a million words of Remembrance of Things Past while in bed with asthma.

D.H. Lawrence writes poems about his mother, at her bedside, while she is dying. He later writes Sons and Lovers, a novel that explores their complicated relationship

Alice Walker tells us that writing “is a matter of necessity and that you write to save your life and so far it’s been a very sturdy ladder out of a pit.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific book about writing and how important it is to those hwo have suffered some trauma. I marked this book up a lot using a green highlightere and can't wait to read the highlighted areas again. Maybe I'll read the whole book again! I expect to be using its advice in my writing in the near future. The last paragraph is important:

"Writing testimony, to be sure, means that we tell our stories. But it also means that we no longer allow ourselves to be silenced or allow others to speak for our experience. Writing to heal, then, and making that writing public, as I see it, is the most important emotional, psychological, artistic, and political project of our time."

A big thanks to Ms. DeSalvo for this important book.

[Jocelyn Paige Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeSalvo's slant on writing as a way of healing stems on the essential aspect of "linking" our emotions with our thinking. It's not just about expressing or venting or more specifically, free writing. It's about engaging with our minds to process our experiences in a way that heals us. If you're looking for a book to give you freewriting ideas, this isn't it.

But, if you're looking for a book that helps people connect their creativity with empathy, this one is perfect.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be more of a how-to. Instead, it was more like reading a long, boring college term paper. Too many theories and stories of other people instead of helpful advice.

[Demetri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louise DeSalvo’s “Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives” carries the quiet authority of a teacher who has watched the same human drama replay in different bodies, different biographies: the student who cannot name what happened; the student who names it too quickly, as if speed were safety; the student who circles the wound for years and then, one afternoon, writes a single honest sentence and feels the world tilt a few degrees toward steadiness. DeSalvo’s sensibility is at once literary and clinical in the best sense: attentive to the texture of sentences, but equally attentive to the nervous system that produces them.

The book is organized with the practical calm of a workshop syllabus, yet it reads like something closer to a long letter from a seasoned guide. It opens with a disarmingly plain question – why write? – and answers with a phrase borrowed from John Cheever: writing as “extrication.” In DeSalvo’s hands, extrication is not a metaphor for literary cleverness. It is a bodily action. The writer pulls themselves, sentence by sentence, out of obsession, distortion, and enforced silence and back toward the rhythm of ordinary life. This is a book that believes in craft, but it believes in craft the way a carpenter believes in tools: because the right instrument, used patiently, can keep your hands from splintering.

If that sounds like therapy, DeSalvo is careful to complicate the comparison. One of the book’s most admirable features is its refusal to pretend that writing is a cure-all. She acknowledges scientific and clinical work suggesting that expressive writing can improve well-being and, for some people, even aspects of physical health, but she resists the grandiose promise. Writing does not erase what happened. It does not abolish grief. Instead it can help a writer accomplish something subtler and more difficult: a change in relationship to what happened. Healing, as DeSalvo frames it, is not the disappearance of pain but a shift in perspective, a reorientation away from distortion and toward a truer, more habitable story.

DeSalvo’s classroom appears early, not as decorative anecdote but as evidence and method. She invites students to choose subjects they return to in thought, subjects they fear thinking about, subjects they feel compelled to examine at length. She does not require that those subjects be traumatic, yet pain tends to surface, as it does when people are granted permission to be authentic without being sensational. The roll call of topics is bracing: suicidal depression, addiction, illness, abortion, murder, grief, exile, violence, the long echo of family secrets. DeSalvo’s crucial move is not to sensationalize this material, but to locate the first act of healing in choice. The writer selects the subject, sets the pace, decides how close to stand to the flame. The book’s ethic is consistent: writing heals best when it restores agency.

From readiness, DeSalvo turns to entry: what it means to go into pain without being swallowed by it. Healing writing, she argues, honors pain, loss, and grief rather than skirting them, but “honor” here is not a sentimental bow. It is a discipline of attention. The writer goes into the experience, observes it, examines it, and tries to find words that describe sensations precisely, accurately, without distortion. Precision, in DeSalvo’s account, is protective. Vague language invites melodrama or dissociation, two ways of leaving the room. Accurate language keeps the writer present. In an era saturated with quick confession and instant commentary, her insistence on exact description feels almost old-fashioned, and therefore clarifying.

