My best friend is training to be
a counsellor (probably after having so much practice with me haha). Over the New Year period she had to write an
essay about how she had changed since starting the course. Since we have both been on a massive journey
this past year I decided to do it too.
The idea was that you write down
how you remember that you used to be and how you think you have changed. But then you have to read out your essay out
loud to the group, and they then analyse what you have said.
We agree to both read our essays to
each other. I have known my best friend
for nearly twenty years so she knows every nook and cranny of the way my mind
works and the person that I am, so I have no qualms in reading mine aloud.
What reading my essay turned out
to be was something I hadn’t anticipated.
Writing down how you feel can be
incredibly cathartic and I have experienced that many times during the course
of writing this blog. But actually speaking
the words out loud seems to release the words and bring them off the page and
into reality.
It makes sense really, you think
all the time and you may come to conclusions in your head, decisions are made and you
may write those thoughts down, but they are rarely in spoken form. Those thoughts become tangible the moment
that they pass your lips.
I could hear the rise and fall of
confidence in my voice. The passion that
I felt about some issues practically sung out of me. You could hear the conviction and strength behind
the words I spoke, but then with other matters I wasn’t so sure about, the
voice softened and became quieter. Things
that I thought that I had gotten over completely produced tears that I didn’t expect to
come.
After finishing there was such a
feeling of release and like absolution of sins, the thoughts and feelings that
had been trapped in my head and on paper had been liberated. I felt free of them.
When I got home from my holiday,
the thing that had made me cry, I immediately ejected from my life. The dead wood has been cleared and I’m ready
and excited to see what lies ahead of me.
Try it. Find something that you have written, something
where you are talking about how you feel, something powerful. Say the words out loud, let them take their
own flow and don’t stop. If you have
someone you trust enough to say them to, do that.
It was amazing for me; hope that
it is the same for you. Now I'm aware that this post was a little "deep hippy trippy" so in case you didn't want to read all that, here's a singing weasel. Enjoy.
