Aimee- Writing and healing for war veterans reminds me of my time in Fred Wilcox's class. In Creative Nonfiction he shared his novel that he wrote giving voice to veterans of the Vietnam war and victims of Agent Orange. While he never personally went through war he felt it was his mission to share their story. We mentioned a couple times about writing to help others heal and writing to help yourself heal. I think for Fred it was very much the former but now I have to wonder how healed the people he interviewed felt. Wouldn't it better more effective if you could write through the experience yourself? I think the idea of getting veterans to directly connect with their experience it really important and it's cool to see that it's really working for some people. Of course I also think it's great that they're incorporating Buddhist practice into their writing/healing sessions. In my eyes combing those two things are the best way to heal.
The other source on creative nonfiction I think really gets to the heart of why I love/need to write. When I decide to tackle a personal piece I typically know what I'm trying to get to the heart of. A lot of times I write to work out my fears. Of the ocean, of death and impermanence, of losing my mom... By the end I can't say I've conquered the fear, but I don't think that was ever really the point. The point is to understand and learn to cope. Veterans know they can never forget about what they saw and did but there is a way to come to terms with it. Writing is healing because it gives you the chance to be honest and introspective.

Tess-Love letters to strangers is a lovely idea because it gets at people's loneliness and need to comfort others. It's both therapeutic for the writer and the receiver. The person who gets the letter gets to feel excited and touched that someone is thinking about them and care enough to write a whole bunch of words to them. It's nice to be thought of and to know someone out in the world cares abut you. Brencher experiences a type of healing that comes from being able to comfort others. People often feel like they can't do anything to make the world better but they can and it's always nice to see a reminder of that. I couldn't open any of the other thinks for some reason. But the article on transactional writing was really interesting. "What is healing, but a shift in perspective?" Writing letters connects with journal writing because it's a kind of like writing a letter to oneself. "Dear Diary," who else are you addressing but yourself. I used this method of healing all throughout grade school. It's effective because it gets the thoughts out of your head and on to the page. So letter writing to other people is even better because your thoughts go to someone else entirely. I often think about whether or not I should express strong feelings to someone in a letter but to be honest I've decided that if there's communication that needs to be had in order to heal it's important to say it aloud. I can't expect to heal all my sorrows with various letters.I like that the article adresses not having to send the letter and in fact might not even be a good idea. Again, when you write to heal for yourself it might be less helpful or even hurtful for someone to receive it. I've written countless unsent letters and I'm an advocate. Just believing someone will get the message is usually enough.