I’ve quoted below something wonderful from Rainier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. This piece could almost be a description of Writing for Wellbeing. In the activities we do, you come to a greater awareness of your inner self and the beauty of your own life. When you let the words inside you flow out, you find not only that there is no inner poverty, but rather a great richness within you. It’s true! So the idea of Writing for Wellbeing isn’t new – writers have always used writing as a means of self-exploration. Surely that’s what all good writing is. If you haven’t already read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, I highly recommend it.
‘…save yourself from these general themes and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty – describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the object of your memory. … to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.’
– Rainier Maria Rilke