Writing for Resilience and Joy in Uncertain Times
Today, I’m happy to share an article I wrote for Spirituality & Health magazine featuring the wisdom of my writing mentor of thirteen years—best-selling author Laura Davis. I hope it inspires you to join our free writing workshop on Saturday, November 15, Writing as a Pathway to Resilience & Joy. Please don’t think you need to consider yourself a writer to attend. Everyone is welcome and everyone can benefit!
Best-selling author Laura Davis explains how writing cultivates strength and renewal—and offers powerful prompts to spark your own creative inspiration.
Resilience can be defined as the capacity to recover from difficulties and adapt well to change. The more resilient we are, the better we’re able to access inner strength and flexibility when navigating setbacks.
Laura Davis, author of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse among several other books, has provided resources for healing, self-discovery, and personal empowerment for more than three decades through her writing, retreats, and workshops. In our conversation, she explains how writing can help us navigate through hardship and uncertainty.
Myra Goodman: Laura, we’re living in especially challenging times, with frightening and heartbreaking news from around the globe coming at us nonstop. How can writing be a source of strength and support when the world feels so overwhelming?
Laura Davis: When things feel out of control and we’re frightened about the future, our inner resources become more essential than ever. If we numb out or collapse in the face of adversity, we’re not able to help ourselves or anyone else.
Writing can help us remember times we faced tough circumstances and rose to meet them. We can write about the strength of people in our lineage—or anyone we admire, even a historical or fictional character—who stood up and showed the type of wisdom and courage we need to find and harness within ourselves.
How is the ability to find joy in the midst of challenges a skill that supports resiliency?
Joy replenishes the spirit, restores hope, and helps us keep moving forward even when life is challenging. It increases our capacity to solve problems, discover creative solutions, and touch others in a positive way.
Even during the hardest times, we can look for and savor moments of joy. Despair doesn’t help anyone, and it never makes the world a better place. But our joy can make a radical difference.
Cultivating joy requires paying full attention to the moment we’re in. This means breaking the habit of obsessing about all the bad things that are happening in the world or may happen in the future, and instead using your senses to notice what’s around you. It could be the way the light lands on a leaf, a child’s smile, the taste of a fresh peach, connecting with another person while standing in line at the grocery store. Writing about the things that bring us joy makes them more vivid and longer lasting. It also allows us to share our joy with others.
Upper Salmon Lake, photo by Laura Davis
Many people feel intimidated about putting pen to paper, but you view writing as a powerful tool available to everyone.
Just like you don’t need to have perfect pitch to take pleasure in singing, you don’t need to be a “good writer”—or even consider yourself a writer at all—to use writing as an effective, empowering form of self-expression and self-discovery.
I teach a freewriting practice that works well for beginners and established writers alike. Basically, you pick a prompt, set a timer for 10 to 20 minutes, and then write continuously without stopping. By refusing to pause, you bypass your inner critic and often uncover truths, memories, and feelings you didn’t even know were waiting to be expressed. Don’t worry about spelling, syntax, or grammar. No editing, censoring, or judging. Just go for the gut and get the raw material out. You can engage with editorial brain later on.
You are famous for your powerful writing prompts, and you shared a beautiful one in one of your Substack posts recently: “What hasn’t changed?” You said this prompt can be an effective antidote to fear because it reminds us of the parts of our life that have held steady and the little things we still control.
Good writing prompts make facing a blank page less daunting and lead you to remember things you hadn’t thought about in decades by giving you a doorway into your subconscious and sparking your deep creativity.
Writing about what does not change—like the sun rising and setting every single day, or the steam and aroma from our morning cup of coffee or tea—can ground us when life is chaotic and unpredictable. Here are six additional prompts that I find similarly helpful:
Share a time you didn’t think you were strong enough, but found out you were.
Write out a set of instructions for living a life full of uncertainty.
In the center of the storm.
A gift I bring to the world.
When all else fails.
What gives me strength.
Point Lobos State Park, photo by Laura Davis
You always encourage people to include a lot of sensory details when writing. Why is that so important?
Sensory detail helps your body remember the experience and makes it possible to communicate it viscerally to someone else. If you just say, “I was so happy to see my daughter again,” that doesn’t do anything for a reader. But if you slow down, take us into the moment, and include details of what your daughter was wearing, what it felt like when you first saw her at the airport, how she ran towards you, the ways her body felt different because you hadn’t held it in two years—you bring people into the experience with you and help them feel the emotions you had at the time.
How does writing cultivate hope?
Writing not only helps us remember who we are and what really matters to us, it’s also a way to use our voice to advocate for what we value and want to work toward. It reminds us that we have efficacy and that we can make a difference, no matter how small. It’s millions of us committed to making our own small difference that leads to stronger communities, more compassionate human interconnection, and a better world.
