In today’s blog, I will be talking about the importance of writing and its impact on our well-being. One important thing to note is that you don’t always have to write academic papers to recognize the importance of writing and explore its benefits. You can also do it for fun and to aid in your well-being.
Importance of Writing and its advantages Creative or expressive writing helps people in maintaining their physical and mental health well-being. During 2018, Cambridge University Press posted about a study of group of people who were asked to participate in an expressive writing for 15-20 mins per day. They were asked to avoid downplaying their emotions when engaging in this research. It was discovered that people who expressed confidence in expressing their emotions in the writing had better physical and mental health indexes compared to people who wrote about neutral topics and downsized their emotions in writing. The results of this study clearly highlight the importance of personal or expressive writing such as journaling to help people regulate their emotions and maintain their physical and mental health well-being. Now, let’s talk more about journaling and how you can get started with it. Journaling Journaling is one of the healthiest ways to express oneself and deal with overwhelming emotions or situations. Whenever I have a bad day or the best day, I like to write about it. It helps me own my good actions and memories. It also helps me destress and prioritize my to-do lists, problems, and solutions on my bad days. Journaling gives us an opportunity to speak with ourselves and improve out communication skills at the same time. Some tips about how to get started! Some of the tips that you can easily incorporate in your busy schedule are as follows:
Baikie, K., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338-346. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.11.5.338
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There’s something so daunting about a blank screen, and I think that’s especially true when you’re trying to generate a piece of creative writing. You have an idea, whether it’s a line of dialogue, a snapshot of a moment in time, or a character who’s unrelentingly pestering you. It’s up to you to take that small detail and turn it into something beautiful.
So, how do you overcome the intimidation to do it? The first time I ever tried my hand at creative writing was when I was twelve, seated in the back of a crowded minivan on my way home from a long camping trip. My blank notes app stares back at me, daring me to take the leap of faith and start writing, so I did. I would be lying if I told you that I knew exactly what pushed me to start in that moment, but I’ve had a few years of practice since then and have tried all kinds of different things to overcome that moment of heart-clenching pressure that comes from a blank document. In my opinion, there are two different ways in which lightning strikes on a new story: the inspiration and the writing itself. Neither happens without the other, even if they’re process of their own. Below, I’ve included a couple of ways in which you can jar these elements into action. Inspiration: Inspiration—for me at least—comes from consumption of other media. It might be a song lyric I’ve heard dozens of times or the style of prose in a book I read, and part of why I love to write is because of the sudden moment when inspiration strikes in the most mundane of situations. Here is some of my advice on where you can find inspiration! - Other books: Reading books in the genre you want to write in is a great step in getting inspired! It’s a great way to discover what kind of reading resonates with you, because, at the end of the day, your goal with writing should be to write what you want to read! - Music: I am a HUGE Taylor Swift fan and growing up on her music has taught me the importance of digging deep into emotions, particularly in the idea of showing instead of telling. Musicians all present stories or moments in different ways and listening to their work can help you find your voice in your own writing. - Your own community: I find the biggest inspiration in the people in my personal life, whether it’s through things they say, stories they tell about their lives, or how they interact with others. Comparing how people react to certain situations can allow you to learn how to create nuance and motivation in your own writing. Writing: This is, more often than not, the harder part. You’ve found some element of a story you want to tell. Now what? - Pinterest Boards: If there is only one Pinterest fan in the world, it is me. Before I start writing anything, I always create a board for each of my main characters before pulling quotes and images that visually show me who they are. As a visual learner, seeing the story come to life through images makes it feel more tangible and allows me to connect with it more. - Outline: This is not something that every writer does, but it is critical to the success of my personal process. I like to outline the first few chapters in detail, write a summary for myself (like the one you’d read on the back of a book in bookstore), and break down key attributes of my characters before I even start. This sounds like a lot, but when I start writing, I know what I need to accomplish on my first page. All these steps are helpful in starting the process of writing, but my biggest piece of advice is this: it doesn’t need to be perfect. It is very easy to get stuck in a space of not wanting to start writing because you are worried that it won’t be “good” on your first go. I know that this is something I struggle with, too. Still, I always try to remind myself that this is only my first draft. The more you write of a story, the more you find the voice you want to tell it in and the more your characters click into place. This draft is to fully discover the story you want to tell, not the sparkling, final draft. You will always be your harshest critic. Be gentle with yourself and allow yourself to fall in love with your story, even with its flaws. You are writing a story. That alone is success. This is the third post written to both honor and spread awareness of gender diversity across cultures in both past and present day. To adequately do that, I will be addressing the forms of oppression these communities have faced as well as the implications that they have had on BIPOC communities today. While I have done some additional research, much of my analysis for this post in particular has been drawn from research I have done for classes in the past, and I will share sources throughout as well! If you have not already read the first post addressing the overall topic, I would highly recommend doing so for additional context.
