In “Expressive Writing, Emotional Upheavals, and Health,” James W. Pennebaker and Cindy K. Chung discuss the health benefits of writing, specifically writing in order to help people work through trauma. They write, “The problem of capturing an experience with language is comparable to the engineering difficulty of defining an analog signal using digital technology,” and I’m very inclined to agree (Pennebaker and Chung 26). I believe that when writing about traumatic experiences especially, people may be initially resistant to put pen to page, making the transference from experience to written word a bit difficult for some. Maybe I just have trouble finding the words, but when it comes to my own journaling, I spend a lot of time trying to get as close as I can to describing or emulating the emotions I felt during the time I’m trying to record; I feel like focusing on doing so is a huge part of what helps an individual process these events in the first place, but the writing of the event often comes after I’ve processed the event to a certain degree. Pennebaker and Chung don’t seem to agree, as they continue, “Once an experience is translated into language, however, it can be processed in a conceptual manner. In language format, the individual can assign meaning, coherence, and structure. This would allow for the event to be assimilated and, ultimately, resolved and/or forgotten, thereby alleviating the maladaptive effects of incomplete emotional processing on health” (Pennebaker and Chung 27). In my own experience, the writing and processing aren’t so clean cut; I believe the act of writing helps with processing, but there is a lot of overlap between the two. I can’t write down my experience until I acknowledge my experience, but in order to do so I need to process it, even in part. I do believe that the strange zone between “experience” and “written” is where healing starts to begin, similar to how acknowledging a change is needed can help facilitate change.

All this being said, I definitely believe there are positive benefits to writing about these traumatic events. I do think that having them committed to writing can help signify a sort of moving on, or at the very least, it gives the writer space to organize and reframe their experience in order to find closure. Additionally, the fact that the health benefits of writing are being studied is something that fills me with hope and gladness, as it verifies the feeling I’ve had for years that writing is a positive, healing force in my life.

This blog post was written while listening to Charlie Parker’s 1951 album The Magnificent Charlie Parker. I went to a jazz bar with some friends this past weekend named Ornithology, and its name made me want to listen to some Charlie Parker for the rest of the weekend.