S2E7 Journaling as a path to healing with Mari McCarthy

Geoff Allix  00:00 

Hi everyone, Geoff Allix here, your host of the Living Well with MS podcast. To all our listeners, I hope you and your families are staying safe and healthy during this COVID 19 crisis. While social distancing and other restrictions may seem like a drag, in the long run it will prove critical to stemming the tide of this epidemic and returning to a sense of normality. I have faith we’ll come out of this stronger, smarter and a bit more enlightened as a result. In the meantime, we at Overcoming MS and the whole team behind this podcast are here for you, to keep you informed and help you keep on track with your personal journey to a healthier you. Now on with the show. Mari L McCarthy is an award winning and international best selling author whose books; Journaling Power, How to create the happy, healthy life you want to live and Heal Yourself with Journaling Power, have introduced people around the world to the power journaling has to help heal the body. After losing feeling and functioning in the right side of her body in 1998, Mari was diagnosed with MS. Undaunted, she took up a daily journaling practice, which over time helped improve her MS symptoms to the extent that she is now an accomplished recording artist with three full length albums. Mari’s website CreateWriteNow.com is the platform she runs to share her methods, expertise and passion for journaling. So, Mari, welcome to the podcast and I’d like to start off by asking you if you could share with our audience a bit about your own personal story and your journey since being diagnosed with MS. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  01:44 

Oh, certainly and I just want you to know, my name is Mari. I just spell my name a little bit differently, I’d just like to let you know. Okay, certainly, I’d be glad to talk about how I’ve gotten into journaling for the health of it. I’ve been living with my health challenge known as MS for almost 30 years now and about 20 some years ago, I had an exacerbation where I lost most function and feeling on the right side of my body and I needed to find a way I guess, let me back up a bit. Having had a lot of experience with MS, I just had this feeling it was gonna be around this exacerbation, this episode was gonna be around for a while, so being a high powered businesswoman, I needed to get a procedure as quickly as possible to teach myself how to write with my left hand and I was introduced to a young lady by the name of Julia Cameron, who wrote the book ‘The Artist’s Way’ and in that she has a thing, a procedure called Morning Pages and each morning, you sit down and you write three pages of just whatever stream of consciousness. So I thought, well, that sounds like a good logical way to get me up and running as a left handed writer. So I went through that process and it became very soon on a very, shall we say, woowoo, spiritual, emotional experience and I started remembering things from my childhood and it was just a totally different experience. It was way more than just physical therapy, it was emotional, spiritual, mental as well. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  01:47 

But you were literally doing it because you had to learn to write with your left hand. You just had to practice the action of writing and you thought, well, this is a good way of learning to write. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  04:07 

Yes. It’s just something that I needed, a disciplined procedure or whatever and so, hey, well, let’s give this a shot, that sounds like it, you being the practical business woman I said, yeah, that makes sense and that’s how I got started and this sounds like a good idea to me and I got one off into who knows where started the inner journey into who really lives in Mari McCarthy’s body. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  04:37 

And so, with your MS diagnosis, presumably there was not much treatment available 30 years ago? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  04:45 

I know because I was diagnosed in 1991, so my neurologist at the time, put me on Imuran which was used in transplants to help the body with rejection and things like that and they were finding that there was application. So, yes, to answer your question, so I was on on that for a while, but then after like, seven or eight years, my neurologist started taking on, it has a potential for taking on carsogenetic, or prompting cancer and things like that. So it’s just like, she took me off that and by that time, what they were calling the ABC drugs, we’re just starting to come out, you know, being the established medical doctor, she had to get me on a drug. So I was on the Avonex for a while, and that was part of the process, I’d learned from journaling, because when I started on the Avonex, I was like, two or three years into the process of journaling and I was just discovering so many fantastic things about myself and all that and I was on the Avonex for about a year and since I had the issues on the right side of my body, I had to have a nurse come and give me the weekly injection, well one week, she didn’t come and it’s just like, I didn’t lose two days, because what normally was happening with the Avonex is like the day after, or sometimes two days after, I would come down with the flu and get sick and all that. But when she didn’t come and give me the shot, I felt really good the next day. So I called up my neurologist and I said; thanks, doctor for everything, but no more drugs for this kid. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  04:53 