I will admit that this post has been months in the making. Africa is vast not only in land but also in diversity and history. It is never my intention to portray the continent as monolithic. That being said, I also celebrate many aspects of Pan-Africanism as a descendent of those who were taken from the continent and survived elsewhere. A big part of accepting who I am in terms of my racial, ethnic, and gender identities have been dependent on discovery of some ways that Africans lived prior to colonization. This comes from having much of my association with my Blackness coming from a Christian evangelical church community and because of that, I found myself needing to reconcile my queerness. However, the more I learned about the gender diversity present in many pre-colonial African societies, I realized that my gender identity wasn’t contradictory to being Black at all. While much of what we know about gender norms has been limited or lost to history, much of what we do know about them can be revealed or inferred by the spiritualities of different groups! As far as gender diversity that can be found in some African spiritualities, Olokun, an Orisha from the Yoruba tradition is a strong example. Olokun has been recognized as being male, female, or androgynous by different groups. In addition to different interpretations about Olokun’s gender, there are some possible social implications as a result to Olokun’s deviation from the binary. Women have been allowed to have the same spiritual authority and power in the worship of the deity as men do, which has not always been the case in other spiritual practices. Another example is Amma, who is the supreme creator in Dogon spirituality. Amma is believed to embody both male and female principles. This has been explained both for the reasons of being consistent of the duality present throughout Dogon beliefs and because Dogon represents the reproductive process as a whole. One final example is Hapi from Egyptian spirituality. Though Hapi is generally referred to as male, he has been depicted as having large breasts to represent the prosperity that comes from the annual flooding of the Nile River. In other regions of the continent, gender diversity was evidenced in multiple human societies. According to Syvia Uganda of Makere University Uganda, the “mudoko dako” were part of the Langi in northern Uganda. She claimed that they were “effeminate males” who “were treated as women and could marry men.” In what is known as Angola, a Portuguese soldier in 1681 reported that there was “among the Angolan pagan much sodomy.” In the same account, the soldier claimed in less kind terms that Chibados were not monogamous and dressed as women. From another Portuguese account, there was an enslaved woman named Vitoria who was arrested in 1556 during the Inquisition in Lisbon. In spite of being arrested for deviance and sodomy, James H. Sweet of University of Wisconsin Madison claims that she “insisted that she was a woman and had the anatomy to prove it.” Unfortunately, she was given a life sentence. Sweet explains that, for people like Vitoria, “same-sex behaviours were simply expressions of their broader spiritual roles, roles that went completely unrecognized by the Portuguese.” What was described above are only a few small examples in regard to gender diversity in connection to the history of the vast continent of Africa. However, I did not grow up hearing of these examples at all, and I am now very protective of this information and determined to seek out much more. By doing so, I hope to educate more Black communities of who some of our ancestors were and how they may have lived for centuries prior to and even during the onset of enslavement and colonization. Not only do we need to honor their memory, but we need to do better by each other and acknowledge some of the damaging views about gender that have been imposed on and embraced in our communities today. One could argue that we have lost many Black women like Vitoria in only the last few years, and we need to do more to protect each other. It is by engaging with and acknowledging our full histories that these lasting trends are recognized. Bek References and Further Reading: "Amma." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11 Apr. 2014. academic-eb-com.proxy.seattleu.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Amma/605230. Asante, Molefi K. and Ama Mazama. "Amma." Encyclopedia of African Religion. Edited by Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2009, pp. 40. SAGE Knowledge. 2 Jun 2022, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964623.n25. Asante, Molefi K. and Ama Mazama. "Olokun." Encyclopedia of African Religion. Edited by Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2009, pp. 489-90. SAGE Knowledge. 2 Jun 2022, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964623.n307. Elnaiem, Mohammed. "The “Deviant” African Genders That Colonialism Condemned." JSTOR Daily, 29 Apr. 2021, daily.jstor.org/the-deviant-african-genders-that-colonialism-condemned/. "Hapi." Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 10 Jul. 2008. academic-eb-com.proxy.seattleu.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Hapi/39188. |
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January 2024
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