How I healed under a year from Journaling

They say that time heals, although writing does the healing sometimes 😉
Blessing O. Okoro

Photo by Jess Bailey Designs from Pexels

Writing & Healing

Last year was a lot for me, a young Nigerian living in France. I bore the burden from two countries (my home country – Nigeria and my host country – France)

In Nigeria, there was the #endsars movement around October last year. And in France we had a series of continuous lockdown – a literal ‘stay at home’! It was tough, it was sad, it was something I had never experienced before.

I never believed in my life that I would ever live a day when the military will take the guns and kill young Nigerian citizens (while they sang their own national anthem). It’s even painful to mention. That night, I bled, I was bleeding on the inside and crying on the outise – I couldn’t sleep.
I just couldn’t sleep well for days 😭

Photo by **Ivan Samkov** from **Pexels**

And even more, the shock! The literal shock I felt. I prayed for my family and friends, out of this shock. I checked-in on my people back home every single morning I opened my eyes, out of that shock. I cried to feel better, out of the shock. I didn’t feel better… I didn’t.

And then the next weeks came along. The next months ran along. Though when the next year came by, I began to write. I didn’t write about the experiences, no. I simply bled out poems. I bled on the outside this time in form of words. I bled out the poems, ‘Forgiveness‘, ‘His Love‘, ‘Heal‘. Even more, I wrote in my journal almost every single day (every single day for a period of time). I wrote daily in order to keep my sanity, to hold the pieces together, to live out each day without screaming.
Those were long days… Those were simply long days.

While I was writing, I didn’t know that I was healing in the process. I was just writing, that’s all. And the more I wrote, the more I could live through each day (I prayed in order to write, I wrote in order to pray). I wrote and I prayed and I lived out each day at a time. I thank God.

They say, ‘thank God we don’t look like what we’ve been through’. For me, I looked like what I was going through. I did. I was hurt. They also say, ‘time heals’. In my case, writing did. It took the bleeding of those poems, the words penned in my journal, the words of love and encouragement I read on Instagram, the words from my Bible, the words from the LORD, to heal me.

I realize this because I never imagined that I could be whole in less than a year. This is about a year later and I remember the experiences not from a place of hurt, but simply from a place of memory. That’s unreal… Time can not do that. If it could no one would be hurting years after. But writing did, words did, God did.

And I’m beyond grateful for the inspiration to bleed those poems, to pen words in my journal and to have care-filled words all around me while I healed. And I did heal. Thank God. I do believe this would help someone else, that’s why I thought to share. And not just share the good news that I healed, but also share the how – writing.

Join me on Saturday, 25th September as I talk on the theme, ‘Writing and Healing’ ⏳✍🏽🤍