#expressive-writing

#expressive-writing

When my youngest foster daughter was in treatment for her severe eating disorder, one of her therapies involved writing a trauma narrative. In 11 single-spaced, both sides, she documented all the obstacles she had overcome in her young life: the death of her father, her mother's alcoholism. Then, in what her counselor called a destruction ceremony, she shredded her words, stuffed them into balloons, and set them sailing on her way outside of the residential treatment facility where she was living at the time.

As I've shared before, when I was 12, I was playing at a friend's house one hot August afternoon when I was told I was needed at home. As I turned into my long driveway, I saw the lights of an ambulance, a stretcher being loaded into the back. The doors slammed shut. The whirling lights threw red streaks across the oaks as it sped past me out of our driveway. No one noticed the small, pale, immobilized girl standing by the mailbox.