I think that’s quite a common theme in the podcast is that, although the drugs have moved on a long way, particularly, in sort of in the last five years, it’s sort of more and more and more newer drugs coming out, there’s still this side effect. The stronger the drugs, the stronger the side effects and so there’s always that trade off and it seems like we’re quite a long way from something where you can just take a pill, no effects, like a vaccine or something that we might have that there’s very minimal effects, and we get all the benefits, we seem to be in the MS area to get something which is effective, you’re going to have a lot of side effects as well. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  07:08 

Definitely and I again, I attribute my decision to go off the drugs to the journaling, because with the journaling I had gotten into my thoughts, my heart, my soul, as I say, I was dealing with the issues in my tissues, all the emotional mental things that literally I’ve been carrying around in my subconscious and in my body. But I think the journaling helped me, help empower myself and said well wait a minute if they haven’t found out exactly what’s causing it, what the cure is I think it’s great and wonderful that all the scientists have come up with all these things to help the process, but it just didn’t make any sense to me. It’s just it’s been 16 years now and I feel fantastic. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  07:47 

Brilliant. And so what would you say are some of the key benefits of keeping a journal? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  08:57 

Well, I think the A number one benefit is that you are able to deal with all the thoughts, emotions, traumas, experiences, and understand the source of those things and really understand what power you have to say, Yes, this will happen. I guess the key thing with the journaling, is really understanding and owning your intelligence, your creativity, your power, your strength. I think that is the key thing is as I said earlier, to find out who you really are because we’ve been basically functioning on an external basis and we’ve been told by everybody who we are but we’ve never really spent the time and been with ourselves and really delve deeply deeply into our personhood.  So I think that the A number one benefit of journaling is to really understand and appreciate and embrace all the beauty, the talent, the creativity, everything that really makes who you really are, not what you’ve been thinking that you are for all these years. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  10:42 

And do you think that there’s a link between as well as the mental aspects you’ve talked about, is there a link between journaling and physical healing potentially? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  10:53 

Oh, absolutely, positively because I think journaling enables us to take a look at ourselves holistically, because again, based on how we are brought up and trained and conditioned and deal with the established medical profession, everything is so compartmentalised, but with journaling, it helps us understand and realise we are a process, we are physical, we are spiritual, we are mental, we are emotional. So definitely and like I said, I’m at the point now that I’m doing now ambidextrous morning pages, so that I’m doing one page with a left hand and one page with the right hand, and I have almost complete function on the right side of my body. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  11:48 

Oh fantastic so you’ve actually, so the original symptoms that you had are much less so now?  

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  11:58 

Oh, yes, I’d say I’m 75% back to where I was like, I’m able to walk, certainly with the assistance of my walker, but this is just a whole, I’m whole, I just I feel very, very whole and very functional and just really fascinating to see the changes. And, you know, and with the functionality, I just think this overall functionality of how I look and how like, I carry myself and the breathing and all that, the journaling has really helped that like I said, I don’t I couldn’t tell you scientifically, what’s going on, but I just know that from a physical point of view, I’m much better than I was with the episode and certainly, vastly I see continual improvement in my like physicality, like doing my daily journaling. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  13:05 

Brilliant, just as an aside, my son actually is ambidextrous and when he learned to write, he was writing, he’d start a line with his left hand and then he’d swap hands halfway across the line and finish it with his right hand. Yeah, I wish he’d carried on actually because they discouraged it at his school, because his writing wasn’t very good, but he was kind of learning twice and they said he’s effectively learning to write with his left and right hands and so that’s why his writing’s not so, his writing, like as in the words he was writing was good, but the writing neatness was poor. So they discouraged it, and he ended up being left handed as a writer. Which is somewhat annoying, actually, because it’s harder to write left handed and we wish they’d made him but um, yeah, cuz he does other things right handed, its random what he will do one way or the other. Yeah, that was just interesting what you’re saying, writing some things left and some things right and that’s exactly what he was doing when he was a child. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  14:09 

