Healing Within the Words - Blog (December)

Literature can bring a great source of comfort and courage during tough times. Writing allows us to express ourselves. Reading enables us to feel heard and seen. The two go hand in hand. Acting is also helpful in communicating thoughts, emotions, ideas and concepts.

The beautiful thing about getting lost in the words is we find ourselves in them. A lot of the time it's to do with perspective - the physical or emotional place we are in can dictate how we perceive a text, which fuels us to be enlightened by its impact. Characters, settings and ideas can resonate deeply with readers, who in turn will remember the text according to how it made them feel. Just like how someone remembers a good meal because of the taste, the appearance, the atmosphere, and even the hospitality service.

It's not always within the words that people find joy, grief, relief, angst, wonder, etcetera. It can be in the style or structure, such as monosyllabic lines in a poem, or rhyming, or perhaps the words are peppered on the page, disembodied limbs of sentences that give weight and validation to the readers feelings.

Readers want to read what's relevant to them, even if it's not directly about them. It could be in the best interest of a family member or friend that they've picked up a self-help book or a poetry collection written from the author's experience of hopelessness. They either have an expectation of what they'll learn or no ideas at all. It is in the writer's best interest to connect with the reader in that same space while expressing their own feelings. Words are delicate, fragile, precious. Countless hours are spent searching for the perfect word that many can murmur beneath their breaths, like that one Lego piece you can picture in your mind, but cannot find.

More than anything though, the art of reading, writing, acting and so forth in the arts industry, it's about everyone having a collective thirst to be understood and helps others understand. Nobody experiences things the exact same way you do, and that's a big deal! Yet tens of thousands of authors, characters and narrators have shared in your emptiness and try to put words to that wound whatever it may be: loss, heartbreak, homesickness, a sense of failure. There's three reasons for this act: to enable one to be feel validated, to enable inner healing, and to inspire reflection, thus giving birth to words that the reader can use to express his or her own story. Their journey. Their overcoming. What once was becomes what is.

A few books I have found healing through reading is:

• first and foremostly, The Bible ('The Lost Son' is my favorite' Luke 15:11-32);

• Because Everything is Right But Everything is Wrong, Erin Donohue

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton

• Gravity Let Me Go, Trent Dalton

• Pieces of You, Eileen Merriman

• The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, Charlie Mackesy

• Every Day - David Levithan

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin

I suppose the upside to new groundbreaking AI technology is we can simply search up "Books that have a focus on XYZ" and the search engine will provide an extensive list of texts that may qualify. Books where we can find healing within the words. According to australiareads.org.au, the benefits of reading for mental health include: stress reduction; less loneliness; less risk of depression; better night's sleep; helps understand difficult situations.

As a final thought: to put pen to paper or open a book is to begin a harrowing journey. Brave is the reader who sails from the port of what once was to what is.

-Campbell