{"id":441,"date":"2015-09-18T15:49:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T15:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/?p=441"},"modified":"2015-09-18T16:01:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T16:01:26","slug":"writing-as-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/2015\/09\/18\/writing-as-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing as Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life<\/strong> is not easy; not that I really have to tell any of you that. Things aren\u2019t always good and sometimes we have to avoid them to keep ourselves safe. In the event that things get out of control, it becomes categorized as an interference on life and sometimes a mental illness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Treatments often include coping methods and therapy and other times medication is required. Living like this makes life even harder. Trying to process these things can be a whole different traumatic experience. If you\u2019ve ever been through therapy, the first thing every therapist seems to suggest is to keep a journal. Not everyone can write about the problems they have because sometimes they can\u2019t identify them. There are other times that while writing might help, they need to digest the events of their life first. I\u2019m one of these people; I can\u2019t talk about things right after they happen and a big reason for it is that I simply can\u2019t always wrap my head around what consequences are to come. Whenever a therapist told me to \u201cgive it a go\u201d I rolled my eyes and told them that it was a useless activity for me. I\u2019ve changed<\/strong> on that statement.<\/p>\n

Reading has been a big part of my life since I was able to get my grubby little hands on a book. I like stories and characters I can relate to-not unlike other readers- and many of my favorite pieces to read have been those that tie into my identity and the intersecting pieces that play into it. Since starting college, I\u2019ve been finding and receiving\u00a0more of these kinds of books and pieces to read; many have been related to race and ethnicity. I\u2019ve been able to find meaning for myself in these pieces, but never<\/strong> wholly. This has been something that I\u2019ve discussed with many others and have found they are drawn to similar conclusions. It probably doesn\u2019t help that there are not many South Asian female writers who want to write about living in the United States. Realizing this, I\u2019ve found an answer to the question that has been lurking over me for the past several years: what are you going to do with your degree? Write<\/strong>. I\u2019m going to write a book; something memoir-ish but also dabbling into creative non-fiction to tell my experience as an Asian American.
\nGrowing up, it was hard to even talk about my race and ethnicity without getting picked on. Being Asian American in a mostly white town was tricky and invalidating. No one wanted to say they were racist when they made Asian jokes at me or when they voiced their doubt about my heritage. It hurt and left scars on my psyche that I\u2019m still trying to heal from. In my studies, I\u2019ve found that writing about it to tell my story has helped greatly and therefore why I\u2019m writing this to you. By delving into this project, I hope for a couple of things. First, I hope that the end product will help someone also struggling with living in the grey area of race. That is truly the only way that I want to measure the success of this project. My second goal however, is to be able to repair myself by going through this. Since I am writing with the hope to help others, it is easier to say what I need in an artistic way; in a way that I don\u2019t have to be blunt and put all of myself out there.
\nThis writing has been therapeutic already and I would suggest it to anyone else. Our stories and experiences are unique, but humans have an infinite<\/strong> capacity for empathy; writing is the way to tap into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life is not easy; not that I really have to tell any of you that. Things aren\u2019t always good and sometimes we have to avoid them to keep ourselves safe. In the event that things get out of control, it becomes categorized as an interference on life and sometimes a mental illness. Treatments often include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[14,16,53,27,52,43],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stress-relief-2","category-uncategorized","tag-creative-writing","tag-culture","tag-help","tag-multicultural","tag-therapy","tag-writing-process"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}