Yes, it can be emotionally healing to write if you know how to do it in a way that doesn’t re-traumatize you. I think this is why many people start writing but never finish - they don’t know where to start, what to share and how to put all of the story together in a way that is beneficial for them to write and others to read.
If you dip into emotional events of the past it can trigger those deep wounds and feelings and no one wants to revisit that. However, there is a way to do it that is beneficial and you can decide exactly how much of the past you wish to review and write about.
After many years of trying to write my own memoir, God gave me a gift that helped me see the way forward in writing about hard things. I call this “The Sequential Writing Formula.” I explain how it works in my book, “The Gift of My Imperfection: A Memoir of Returning to Jesus with a Reflection Journal for Growing with God.”
My book can be found here on Amazon
You take one hard thing. You answer a short set of gentle questions about it, at three different points in time. Then you set the three side by side.
That is the whole idea, and it is deceptively simple. You are answering questions you already know the answers to, in your own plain words.
- PHASE ONE
When it was new
What was happening? How did you feel, and what did you do because of it? Where did you want to go from there? - PHASE TWO
After some time had passed
What has changed? How were you coping? What were you beginning to want instead? - PHASE THREE
Looking back now
What is different today? What carried you through? What do you know now that you could not have known then?
Answer in simple terms. Be specific about the feelings, because that is where the change usually shows first. And every phase closes with the same invitation, which you are free to take or leave: would you like to invite God into this part of your story?
Laid out in sequence, the three phases show you something you cannot see any other way: the change that was already happening in you. Change you lived straight through and could not name at the time.
God’s slow work in you becomes visible on the page.
Click here to download the full Sequential Writing Formula that I share in my book.
From Michele October 2026