Read and Write for Better Mental Health
Loneliness isn’t a mental illness, but feeling lonely can intensify mental health struggles. One way to soothe your loneliness is knowing what helps you belong to yourself, others, the divine, and the world.
Two things that help me belong are reading and writing. If reading and writing help you feel less alone, check out the books I recommend in my list over at Bookshop.org for Mental Health Awareness Month:
The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing
Thirteen Black writers share how reading broadens horizons, expands minds, and nourishes souls. A great book for all who love to read and believe in the power of stories.Several Short Sentences About Writing
A fresh approach to writing that might make you turn “Klinkenborg” into a verb. If you write a sentence that’s too long and clunky, you definitely need to Klinkenborg it.A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith
A wonderful book for anyone who’s interested in the intersection of faith and writing. Nineteen poets reflect upon their diverse experiences with spirituality and the craft of writing.If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
Brenda Euland helped Charlotte Donlon embrace her role as a writer and said the word “writing” in her book also means anything you love and want to do or make.
If you’re interested in exploring various angles of loneliness and belonging, you might want to read my first book, The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. The book’s sections include Belonging to Ourselves, Belonging to Others, Belonging to Our Places, Belonging through Art, and Belonging to God.
The Great Belonging isn’t a book about living with mental illness, but that’s one of the things I wrote about. Sarah Sanderson addressed this in a review over at Mockingbird:
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this book is Donlon’s willingness to welcome us into the far reaches of her own mind. Donlon has bipolar disorder; she has experienced addling manias and debilitating depressions. In The Great Belonging, Donlon relays these vacillations without hyperbole and without shame. What struck me most about these particular chapters is that, while they are vital to the book, The Great Belonging does not become, by their inclusion, a book about mental illness. Most books that include this level of openness about mental illness are primarily about mental illness; they are written for the mentally ill and those that love them, or they are memoirs written to shock or educate the general public. The Great Belonging is none of these. It is a book about loneliness whose author happens to be quite open about her own mental illness. In treating her condition this way, Donlon gives us all a great gift: a vision of a world in which mental illnesses can be openly discussed, but in which they do not have to totally define the people who live with them.
May all who struggle with mental illness have the freedom to discuss their experiences without being defined by their diagnoses.
May we all know we belong.
*A version of this post is also on Instagram.
Good News! You can now purchase our Read Write Belong mug online here OR Venmo $20 and a mailing address to me @CharlotteDonlon and I’ll send you a mug and a copy of The Great Belonging. Offer good through May 15, 2022. Only available for mailing addresses in the contiguous US.
Charlotte Donlon helps her readers and clients notice how they belong to themselves, others, God, and the world. Charlotte is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder of Spiritual Direction for Writers™ and Parenting with Art™. She is also the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University where she studied creative nonfiction with Paula Huston and Lauren F. Winner. She holds a certificate in spiritual direction from Selah Center for Spiritual Formation. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. To receive Charlotte’s latest updates, news, announcements, and other good things, subscribe to her email newsletter.