This is where DeSalvo’s craft instruction reveals its deeper purpose. When she speaks about “Writing Pain, Writing Loss” and the qualities of a healing narrative, she is not making a case for polish as an end in itself. She is making a case for form as a vessel sturdy enough to carry volatile material. The virtues she recommends are those any serious writer recognizes: specificity, complexity, honesty, perspective. But in her hands these are ethical virtues as well. A healing narrative does not flatten contradiction into a moral slogan. It does not make the self saintly, or the other person monstrous, simply to achieve narrative certainty. It resists the cheap relief of simplification. It stays with the mess long enough to become accurate.

That emphasis on craft as ethics makes the book’s next move feel inevitable. DeSalvo includes a chapter she calls “A Caveat,” and it is, in its way, the book’s spine. She warns plainly that writing can destabilize. This is not the glib disclaimer of a self-help book; it is an integral part of her philosophy. If writing is powerful enough to change our relationship to pain, it is powerful enough to stir that pain up. The page can open doors we are not ready to walk through. DeSalvo counsels boundaries: time limits, pacing, attention to bodily signals, external support when needed, and the humility to stop when the work is becoming dangerous rather than clarifying. Her caution is not fear-mongering. It is respect. She treats the writer’s psyche as something real – not a metaphor, not a narrative device, but a living organism with limits.

The book’s second movement turns from entry to endurance. “Finding the Right Voice” treats voice not as ornament but as psychological position. Many of us have learned voices for survival: the ironic voice that prevents feeling, the prosecutorial voice that prevents vulnerability, the sentimental voice that makes injury palatable, the clinical voice that makes everything sound manageable. DeSalvo does not shame these strategies; she recognizes them as adaptations. But she argues that healing requires discovering a voice that does not defend itself by distortion. The “right voice” is not necessarily soft, and it is not necessarily forgiving. It is, above all, accurate – a voice the body recognizes as true.

“Working Through” is the book’s bracing corrective to the fantasy of the breakthrough. Healing is not a lightning bolt of insight. It is return and revision. Resistance, in DeSalvo’s view, is not an enemy but information: fatigue, boredom, avoidance, doubt are clues to where the material remains charged or where the writer is pushing too hard. She offers a practical shift that can change a writer’s life: treat the writing process itself as text. Notice what happens to the sentences when you get close to what hurts. Notice what happens to your body. Notice where you become abstract, where you become grandiose, where you become blank. Revision, in this context, becomes more than refinement. It becomes a method of emotional calibration. The first draft may be a flood. The next draft learns containment. Later drafts can accommodate complexity.

The chapter on sharing is among the book’s most humane. DeSalvo dismantles the assumption that writing must be shared to be “real.” Sharing is framed as a choice, not a moral obligation. The writer is urged to consider audience, timing, and intent. Who can bear this story? What does the writer want from sharing: witness, connection, contribution, validation? DeSalvo distinguishes witness from applause, and she is skeptical of the hunger for validation that can tether a writer’s healing to other people’s reactions. In her framework, sharing is not the culmination of writing. It is a separate decision with its own ethics and risks.

As the book nears its end, DeSalvo widens her frame. Writing becomes less an intervention and more a way of life. Transformation, for her, is cumulative and often quiet. The writer’s identity loosens from rigid categories imposed by trauma or loss. Perspective becomes a habit. Agency learned on the page begins to shape life off the page: choices, relationships, the capacity to live with complexity without rushing to tidy conclusions. Pain does not vanish, but it loses its monopoly on attention. The past stops being a trap and becomes, finally, one thread among many.

