If you have taken a look at my work before the “What’s On Your Mind?” column, you will likely find most of my articles have a theme of mental health. My mental wellbeing is something that I have always taken seriously, as well as devoted much of my time and energy to, so it makes sense for this pattern to emerge in my writing. Not only do the articles I publish resonate with mental health themes, but I have found my poetry to echo this devotion to mental health too. Since elementary school, I gravitated to writing; I loved receiving essay assignments, coming up with stories, and writing in my free time.
As I moved into high school, writing developed into a way for me to be able to cope with the mental health struggles that began to arise. I did not know yet, nor suspect, that I had anxiety, but I grew increasingly more nervous, stressed, and overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities I was taking on at the time. I thus began to write poetry. It was not so much a conscious decision as it was a natural development of what I wrote in my free time. I began to write less story ideas and snippets of plots, and more poems and expressions of my emotions at the time. I found that when I was able to put how I was feeling onto paper, a bit of the weight on my shoulders and mind lifted. I felt more grounded, a bit less tense, and as if I had more control over my situation.
While writing a poem did not drastically change my mood or solve any issues that were occurring at the time, it certainly improved my mental wellbeing in the moment. Putting my thoughts down and seeing them, rather than just hearing them on repeat in my head, allowed me to be able to look at them from a different perspective and clear my mind. It also gave me a way to document my mental health journey, as I can see how my writing shifts from themes of despair, pain, and heartache to themes with more underlying tones of perseverance, hope, and healing. I even reflect on this growth in my old article “Rising Through Writing.”
Though I have written about journaling to help my anxiety in past installments of this column, I wanted to touch on how creative writing specifically can be beneficial for your mental health. Poetry in particular has resonated with me because of its strong embodiment of emotion. Take for instance the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Known for his romantic poems, his work “Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)” embodies the pain of losing someone you love and the reflection back on the relationship that is inherently part of that pain. He writes “I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.” He expresses how he no longer is in love with her, but when he was, that love was genuine and ran deeply in his heart.
It is beautiful the way we can peer into others’ lives through their poetry, as it serves as an excerpt from their life’s story. We are given an opportunity to learn and understand something about them, and in turn, we may learn or understand something about ourselves. In writing our own poetry, we can offer ourselves some comfort and engage in a healthy coping mechanism, and when we read a writer’s poem, we have the chance to listen to them and their struggles, as well as to their advice. In writing of this pain, Neruda presented thousands of people with a way to relate to him, to know that someone else out there has felt a similar pain and given a voice to that pain. Poetry allows us to connect with one another and have our own experiences be validated.
This is remarkable when considering mental health, and it points to how poetry can be used as a form of resistance against the mental health stigma. I always wrote to provide a remedy for myself, but beyond that, my writing could one day serve in the same way as Neruda’s does; it can speak to the pain that others are experiencing and show those struggling with anxiety or their mental health that they are not alone. I am looking forward to one day compiling my work into a collection of poetry to publish, so that I am able to tell others my story and offer a remedy to them. If I am able to do that for one of my readers, I will believe I am an accomplished writer. In the meantime, enjoy a glimpse into my work by scrolling through some of the poems I have on my Her Campus page, and keep an eye out for my name in the poetry section of bookstores in the coming years!