People ask me sometimes why I keep writing about the hard things — the addiction, the grief, the years of not knowing where I belonged. The honest answer is that the page has always been safer than saying it out loud. A poem doesn't interrupt you. It doesn't flinch, and it doesn't need you to soften it for its own comfort.
I started writing as a child, long before I understood what I was actually doing. I know now that it was a way of putting something down instead of carrying it. That's still what it is for me — a place to set a feeling down on paper so it isn't only living in the body anymore.
When I lead a workshop, I'm not asking anyone to write something beautiful. I'm asking them to write something true, even if it's three lines, even if it's a list. A list can be a poem. So can a letter you never send. The craft comes later — first you just have to let something out.
Healing isn't linear, and neither is writing about it. Some days the page gives you a way through. Other days it just gives you a place to sit with the weight for a while. Both are useful. Both are part of the same work.
If you take one thing from this: you don't have to call yourself a writer to write. You just have to be willing to be honest on the page, one line at a time.