To read DeSalvo well is to appreciate what she is not doing. She is not prescribing a genre. She is not telling every reader to write memoir. She is not fetishizing disclosure. Her attention is on the underlying act: turning experience into language with accuracy and care. She moves easily among forms – diary, memoir, poetry, fiction – because her true subject is not form but relationship: the relationship between a person and the story they have been forced to carry in silence. In this sense, DeSalvo is not only a teacher of writing. She is a teacher of attention.

She is also a generous curator of companions. Writers and thinkers appear throughout as quiet guides rather than name-dropped authorities: Audre Lorde’s blunt wisdom about using pain, May Sarton’s insistence that nothing that happens is unusable, correspondences with other writers that illuminate the variety of ways art can function. These presences widen the room. They suggest that healing is not a solitary hero’s journey but a tradition of people learning, across time, how to tell the truth without being destroyed by it.

Yet the very elegance of DeSalvo’s model can make it sound universal when it is, in practice, contingent. The book is deeply committed to autonomy – to the writer’s right to choose, to pace, to withhold – but it is worth noticing how unevenly that autonomy is distributed. Not every writer can claim privacy without consequence. Not every story can be told without legal risk, economic fallout, family reprisal, or social punishment. DeSalvo’s insistence on boundaries and discernment is helpful, but the book’s center of gravity remains the interior life: what the writer can do on the page, in the body, in the mind. Readers navigating hostile workplaces, precarious housing, immigration stress, or family systems that punish truth may need to translate her counsel into a more explicitly protective practice, one that includes strategic silence, coded forms, or professional support beyond the writing desk.

There is also a quiet pressure hidden inside the phrase “healing narrative.” DeSalvo argues persuasively that writing can shift perspective, but the architecture of her book can tempt a reader to treat healing as a standard to be met: write in this way and you will arrive at acceptance; revise long enough and serenity will come. DeSalvo does not promise such outcomes, and she repeatedly emphasizes that pain may remain. Still, “healing” can become an evaluative lens that hardens into self-judgment, especially for writers who already measure themselves harshly. The most faithful way to read her, paradoxically, is to resist turning her framework into a checklist. Treat it as an orientation toward honesty, not a scorecard of emotional progress.

There is also the question of style. DeSalvo writes with instructive clarity and a teacher’s cadence; she is not aiming for literary dazzle. Her prose is purposeful rather than ornamented, more mentorly than flamboyant. For some readers, that sobriety will be a relief – a sign that she takes suffering seriously and will not turn it into artful entertainment. For others, especially those drawn to books about writing for the pleasures and dangers of language itself, the tone may feel more like a seminar than a lyric essay. But even this restraint has an argument behind it: when the subject is pain, the writer’s job is not to decorate but to see.

The achievement of “Writing as a Way of Healing” is that it treats writing as both art and practice, craft and conscience. It asks the writer to choose: not only what to write, but how to write it in a way that does not betray the self. It insists that healing is not a finish line but a lived shift toward depth, steadiness, and a more truthful relationship to one’s own history. And it offers, in place of slogans, a set of durable principles: autonomy, precision, patience, revision, discernment about sharing. These are not glamorous tools. They are the tools that last.

In an era that alternates between oversharing and silence, between the monetization of trauma and the policing of speech, DeSalvo’s book feels quietly radical in its insistence on the writer’s sovereignty. You decide your subject. You decide your form. You decide when you are finished. You decide whether to share. The page is not a courtroom, not a confessional booth, not a marketplace. It is a place where the self can practice freedom, and where freedom can slowly become a way of seeing.

For readers who come to writing with dread – who suspect the page will expose them, overwhelm them, or betray them – DeSalvo offers a different picture: the page as a practice room. The work is not always pleasant, and she does not pretend it will be. But she makes a persuasive case that the act of putting experience into language, with patience and fidelity, can return a person to themselves. The book’s greatest gift may be its tone: firm about craft, tender about fear, and unwilling to turn suffering into a performance. You can read it as a manual, but it reads best as companionship: a steady voice saying, go slowly, tell the truth, and remember that you are allowed to choose.

It is a book to keep nearby and return to in different seasons, because its advice is less a prescription than a way of listening. My rating: 82 out of 100.

[Ceci Marlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. Practical. Motivating.

