Writing Rx

What does it mean, this writing thing? Why is it so important to us, so ingrained in our lives and so necessary?

This weekend was very scary. The frightening medical landscape of the last few days has taken me to mental and emotional places I have never been before.

The baby, our 14 month old granddaughter was hospitalized.

It didn’t matter that she was in one of the best hospitals in the world, (Yale), it didn’t matter that we were told what she had was fixable, all that wound around my head and heart was the constriction of fear. Something horrible was happening to the most innocent and lovable member of our family. To experience pain, uncomfortable tests and being taken to an unfamiliar place set to help you, without being able to intellectualize the necessity of it all, is what played over and over on my mind. I just wanted it all to go away, for her, and for me.

I couldn’t sleep, I cried and cried, and when at work all I thought about was her. Every word, every deed, every interaction with clients, friends and family was preambled and postscript by worry. We visited her, saw she was going to be okay, but it wasn’t enough. All I wanted was for her to be totally and unequivocally better.

She is coming home today and the breath I have been holding will not be expelled until I hold her in my arms, in her home or mine. 

So it is, that now the importance of writing, as panacea, has bubbled to the top of the caldron which has been steaming on the main-burner and threatening to boil over.

The words we summon, the ideas we unearth, erase and let rise again, the communicative ranges we traverse are all there to sooth that which smolders within all of us. If life is the journey, and health is the ticket, than writing is the conductor punching the ticket to all the destinations along the way. Non-fiction is the bare-bone of reality, fiction is the escape to catch breath.

I don’t think I could have come this far in life without writing. In fact I know I would not have. The joys of childhood, marriage, raising children, watching them walk away and back again with children of their own, the pain and fear of indecision, confusion and loss, all seems to melt away when warmed by the rays of pen and paper in hand. Writing is a powerful prescription when the world begins to dissolve. Even when scribbled by an all-powerful hand, writing helps and God-willing, cures.

 

When has writing last soothed you?

UPDATE:
It's April, she's home healthy and the little pistol she was. Thanks all for your heart felt sentiments, and for you folks dropping by via QOTKU, welcome.