I Wrote to Heal Myself. I Never Expected My Words to Heal Anyone Else.

By Carmen Lea

I started writing my first book as a teenager. I finally published it after turning 50.

Apparently, I needed a few decades to finish my homework.

But then again, some stories take longer to tell. Especially the ones you've spent most of your life trying to make sense of.

Unshattered: From Wreckage to Radiance didn't begin as a book. It began as a way to accept my past. A place to put the thoughts, feelings, and experiences I didn't always know what to do with, a healing journey is how it started. 

Writing became my way of facing things I'd rather forget, questioning things I'd accepted, and learning to understand myself.

I wasn't writing for an audience. I was healing out loud, one poem at a time.

Eventually, I decided to publish it.

And that's when things got interesting.

I knew what the book meant to me. What I didn't know was what it might mean to someone else.

Then came the reviews. The emails. The Facebook messages.

Readers told me they felt seen. That my words helped them understand something about themselves. Some said it changed their lives. One called it the best book they'd ever read.

Now, I'm not going to pretend I know how to respond gracefully to that kind of compliment. I'm still working on accepting a simple "you look nice" without making a sarcastic remark.

But the moments that stay with me most aren't the online reviews.

They're the people who stop me at a market or in the mall just to say thank you.

Imagine that.

Someone thanking me for sharing the very things I once struggled to understand about myself.

Readers started returning to buy multiple copies, not for themselves, but for people they cared about. They wanted someone else to experience what they'd found in those pages.

That's when I realized something.

I had written my story, but somehow, other people were finding theirs inside it.

Those reactions changed more than my writing career. They gave my pain a purpose.

They inspired me to keep writing, build my website, share my thoughts through blogs, and begin speaking about the things I believe matter.

Kindness. Self-love. Understanding ourselves. And ending the cycle of bullying, including the cruel things we sometimes say to ourselves.

My message is simple: Learn to live from within.

We can't rewrite yesterday, and we certainly can't control everyone else's behaviour. Trust me, I've tried. Apparently, people insist on having minds of their own.

But we can question what we believe about ourselves, choose how we treat others, and decide what we do with the experiences that shaped us.

I started writing because I needed to find my own way forward.

I continue writing because somewhere, someone might need those words too.

And maybe that's the real power of sharing our stories. We never know whose life they might touch.

So here's my question for you:

Have you ever read something that made you feel like the author had somehow been reading your mind?

I'd love to hear about it.

I'm Carmen Lea, Canadian indie author of Unshattered: From Wreckage to Radiance and other books about the messy, meaningful business of being human.