I have always loved writing. When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, a good friend brought me a beautiful journal and pen. As I lay in bed recovering from surgery or fighting chemo fatigue on my couch, I would stare at my blank journal and it would stare back.

One day, my daughter Gillian picked it up and began doodling in it. We started laughing and soon I had added a bit of my own handiwork.  Then we took some silly pictures of her (and even my dog Sammy) wearing my wig and stuck them in.  Soon I found I had a lot to say and it didn’t matter how I said it. Through words and pictures, my journal became a collage of my cancer recovery as seen through my eyes and my family’s.  

Journaling is a great way to express yourself particularly during such a difficult time. It allows you to capture your myriad of emotions and explore what really matters to you. It can be done in a beautifully bound book, a simple notebook, creating a blog or even scrapbooking.

Writing prompts are an excellent tool to help you get started. These are an image, topic or questions that are designed to get you thinking and generate ideas. They can also help you to make new connections between things. 

Here is some excellent advice from the cancer community to entice even the most resistant journal-er.

• Leukemia and Lymphoma Society:  Creative Medicine: Journaling Through Cancer Treatment 

• Nancy’s Point (Survivor Blog) : 12 Tips to Journal Your Way through Cancer or Anything

• Suleika Jaouad: Leukemia Survivor  Isolation Journals

Creating a safe, connected and shared creative writing community is the goal of Leukemia survivor, Suleika Jaouad. Suleika is a journalist, writer and speaker and the author of the award-winning book, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. Through her writing Suleika explores isolation, creativity, survivorship and well-being. You can connect with Suleika through her Isolation Journals project which sends free weekly prompts to your mailbox or subscribe to her inspiring monthly conversation series about the creative process with well-known contributors. 

For more lifestyle advice on living with cancer read our helpful blogs in our series, Know & Tell.