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Suzanne Strong's Blog, page 3
December 2, 2023
Telling stories…
A thought I had the other night was that I have always wanted to give a voice to the voiceless, be able to give them a loud speaker. But it occurred to me a lot of writers want to tell people’s stories, but sometimes we need to tell our own.
In my next novel, I put some more of my own story, mixed with the story of the main character. It is still fiction but it is also part of my story interwoven together. A lot of good novels have both these elements within. 
Just a thought about writing stories…the ones we resonate with have base in reality. Thanks for reading more another time. Suzanne
November 2, 2023
Working on my new novel Sarah Johns…
I am excited by the idea of working more on my third novel I have written, which is about Journalist and foreign correspondent Sarah Johns. My friend recently read it for me she is a lawyer and writer in New York and she was complimentary and positive about it and gave me glowing feedback.
Stay tuned about this new novel it is exciting to put aside other responsibilities and do what I love, which is to write.
Thanks for reading
What is writing to you?
Hey everyone,
If you are a writer or enjoy writing, I did this exercise in my Writing Workshops course with Write Well based in the UK. I thought I would share this with you so you could also explore what writing is to you as well. If you want, you can share if you did this in the comments. . Thanks for reading and have a great day!
When I write … my mind …
My mind is exploring, discovering, releasing, sometimes in pain, sometimes reflecting, sometimes overjoyed and grateful. Sometimes exploring characters and creating worlds and sometimes creating communication but when I write I write to experience the world and know my true thoughts. When I write I can fully explore who I am (and also explore others’ actions) and I can explore how I am thinking at a certain time and feeling, and then look back on it and rediscover again from hindsight.
My mind often feels freer when I write, as I release emotions and negative memories and stored stories, and my mind often relaxes and floats down the cool, green stream with the dank smell of the banks nearby, on a lilo in a peaceful afternoon, with trees standing silent, dignified and beautiful overhead.
When I write … my body …
I am often not aware of my body when I write, which is probably a bad thing. I think initially it feels tense in the beginning but gradually becomes more released. But the truth is I need to connect more to my body in writing and access this.
When I write … my spirit …
My spirit is lifted often to more spiritual understanding when I write, as God communicates with me and also I am accessing a deep level of my spirit and my soul and finding out how I really feel and where I am. It is such a sometimes painful but always uplifting thing as I commune with God through my writing. It is a place we can express pain, sadness, grief, anger and it allows my spirit and my soul to connect to His spirit and be closer to Him. Writing is also a great way for God to communicate with me and He reveals things about myself to me and about other things, people and situations.
I believe writing …
Is spiritual, is transformative, takes us to another place, I believe writing is healing, is exploring, creating and communicating to others, writing facilitates empathy between people and writing also heals us, as well as others when they read it.
Writing is powerful and I was so excited when I first read my first word at the age of five, I am blessed by writing. I couldn’t live without it. I experience life through it. I can describe life, delve into life through it and also enhance my life through writing and words. Writing is everything to me, and I want to do it more and more.
A poem can unify people, enlighten and heal people.
Writing is …(metaphors) like a beautiful clear stream pulling me along in a gentle current, it can also be an ocean that surges and pulls and dumps me on the beach, but then is tranquil and the most transparent and clear blue on white sandy beaches. Writing takes on different forms but is fluid like a river, or the ocean, it is my friend, my solace, and my release from what I am going through. It is a divine gift.
The gifts of writing are …to me the ability to create, to imagine, to draw a word picture, the ability to rise above your emotions or situation, the ability to see beyond things, the ability to be released. Writing gives me many gifts as well as a way to connect with others and people who may never meet you but you have connected through the reading of a piece of writing you wrote. Writing gives me gifts of joy and peace.