Well, that was the fascinating thing for me about getting into journaling because I became left handed very, very quickly and one of the things I realised that came up in my morning pages was that I always was left handed, but the nuns changed me when I was in grammar school. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  14:31 

Okay, because they did use to, didn’t they used to? There was I mean, especially I’m for Catholic upbringing. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  14:38 

Oh, absolutely. So you know very well, so it’s like good little Catholic girls do not write left handed. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  14:43 

No, it’s the whole the words for sinister comes from the word for left and gauche comes from the word for left and left is taken as a bad thing isn’t it was sort of, almost demonic to be left handed. So they’re very encouraging you to be right handed bizarrely. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  15:07 

Yes. It was fasinating. So Geoff, to answer your question, there definitely has physical things. It’s like, Oh, my goodness and now that I’m ambidextrous, it’s like, it’s opening up even more and more aspects of creativity, intelligence and things like that. So it’s just, you know, again, just being able to do things that they said that we shouldn’t be doing, or they, whatever, it’s just like, it’s so exciting and so freeing to realise, wow, damn, I’m good. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  15:47 

So you think that actually keeping a journal I mean this podcast is specifically for people with MS. So keeping a journal could actually improve the health of people with MS? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  15:59 

Oh, definitely because it’s my goal and intention is that it is helping me do whatever I need to do, physically, to heal myself and like I said, I fully intend that one day in the not too distant future, I will not be needing the walker and the assisted devices or whatever. So definitely, it’s a beeline. Journaling has helped me take ownership of myself and appreciate and understand that it’s my body, and who knows better about what’s going on in my body than I do. And then with me, it’s a whole different way of working, it’s just like, No, it’s my body, this is what’s happening and this is where I need help from a doctor or whatever help resource, so it’s really completely shifting things around rather than going out there trying to find I need help for this, I need help with that. Journaling has helped me center and get clear on okay, this is what’s going on, what do i need? It’s helped me completely change my diet, i’m strictly paleo and that works really well with my body. So I just really feel that daily practice of self care, self nurturing, self healing, called journaling has really helped me holistically, spiritually, mentally, and physically for sure. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  17:41 

Do you think you, mentioned sort of creative influences as well? Do you think that there’s a connection between journaling and your music side as well? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  17:52 

Oh, absolutely. Again, that was one of the things I learned early on when doing the morning pages, is that as a child, I’ve always loved music and I always wanted to be a singer and I remembered an instance in fourth grade when I tried out for the choral group at school, and they didn’t want me because, they said I had no music sense and I was tone deaf. Well, it’s a little child, and I think that again, that’s why I’m so passionate about journaling, is that it really brings up the issues in your tissues and really appreciate so many of the things that happened in childhood, this is like journaling enables you to process those things. And it’s like, wow, because there’s so many things that were repressed in this like, course when you have that kind of a situation when you’re a child, you’re gonna forget about that. So it’s just, you know, and then you’re building the self esteem challenges and all that type of thing. So it’s, again, the journaling was just fantastic and bringing out; Oh, my goodness, I really do, and what was interesting was the after I wrote that and came to the conclusion, that’s like, Yeah, I’m gonna set a goal, I’m gonna learn how to be a singer. Well, less than a month later in my local newspaper was a story about a local music school that caters to children of all ages. So I signed on and started taking singing lessons so it’s just, I like say I could go on and on and on, about all the things that are the benefits of journaling, and all these things that are just as you were saying that we just repressed or, you know, the teacher says something or oh you can’t write or gives you a, B, or a D, because you didn’t do the grammar right, or all kinds of crazy stuff. But that’s why I go back to what I call the issues in our tissues, we’re carrying around that in our being, in our subconscious, and all that. And this journaling provides the opportunity for us to process all the stuff and to recognise and bring to the forefront all these things that, oh, that’s my love, that’s my passion and you know, and now I’m at the point and it has helped me with my return to writing and now I’ve written two books and I’m working on my third. So I could go on and on and on as far as creatively, physically, mentally, spiritually, how journaling has saved my life. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  21:08 

