Daily, we are bombarded with media messages promising quick-fix solutions to transform our lives — attached to expensive course offerings, dietary supplements, and exercise plan enrollments — all of which, of course, can be helpful. But what if you already have the tool you need sitting on your kitchen table?

Writing is a gift you give yourself that is both free and freeing.

It allows you to begin your transformation immediately, instead of waiting for someone or something to blow the whistle to announce the start of your evolution.

Sometimes you are in a job, a relationship, or a situation that has no commitment to your well-being nor buy-in to your growth, yet you don’t know how to unravel the complexity required to make a change, and therefore stagnation feels like the only option.

Writing, however, makes movement possible, on your own or in conjunction with a licensed mental health professional.

Writing is an invitation to search inward, reflect, and imagine your life’s possibilities.

First, writing helps you to celebrate the ordinary, noticing those corners of your existence that bring you joy and meaning, such as the weekly Zoom calls with your adult children, where you catch up on life’s little unfoldings. Recording these pockets of goodness each evening serves as a reminder and a record of life’s small blessings (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Second, writing invites you to examine the larger cultural issues that serve to muffle your voice and limit your growth (Dunlap, 2007). The Brazilian educator and activist, Paulo Freire (2000), often referred to as the father of Critical Pedagogy, described these institutions as “cultures of silence.”

Third,........

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