September 14, 2023
September 2, 2023
My story…writing to be free…
“Write the truest sentence you know”
Ernest Hemingway
I have written one other book about writing to release trauma or past experiences, or emotions, it is called Freedom Writing. It was published after one of my previous students ended his life and I felt the urgency of making sure I share the power of writing things down as a way to heal ourselves. Sixteen years ago, I experienced an act of domestic violence from my ex-husband. I had been married to him for ten years and in this time, he was emotionally abusive to me, throwing things, raging, name calling, swearing at me, at times he threw things at my head. This act of violence was a one off and a trigger warning if you have been through domestic violence, he strangled me. When he was doing this and I was screaming out “help”, the world stood still and the universe was never the same for me again. Everything changed and the earth moved on its access. My kids came running from down below on the bottom level of our house. I heard their footsteps running up. My choker from around my neck was on the floor, as his violence had snapped it off. I remember screaming “help” into his face – which was all red. This was the man I had trusted and said I would love forever, and he said he would love and protect me? Hmmm…it was devastating.
He let go of me and I ran to get the keys, he blocked me from getting them and I walked outside and told the kids to follow me. They didn’t as he was holding them back. I walked up to the main street so I could be in public and so he would not be able to touch me again. I felt this strange courage, disdain, anger, shock and adrenalin pulsing through me. He had never laid a hand on me before. He had smashed things before on the wall, which by the way is a very intimidating, traumatic and scary thing to see, especially as a woman, but he had never harmed me. He ran after me on the main street, and called out
“Come back. Your kids need you.”
“I’m not leaving them. I am leaving you. You strangled me,” I said.
“There were reasons for that,” he said, with tears coming down his face, not from being sorry, as he clearly wasn’t.
“If you really think that, I am never coming back to you.” I said and I kept on walking down the main road, crying but determined.
He got the car, put the kids in and followed me. I was hiding in a bush on a random driveway and he told me to get in the car. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to do this.
“You get out of the car and I will drive me and the kids.” And he did. I didn’t want to get in a car with him, he would be yelling and arguing and justifying his actions. Following this I found out he went down to our Pastor in our local church and told him an incorrect version of what happened. He said he pushed me by my shoulders (later I found out he told my friends this lie as well), but actually he strangled me and broke my choker in the process, I still have this broken choker and I had a red mark on my neck where he strangled me. My daughter Leah saw the choker on the ground as soon as it happened. This could not have happened if he pushed me back by my shoulders. Regardless, he began lying about it to people.
Being a Christian I thought I should show grace and I never pressed charges but part of me thinks I should have. I also was shocked later to find out that my “Christian” husband went around lying to my friends about what happened to make himself look like the victim.
For years I didn’t tell this story publicly, for my kids’ sake, (possibly even my ex-husband) but now I know I need to be honest and authentic. What happened after this traumatic event was very significant and it is why I am writing this second book about writing therapy. Following this event, of course I had PTSD– and I retreated to my parents’ house. In the coming months I went to a support group for people who had been through abuse. In this time, I kept seeing the event over and over every night like a horror film I wanted to turn off. One night I got up and said to myself, I am going to write this down as it happened, and be completely honest. It actually wasn’t something I wanted to do, particularly, but I felt compelled to do it. It must have been Divine intervention. Once I wrote this poem down – writing the events as they happened and how I felt, I was completely released from this memory of my ex-husband’s violence, it completely disappeared and I could not even conjure it up in my mind. Even if I wanted to. It was phenomenal! I couldn’t believe such a simple act could free me from this so completely.
Speaking about it had not freed me, though it made me feel supported and not alone, but writing it down had removed it. In the months that followed I wrote poems every day of the memories or the pain I was going through to heal, and as I did, I felt my inner life becoming freer. I was free from bitterness about the ten years of emotional verbal abuse and the violence at the end. I found a simple tool that could help so many people, I told my counsellor about my experience and she asked me to do a workshop at a retreat she was running for women who had escaped traumatic situations. In preparation for this I decided to do some research and then I found that this had been studied since the 1980s and it was 2007 when I stumbled upon its power. I collated some of the research and found that writing for therapeutic purposes had been found to provide dramatic physical, mental, emotional and psychological benefits as well as for grades of people at university or school. I wrote a workshop to show others this amazing tool, and I have not looked back ever since.