So I think you’ve probably convinced a lot of our listeners, you’ve certainly convinced me, that journaling would be a very, very useful thing to start. And so what tips would you have for someone who is completely new to journaling and wants to start? What would you say was the best way of starting to keep journal? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  21:31 

The best thing to do is to get a pen and a notebook that you feel comfortable with, take some time with the journal and put at the top of the page a question of like, how do I get started journaling? How do I, you know, whatever, whichever you feel like, you want to question? Let’s look at the question that you asked me is very good, put that at the top of the page, and then just write to end.  I mean, just free writing, free writing and experience the process, that’s the best way to do it. Because there are no guidelines or whatever, there’s only one right way to journal. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  22:27 

It’s not because I always thought of it really as a diary. I do today, but it’s not necessarily that you’re talking more about experiences or goals or different topics, it’s not I did this today, it could be anything. 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  22:45 

It’s whatever it introduces you and us to introduce me to a new four letter word and it’s called FEEL because journaling is your thinking with your heart, not with your monkey mind or your brain or what’s on top of your head. Your the key about journaling is you’re getting into things that they never told us we should deal with emotions, you know, it’s just because that’s what the real challenge is, because we’re dealing with ourselves, we’re learning how to live our life from the inside out. And that’s very scary and different, the best way to do is rather than to get started is to just get a pad of paper, get a pen, take some time to your yourself and just ask the question and just write write, that way you get to experience the mental and physical and spiritual and get this big experience the whole the whole process and this just because it’s very challenging, very scary, because journaling is all about getting into your heart, your soul, your intuition, all those things that we were never taught how to do that. I mean, good grief spending time with ourselves and working on our inner life and what makes us up and, and how we feel and things like that. We were just never taught how to do that or never supported in doing that. But now we have the opportunity. This journaling is really a solid essay, it creates space for the healing to take place and there is just so much inside of us that the now we provides the opportunity for us to to deal with the erroneous thoughts the unhealty feelings and all that. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  25:04 

Do you journal at a particular, do sort of schedule in journal for a particular time of day for journaling? Or do you just as and when the feeling takes you is? How would you do that? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  25:15 

For me, it’s first thing in the morning, and then I do my meditation. But then also some days, I just, you know, as the spirit moves me, I get to it. But one of the things I’ve been into now for about a year is what I call night notes. At the end of the day, I take one page and just write about the learnings, the gratitudes, the positive things that happened every day, and I find that has really helped my sleeping because I had over the years, as a lot of people have, challenges with sleeping. But now thanks for that. I’m routinely sleeping through the night, seven to eight hours, so it’s great. So again, it gets back to the what I what I said earlier about the journaling, there’s only one right way to do journaling and that’s your way. Yeah, and this enables you to get into, what do I feel like? Like some days, I’ll just go through the process, like, I just really feel like just sitting down and letting it rip for a while while I’m with the journals. So it’s, certainly has given me permission to do what, whatever I feel like. So that’s really exciting. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  26:50 

And do you think it’s important to you mentioned pen and paper? Is it important to use a pen and paper or could people use an iPad or an app or technology? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  27:00 

If you if you want inner, if you want to have access to your spirit, your soul, your body, everything that makes you up the only right way to do that, the only way to do that is by pen to page. The love of technology is great, wonderful, but it’s just like if you want stress reduction or to feel better, or do a data dump, that’s great. But when we’re doing we’re talking, journaling for the health of it, we’re talking about pen to page every day. And that enables you to access all of who you are. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  27:43 

And would you just use any pen and paper? Or do you like or do you have a favorite pen and a nice leather bound pad or does it really matter, do you just pick up any old throwaway pen? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  27:55 

