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Write your Own Prescription: Journal

  • Feb 6
  • 3 min read

By Becca Rae Eagle, M.S.Ed.


Rescripting my health took one prescription: Add pen to paper, twice daily.


Five years ago, I returned to journaling, dipping the tip of my pen into a healing well.


As Covid carried on, in Autumn, 2021, my emotional, physical, financial, occupational, mental, and spiritual health were at a crossroads. I faced an ultimatum: pick up your pen or perish.


Within six months, I had nearly healed. I owned my own business, had written a book, started a podcast, and physically transformed my nervous system as well as cleared sinus blockages that had kept me out of work for months. Adding elements of somatic stretching, contemplative prayer, and meditation to my journaling then compounded my healing. Over the past five years I helped my husband land a career path he had always wanted to explore, moved to an area of our dreams, am featured in Social Scientist Julie Browne’s book, Masters of Change, lost sixty-three pounds preparing to donate my liver to my father battling cancer, have a story featured in an international bestselling collection, manifested a new set of wheels, and walked my son through a life threatening diagnosis of his own. From broke, burned out, grieving, sick, suicidal, and pre-diabetic, to now leading others in a simple practice that mirrors miraculous self-care results, journaling is a prescription backed by science that also taps into the reservoir of our soul.


One, ninety minute practice incorporating somatic stretching, meditating to healing vibrational music, contemplating a sacred text, then journaling and reflecting, applying an affirmation of the day, for 60 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night, bookend my days in medicine. I call my practice Sacred Penning. Research continues to highlight that, “adults with elevated anxiety found that online journaling for 12 weeks (about three months) significantly reduced their mental distress. Long-term journaling was also associated with greater resilience”¹ (Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University). In a more recent study, Dr. Helen Lavretsky, M.D., UCLA, shares that “mind-body practices,” like the ones I use “can change the biological stress response and result in more resilient outcomes, mental and physical,” improving “population-level cognitive resilience, reduc[ing] dementia, and reduc[ing] health care costs.”²


Between 2018 and 2022 we faced…from moving across the country to care for dying parents and being wiped financially clean…to Finally facing early childhood sexual abuse…to Three dying parents, two from Cancer, one from Covid, in twenty-four months…to A Crohn’s diagnosis for my son who already has Autism on his plate…to Layers of obesity brought by grief, anxiety, and unhealed trauma…to Emotional burnout from teaching to screens for over a year…to Multiple Covid layoffs for my husband…to Losing two cars, one to a deer and one to a distracted teenager, within fifteen months…to Housing and food insecurity…to Negative five-hundred dollars in the bank and No health insurance in sight…


From there to picking up the pen and spending time with my Essence, journaling my way back to life.Every day. For ninety minutes a day. Approaching six years now.


Journaling saved my life. What can journaling do for you?

Notes:


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