Breaking the Silence Within: How Writing Became a Way of Understanding Myself

On expressive writing, meditation, and the courage to encounter our inner world

I am beginning to realize that a writer lives in all of us, just as a dancer, a singer, a painter, a poet, and a thinker do. We are a little bit of everything. You and I, we are a little bit of everything, even when we do not express it.

We do not necessarily have to be particularly good at something to experience the joy of doing it. Yet, at some point in our lives, we may feel drawn to a particular form of expression. Perhaps it is music, painting, movement, or writing. Why one form calls to us more strongly than another remains something of a mystery to me.

In my own life, writing appeared long before meditation. And, oh my, how challenging it was.

I remember struggling with written assignments at school, receiving low marks for grammar, sentence construction, and the organization of my thoughts. And I am speaking here about writing in my native language, Polish. Later came university, scientific reports, research papers, and eventually a doctoral dissertation. Each form of writing brought its own expectations, conventions, and limitations.

But somewhere along the way, I discovered another kind of writing. One that did not require me to meet someone else’s expectations. One that did not necessarily need to be evaluated, published, or even read by another person.

I began writing for myself.

For many years, I have carried a simple idea in my mind: the key to writing is to write. I remember encountering this thought in the film Finding Forrester, and somehow it stayed with me.

But is writing really so simple?

When I observe my own experience, I see something much more psychologically layered. Sometimes the words appear almost effortlessly. At other times, a single sentence seems to require an enormous amount of energy. Sometimes I know exactly what I would like to express, yet I cannot find the words. And sometimes I begin writing without any particular intention, only to discover that something entirely unexpected has emerged.

And interestingly, the process does not necessarily end when I stop writing.

A particular sentence may stay with me for hours or days. I may return to it, question it, rewrite it, or recognize that what I believed to be true when I first wrote it no longer reflects my present understanding.

This is what I have come to experience as expressive writing.

It is not simply about putting emotions into words. It is also about observing the mind as it attempts to understand its own experience.

One of the most important discoveries in my writing journey has been the difficulty of being genuinely honest with myself.

What does that even mean?

We may think we understand what we feel, yet when we try to describe it, something does not quite fit. We may write a perfectly reasonable sentence, but somewhere within us, there is a sense that it does not fully represent what we are experiencing.

So we return to it.

We write, read, question, and sometimes rewrite. We move between the words on the page and the experience that remains within us.

Does this sentence truly reflect what I feel? Am I expressing my own understanding, or what I believe I should be feeling? Am I writing to understand myself, or am I already imagining how another person might perceive what I have written?

These questions have accompanied me for years.

There were periods when writing became particularly difficult. Some experiences from my past had remained silent for a very long time. I remember writing through tears, sometimes trembling, walking away because I could not continue, and eventually returning to the page.

It was not always accompanied by relief. Sometimes writing brought more questions, more memories, and more emotions than I had expected.

But gradually, I began to give words to experiences that had previously remained unspoken, even within myself.

I do not wish to suggest that writing resolves suffering or that everyone should approach painful memories in this way. I can only speak from my own experience. For me, it became one of the ways through which I began to acknowledge parts of my life that I had found difficult to face.

Perhaps this is one of the most meaningful aspects of expressive writing: not necessarily discovering an answer, but becoming willing to encounter what is already present within us.

I have written poems during heartbreak. I have written while surrounded by forests in Japan. I have written about nature, gratitude, fear, love, uncertainty, and the many feelings for which I still struggle to find an appropriate name.

Each kind of writing brought a different experience.

Sometimes I wrote because I was overwhelmed with emotion. Sometimes because I wanted to preserve a beautiful moment. And sometimes simply because something within me wanted to be expressed.

I have also noticed how easily the desire for recognition can enter the writing process. We may begin wondering whether someone will appreciate our words, whether a poem is good enough, whether a book will become popular, or whether what we have written is worth sharing.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with wishing to share our work. Yet I have come to recognize how these expectations can influence the freedom of expression itself.

I feel that learning to write for oneself, without immediately imagining an audience, is one way of allowing a more honest relationship with writing to develop. Even more, allowing more honest relationship with oneself. 

And perhaps, when the moment feels right, the words can be shared.

Not because they must be, but because something within us recognizes that the time has come.

When I began documenting my meditation experiences, I did not anticipate how deeply writing would become intertwined with the practice itself.

Some days, meditation felt natural. There was a willingness to sit, observe, and remain with whatever appeared. On those days, the routine carried me.

Other days, meditation was difficult. My mind resisted. Thoughts became overwhelming. The body felt restless, and I did not always have the willingness to remain seated.

On those days, discipline carried me.

Writing was remarkably similar.

There were mornings when the words seemed to write themselves. My hands wanted to express what was in my heart, and almost no encouragement was necessary.

And then there were days when my heart was willing, but my mind could not organize the thoughts and emotions into words. Sometimes even the willingness to write was absent.

Yet I returned to the page.

Day after day, reflection after reflection, I began to recognize how both practices moved between ease and effort, willingness and resistance, clarity and uncertainty.

Perhaps one of the most meaningful aspects of these 500 days was not that I learned to meditate or write effortlessly, but that I continued returning to both practices through changing circumstances.

Looking at a single day’s reflection, I can see one particular moment of my life. But looking at hundreds of reflections together, something different becomes visible.

I begin to see the movement of a life within.

The changing relationship between my mind, my body, my heart, and my experience of being alive.

Not necessarily a straight line of progress. Perhaps not even progress in the way we usually understand it.

But change. Constant change.

And within that change, a gradually developing relationship with myself.

I sometimes wonder how many things remain unexpressed within us throughout our lives.

How many thoughts disappear before we give them words? How many emotions do we carry without fully understanding them? How many experiences shape our perception of ourselves without ever becoming part of a conscious conversation?

We communicate constantly with the world around us. Yet how often do we communicate openly with ourselves?

Writing has become one of the ways through which I approach this question.

It has helped me recognize the movement of my thoughts, revisit old experiences, observe changing perceptions, and sometimes discover that what I once understood about myself no longer seems entirely true.

And perhaps that is perfectly natural.

We change. Our experiences change. Our understanding changes.

The words we wrote yesterday do not need to represent who we are today.

They may simply remind us of who we were at a particular moment in time.

If you have never tried writing for yourself, perhaps you might begin with a notebook and a few quiet moments.

At home, in your garden, beneath a tree, or wherever you feel comfortable.

There is no need to write beautifully. No need to have something particularly important to say. No requirement to share your writing with anyone.

Perhaps begin with a simple question: What is present within me today?

Or perhaps write about something you noticed in nature, an encounter that touched you, a moment of gratitude, or a question that has been accompanying you recently.

You may discover something unexpected. Or perhaps nothing particularly remarkable will happen.

And that, too, is part of the experience.

Looking back over these past 500 days, I can see that writing has gradually become part of my life in ways I could not have anticipated when I began.

What was once an effort has become a practice. What was once a practice has become a way of being.

And what began as an attempt to understand the experiences arising through meditation has become something much broader: an ongoing conversation with myself, with life, and with the mystery of being human.

To tell the truth, writing over these past 500 days has become part of me.

Writing is me. And I am writing.

Milena A. Guziak

This article is adapted from “Breaking the Silence Within,” a subchapter of my forthcoming book, 1–500 Days of Meditation. The Book., a personal exploration of the mind, consciousness, and the experience of being human through daily meditation and reflective writing.