Stop Writing to Yourself. Write someone else.

Close to my whole life, I have kept a journal. I believed it to be my one good place to vent. I believed that my journal helped me to express myself and helped me to deal with the world. Now that I think about it, my journal actually kept me from dealing with the world and made me more introverted. Instead talking about how something upset me, I wrote it in my journal. No one ever really knew how I felt about anything.

When I first started this blog, I often wrote about how miserably in pain I was, or how I felt alone. When I did that, a had a whole new set of people show up to support me and let me know that I wasn't alone. I then found that I had less of an urge to write in my journal.

This morning, I was going to sit down and write in my journal how much I enjoyed visiting with my cousins when I went to Louisiana. I stopped myself and decided that I would just write my cousins a letter and tell them how much I enjoyed visiting them. This is much better than writing it in a book that no one will ever read, don't you think?

When you have lupus, it is so easy to cut yourself off from the world because you're tired or in too much pain to deal, but we need to try not to do that. We need to reach out to others to help us deal with the challenges that lupus brings.

So many people tell us the best way to get things off our chest is to write in a journal, but I'm going to say that the best way is to write a letter, or start a blog, or to join a discussion board. Reach out. Let others know how you feel. Find out how others feel. If you know you aren't in this alone, it makes it easier to get through each day.

Take care.

Live lupie!

LupieKat