Now it is 2023, and I have done much more research into this, and though when I discovered this, writing for therapeutic purposes was not a widely known thing, it is now spoken about in films, taught in university courses and recommended in counselling and any mental health literature. I am so beyond excited that it has become very mainstream and widely known. My purpose, dear reader for this book is to reveal some amazing techniques that we can all use throughout our lives whether we are stressed with normal things, relationships, trauma, past experiences or anything, we can use these tools to experience relief. It can take a long time to release things but you will experience release as you go.
It took a few years, but I healed from my past marriage, and the abuse he inflicted on me and I have forgiven him which is a big part of being free yourself. I know God saved me from that marriage and He also helped me to heal and this was achieved through counselling and writing everything down. So, I am writing this so I can help others to experience the freedom I found first-hand.
So, welcome to this humble guide, it is not exhaustive, but it is just to give you some pointers on how to get started. There are many books out there you can read that will provide you with other methods as well. 
Thanks for reading my first chapter.
This book will be published at some point but this is just my first chapter. Thanks again.
August 27, 2023
Gethsemane Garden – Jerusalem
2000 years of gnarley growth
From when your pain
Fell to earth in droplets of blood
When you surrendered to Gods will
To sacrifice yourself
For our salvation
I wanted to lie down in the dirt
Where you had been
Be there alone in Your presence
That I felt as real as breath
I felt your anguish
I cried as I walked around this place
But there were thousands of people there
Taking selfies where you wept
Where blood poured from your head
Where you grappled with what you were about to do
But you said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”
What a beautiful gnarley olive tree –
2000 years old
That was the place that you sought refuge
In such moments.
I loved it and wanted to stay in your presence
But I had to go.
It’s etched in my memory
The most profound place on earth.
Where God touched earth and humanity
And paid a debt that wasn’t his
For their freedom
May 19, 2023
Expressive Writing Course I have been doing…
Hello, I haven’t written a blog for a while, but so much has been happening. I want to write some reflections on this course I have been doing over the past two months. To write about the things I have been learning in my life, the new techniques and elements I am taking away from this course as well as new ways to explore writing therapy, and my old ways seen in a new light. I feel so enriched by learning these new techniques and reading many more authors ideas and study about writing for well being as well as research that has revealed things about this. It is an exciting world exploring the way writing can free people from trauma, particularly an article that I was fascinated with about helping young people with this. I will share more about this, but this quote was amazing that I read yesterday.
“people who have led difficult lives have important things to say”
This statenent is what they tell the teens in the Pongo program in the USA which brings poetry therapy to teens in juvenile detention centres, psychiatric wards and many other places. I have always believed this, but it was so good to read this in this way. These teens have been through so much and have absorbed shame whether that is from care givers or the world at large or themselves. But this affirms them. I have also been through a lot in my life and it is such a beautiful statement, as people who have been through a lot, have a knowledge of life that othes may not have had. They have been through things and come out the other end and been stronger and learnt to thrive through this. They have seen things in people that were grotesque and ugly, but they have been able to survive and still love despite this, though it is very difficult.
This statement I think would make a huge difference to teens and anyone marginalised by where they find themsleves, they have “important things to say” and indeed they do. I have always wanted to give a voice to the voiceless and this all feeds into this. But I will share more later. I am simply saying I am about to complete a writing therapy course with the Write Well Community. It has been amazing to interact, learn from and get to know the students from all around the world who are on this course as well. I feel so grateful and blessed to have found this community. The tutors were amazing and they are experts in the world of writing and poetry therapy.
May 5, 2023
Free Where the Sun Rises :)
For a few days, Where the Sun Rises is free until Sunday.
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