Again, it’s whatever you feel like or whatever you want to do. I mean just you know thinking in terms of when you were a little kid, what did you like to do? Or you know, some people use crayons or what so there again, there’s not I use personally what has worked for me is a spiral notebook, and I found a pen that has really good, like a little indentation is really helpful for because I tend to really grab onto the pen and hold on to so it’s really helpful. But then also another thing about the journaling it’s your choice whether you want to keep it enoug,h for me once I’ve completed a notebook, it goes to the trash can. Yeah, it’s like I’ve gotten what I needed to get. It’s like you said earlier about you’re writing it down, for me, there’s something about just writing it down going through that process of getting it out. It’s like oh, okay, fine, I got that and then I know that sooner or later, you know, the answer will be approach will come up because I I’ve just done I’ve been consistent in that process. But like again, I have a client who has been journaling for like 30 years, and he took his journals to, I guess Kinkos or a place where they copied and he has computerised all these things. So he has a legacy of all the things that are in his journal for 30 years. So again, that’s what’s so exciting. I can’t stress enough. There’s only one right way to journal and it’s your way because you know, it’s just like it’s because it is about you and what do you feel like doing? You know who you are? And that’s what’s so exciting. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  30:03 

And would the same apply to the privacy of your journal. Do you keep them confidential, or are they public, for your family?  

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  30:13 

Yeah, again, it’s up to you. I mean, it may be that you decide to journal was like, Oh, yeah. And once you get into the process, you’ll find it’s very intense and very deep in that. So I think that it’s been your choice as to, you know, especially if you have a family and you’re living with other people to explain, okay, this is, for me, this is, you know, and that’s, I need you to respect that, or whatever, or have the communication with people what is all about, and it’s about you, and it’s really none of their business or, you know, whatever. So it’s just, again, it’s up to you as to what you want to do. And, you know, some people share their journal with, you know, with people that they live with, there are some people I know that are married and in fact, one of the ladies wrote a blog article is that journaling is the best marriage counselor, because they both keep journals, but they share their journals, they have a meeting session that they sit down, and they, you know, maybe talk about what their experiences of journaling were, what came up, what issues in the relationship need to be discussed. So there are many things that you can do on with your journal. 

 
 Geoff Allix  31:56 

Okay, I think we’ve had some fantastic advice there. Is there any last tips you’d have for people? 

 
 

Mari L McCarthy  32:03 

The only tip I say or is what my hashtag always is and it’s just write on. So if the key is to just do it, it’s like I said earlier, as you asked me about when we got started, that’s always my standard tip answers, like, oh, I don’t know what to do about this, and I say, just write on, just get out your journal and just write because it’s about the process, and it’s about your, on call 24/7 therapists, healing agent, whatever. So the best thing to do is just zip the lip and just get to the page and get it out. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  32:52 

Oh, Mari, thank you very much for that advice and thanks for joining us. In the show notes, you’ll see that there’s links to all of Mari’s websites as Create Write Now, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all the social media. So if you want to get more information, then please head over there. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, please give us a rating or review on the podcast provider of your choice and I hope you join us next time. With that, I’d like to thank you all for listening to this episode of Living Well with MS. Remember that there is a wealth of information at overcomingms.org including show notes, and an archive of all Living Well with MS episodes. Once again, that’s overcomingms.org. There you can also find OMS friendly recipes and exercise tips, connect with other OMSers in your local area for our OMS circles programme, and learn about the latest research going on in the MS world generally and related to OMS specifically. I encourage you to register on the site, and stay informed about the latest news and updates. I also encourage you to subscribe to this podcast, so you never miss an episode and please feel free to share it with others who might find it of value. Let us know what you think about the podcast by leaving a review and if you have ideas for future episodes, we’d love to hear from you. So please contact us via our website overcomingms.org. Thanks again for listening, and for joining me on this journey to Overcoming MS and Living Well with Multiple Sclerosis, I’m Geoff Allix And I’ll see you next time.