How "Free Writing" Set Me Free

I went from being a bad communicator to a good communicator after taking a half-day course in “free writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was and how it helped me capture my thoughts and feelings on paper. I’ll share the simplicity with you here and something I recently wrote to serve as an example and also share a bit of my own mental health journey. 

My morning free writing exercise is coupled with breathing practices, visualizations and physical priming (pushups, gut work, ‘Skye diving,’ flow dance). All are essentially mindfulness exercises I’ve picked up along the way.  

Free Writing

Free writing is a strategy developed by Peter Elbow in 1973, is similar to brainstorming but is written in sentence and paragraph form without stopping. MIT.edu says the practice...

• Increases the flow of ideas and reduces the chance that you’ll accidentally censor a good idea
• Helps to increase emotional fluency — i.e., the ability to produce written language forces us to choose words to depict thoughts and feelings

As in brainstorming,

• DO write down every idea about your topic, no matter how "wild"; you can judge later! (And no one else is going to see it… unless you share it with the world on LinkedIn)
• DON'T worry about correct grammar or spelling

Unlike in brainstorming,

• DO write in sentence and paragraph form
• DO KEEP YOUR HANDS MOVING. Just keep flowing
• DO keep going for 10 minutes 

A Recent Entry

The next part is my free writing entry from August 5th 2019. 

Warning: it is personal, raw and intense. I hope you are inspired to free write your story too.

We’re all in pain. I can see it now, so very clearly, the moment that I woke up and saw the light. I made a choice and moved out of my own way after the deaths in the family. Through necessity, I pulled myself out of my own misery and had an awakening of sorts. Now, in terms of the work I'm doing around mental health activism (for children and adults), I’m looking around and realizing life isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean it has to be challenging. We’re all part of this collective; in this ant farm, together. We connect through storytelling; telling our own stories. Real stories.... Not only the ones with knights in shining armor. This one is about a different kind of armor.

When I got into back in to therapy and coaching - hard - a third go around, it woke me up... when I let it. That’s the key - self-permission. Light bulbs lit up everywhere and I was shown a path to be fulfilled and be a more complete person by walking through the fire of my truth. I used to be cut off, and had a very cynical view about life - negativity around therapy, taught myself that love is not abundant, closed off to familial relationships, scoffed at meditation and even self-care. All the things I thought made me weak and vulnerable were, in fact, the things that made me stronger, inside and out. Gosh, was I wrong. Then I re-committed to looking inward and realized all those soft things were the hard things. I had it flipped... exactly backwards. The way to pure strength and bravery was through the fire of vulnerability, sharing and listening.

Being a new father, I've never been more aware that the things that happen to us in childhood direct the patterns of our behavior for the rest of our lives - whether we wish to look at them and see them or not. Own them, or not. For example, I have struggled to trust people because when I was 8 my older brother Josh told me he was going to be right back. Then he took his own life. As an eight-year-old, even though I understood that he passed away and I knew he struggled with his mental health, but emotionally you’re not old enough to articulate it to yourself to understand you were not rejected. You were not lied to and that you can actually rely on people. I felt unbearable shame and pain. It was tough to delineate what pain was what. It was just a black ooze of sadness, shame, rage, fear, regret, all mixed up, coupled with the fact that I did not know how to help my parents and sisters heal. I simply didn’t have the words. Then my Uncle Jay died. And in a 20 month span, all 4 of my grandparents were gone. My parents did not know what to do. We fell apart. My whole family fell apart. It was a profound loss for me; Josh was a father figure to me. There was no exposing the true depths of my pain when I was young so I locked it up so tightly and built walls around my heart. I didn't have the tools to do anything else. I didn’t know there were tools nor was I ready to see them. There was no getting through to me with talk therapy. I just pushed past it, pushed past it, and get out of the house, move away and start a new life… so that’s what I did. By myself. Alone. It didn’t have to be that way. It wasn’t that way when I look at it now. There was love all around me. I just didn’t see it. By the time I was 30 years old, I was carrying so much baggage and wearing an unbearable coat of heavy armor it was tough to stand, figuratively. And then my dad Marty died before my wedding, unexpectedly. It was a breaking point… rather, a breakthrough point. I was present with it. I was right there with him when he passed. Holding his hand and singing into his ear. There was no shame. There was only love. The tools I had assembled and the practices I’ve been using for some time, helped me categorize this loss appropriately and created a more fertile bed for this story to rest. 

When I started sharing my story I realized it was helpful to me, but it also helpful to others. I thought I was just telling my story. I didn’t realize I was telling so many people’s stories. I thought who the heck wants to hear about all the dark spots? It seems like we all have some darkness lurking in the shadows. Only recently have I started to share my own mental health journey and people have said things like, “you’ve given me so much courage to learn my story and to tell it” or “I admit I’m in pain and I’ve been suffering” or “to understand my anger, I needed to look in the mirror” or "there is a super power in learning my gaps" or “I have been acting this way far too long and not one person called me on it… not even me?” or “thank you.”

I need to one day figure out my story and share it with the world, because I’m going through this and I can’t imagine how many other people are going through it and don’t even know. If I can help one single person see the light at the end of the tunnel, it was worth it. Everyone has goodness and brilliance in them. It’s just that many people are lost, but there is hope. Trust me, there is love all around you and inside of you. Boundless love. Without this North Star, it's hard to get your bearings. For me, that’s worth paying attention to. Zoom in on that because love heals all. I was lost for a long time, so I know the feeling all too well and want to help. I don’t want anyone to suffer the way my brother suffered. Or I suffered.

Sometimes, it is painful to look deeply in the mirror, but when you do with an open, honest and curious heart, you see the love and the light that's right there.

And you are free.

Love,

Matt

“quick now, here, now, always-

a condition of complete simplicity

(costing not less than everything)”

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Marty and Josh’s favorite poem.

If you've made it this far, there is no call to action other than an offer from me.

I am here for you. Always.

Feel free to reach out to me. Maybe we can share stories.