[Zac Sigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to this book/author by the writing of a former professor. I don't want to give to much away, but I think that DeSalvo makes excellent recommendations that really will help people heal more than just writing about traumatic events with no other guidelines.

[Steph Sutorius · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book more. It was obvious that she did her research in terms of discovering and citing all of the famous authors, their mental illnesses and how they healed through the act of writing but I felt as if the same points were made ad naseum.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compelling book, one that gently nudges the reader to write to find freedom and healing—especially from trauma, but sometimes just from living in the world as we know it.

Some of the most memorable (for me) concepts the book contains are as follows:

"We can't improve our health by free-writing or by writing objective descriptions of our traumas or by venting our emotions. We cannot simply use writing as catharsis. Nor can we use it only as a record of what we've experienced. We must write in a way that links detailed descriptions of what happened with feelings--then and now--about what happened. "

I like how the author says writing can be therapeutic, but can also be the antithesis of such because it's re-living the details of things we'd sometimes rather forget.

Sometimes with her students and clients, the author asks, "Tell me something you never want to write about." And that query often results in unlocking the chambers of things we'd like to keep hidden.

Seemingly unrelated, but referring to making writing goals: "An important study of Harvard graduates discovered that the people who considered themselves most successful and content (despite difficulties encountered in their lives) differed from those who didn't consider themselves accomplished or satisfied in one major way: they wrote down their goals and plans."

"Many researchers, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists, like Alice Miller, Anthony Storr, M.D., and Albert Rothenberg, M.D., believe that mental illness and suicidal despair are not caused by trauma itself. They occur because the survivor can't verbalize what has happened and what has been suffered: they are caused 'by not being able to describe our feelings of rage, anger, humiliation, despair, helplessness, and sadness, says Miller. Feeling suicidal, then, means that there's a story that hasn't yet been told, that there are feelings linked to that story that haven't yet been expressed."

On putting your healing work out there in the world: "Whether [our listeners] like [our work] or not can't help us heal. It is impossible to "like" important survival narratives that nonetheless must be told." (Maybe this explains why I've struggled to like some of the memoirs that others raved about.)

Writers write for others, not just themselves: "They write about what they have lived through--experiences that might not be commonly known--to heal themselves. But they also write to help heal a culture that, if it is to become moral, ethical, and spiritual, must recognize what these writers have observed, experienced, and witnessed. All are writing to right a human wrong--one that affected them, surely, but one that affects others too. Writing testimony, to be sure, means that we tell our stories. But it also means that we no longer allow ourselves to be silenced or allow others to speak for our experience. Writing to heal, then, and making that writing public, as I see it, is the most important emotional, psychological, artistic, and political project of our time."

Overall, a great book that has planted seeds about how exactly I write. I recommend to anyone who wants to write for their own healing.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened my eyes to whole new ways to think about writing. I learned how to approach memoir writing from a variety of different angles, instead of limiting myself to just one way of thinking or narrative "lens" for my story. From Louise DeSalvo's book, it dawned on me that I shouldn't be limiting myself to a singular focus or format.

Also, DeSalvo taught me from this book how necessary it is to write about our lives, especially anything that was particularly painful from our past, and how if we don't , we risk a serious lack of understanding for what took place, which can prolong our pain.

I found this book to be very motivating for getting started on my writing and making it a part of my daily routine. Because she stresses the importance of daily writing, DeSalvo includes many tips for structuring your life to allow for writing and emphasizes how doing so has the power to transform our lives for the better by challenging our thought patterns and perceptions.

[Danie Botha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The transition from victim to survivor to victor is possible!

Remarkable!
In an eloquent fashion DeSalvo succeeds in showing and guiding the reader on how it is possible to write one’s way out of the darkest pits of despair. Writing can heal. Writing that is more than keeping a journal. Writing which takes the writer on a path of understanding and growth. What stood out for me is the overarching message that it is crucial to grow and progress from victim to survivor and not become complacent but to move on and become a victor, a witness of tenacity and resilience and refusal to remain broken or to quit. A logical and therapeutic next step is to share the journey, if not the details, with the world. By learning how to take care of the self, in addition to writing, healing becomes possible.

