Through Your Own Words: 51 Writing Prompts for Healing and Self-Care

by Maisha Z. Johnson

Writing can be one of many powerful tools we have for surviving trauma and taking care of ourselves so we can continue to thrive. Through Your Own Words offers fifty-one dynamic prompts to help readers cultivate and grow a practice of writing for self-care. Author Maisha Z. Johnson is a writer, creative facilitator, and survivor of trauma with an MFA in Poetry. She pulls from her own experiences and her healing work with others to give you prompts that can lead to a greater awareness of the body and emotions, help you make sense of things, and foster reflection on your own best practices for self-care. Now, you can draw on your own knowledge as a guide for healing.
Anyone, including beginning and experienced writers and writers of fiction, poetry, and personal journals, can build their capacity for creative self-expression with this book's straight-forward ideas for writing.

Workshop participants who worked with these prompts

“Thoughtful prompts...smart, creative, and insightful. I feel so much openness about writing.”

“Challenged me to explore, write even when I felt stuck. Great prompts.”

“Such a great tool to go back to as a way of calming myself down.”

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2014

About the author

Maisha Z. Johnson is writer and editor living in Oakland, CA. She has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University and she studied creative writing at San Francisco State University. Maisha works at the intersections of creative arts, healing, and social change. She’s also the author of Through Your Own Words: 51 Writing Prompts for Healing and Self-Care, as well as three poetry chapbooks: Split Ears, Uprooted, and Queer As In. Her work has been published in numerous journals, nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and won awards and competitions including Literary Death Match, The Lit Slam, and the Leo Litwak Award.