[Emmi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had very high expectations when I bought and started this book but I disappointed pretty badly. My expectations were that I can have some tips to use when trying to heal from my traumas and mental illness, but I was wrong. The book was in my opinion just story about teacher who teaches writing as a healing progress. I felt very much left out of the group as a reader.

I always grabbed the book and thought that in this time there would be something useful - but there wasn't. Then I abandoned the book for months until I finally finished this book. It took me something like 2 years to do that (I started this book very long time before I joined to Goodreads). The 2 stars comes from that possibility that if I was able to read it in shorter time period, it would be better. The second thin is, that sometimes I was mildly inspired when I read the book.

[Donniesands · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually started this book last year when I started working on an article with a colleague about trauma-informed teaching at our school and while writing I started to realize that there was much more deeper pain involved than I had realized. It affected me so much I had to pause writing that article and i paused my reading of this incredible book. I picked it up again months later and slowly savoured each page. Louise DeSalvo describes her journey using writing as a healing practice through her trauma and beautifully outlines so many other writers who used their writing to make sense of their trauma and illnesses. She also goes into the research of how writing can help heal a person mentally through making sense of what seems disordered and chaotic. This book has fundamentally changed my life in ways i never expected and I will come back to it again and again.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing as a way of healing was a strong book on how writing can truly be a healthy way to heal from traumatic experiences in life. Sometimes it was difficult to read because the author would illustrate graphic examples of other people’s depressing situations. I skipped the parts I felt were too much for me and focused on the portions I felt would leave to the most growth and benefit. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression or just want to learn how to write in the most effective way to heal from past experiences this might be a good read for you. She brought out that by connecting both our feelings to events and not just venting or writing about the events alone we will receive the most benefit.

[Maia Twedt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved so much about this book, that I had to order a thrift store copy before returning my library book. This treasure trove offers further literature to read of authors who share their narrative arc of illness. It honors that illness begets opportunity to review what is essential, and to develop a way of relating to it in a meaningful way- for ourselves but also as a gift to others.
For those of us who live under the shadow of disability or impediment, writing offers a path which is directed toward regeneration, witness, and generosity. Writing shares testimony of one's own experience in a way that connects with ultimate experience of being human.

[Karen Quevillon · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeSalvo tells us about her own life but also the lives of many other acclaimed writers and how they are called to write in order to survive life, make sense of what is happening to them, bear witness to what was done to them, and achieve justice for the traumatic experiences they have endured.

For anyone with an interest in the creative process and the practice of writing, this book will give you additional food for thought on the relationship of writing to the self-understanding, care of self, and so many other aspects of literary communication.

[Evan Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely life-changing; I recommend this book to anyone I know who's been going through a difficult time, yet has the ability to put their story into words. It's a great aid for writers, and, at the same time, a road map for healing and becoming whole again. One is at the service of the other; neither takes precedence. Louise DeSalvo writes from her own experience with disarming honesty. Inspiring.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a lot of insights into writing and journaling by reading this book. There are a lot of great quotes and mental health commentary. I especially loved the insights highlighted from Virginia Woolf.

It did feel somewhat repetitive in places but that could have been issues I had with understanding how those passages were different.

Professor DeSalvo writes in a lot of sentence fragments which was a little difficult for me at times but I got used to it as I read.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was helpful about research surrounding how to share one’s experiences through writing as a form of therapy. I don’t agree with all of the author’s views (ex: you should disregard other’s privacy in sharing their stories where it intersects with yours). Also, this was written decades ago and it feels dated when it talks about using technology or the way we live. This isn’t dwelled upon, but thought I may point that out.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been studying this subject for years for myself and also for my students, in order to help them to write and heal.
I love this book for its honesty and for its authenticity. I thought it was highly helpful. I realized that I really needed to tackle some difficult traumas in order to heal and to develop as a writer. This book speaks the truth about writing and healing and Louise DeSalvo does it in a very loving way.