One of the most fundamental questions of creative self-expression (cathartic writing) is; Is it true that writing can be a therapy for wounds or even make old wounds bleed again? To borrow the sentence from Zubaidah "Ibeth" Djohar, "a journey to uncover old wounds without bleeding".
How can the wounds that we want to forget or want to heal, can be made bloodless when we return to the halls of memory that are still strongly imprinted. Attempting to bring back facts that can be seen, seen, or heard is a risky endeavor. On the one hand, it can be therapeutic, on the other hand, it is like a fire that excites lightning.
Making Peace with the Past
Many survivors of violence care for wounds by giving up time to neutralize them, rather than heal them. Hoping that time will erode bad memories and can forget past trauma.
The people of Aceh who have a strong culture, he said, do not have a tradition of controlling the turbulence of the soul with the soul in a psychiatrist. This is in the case of the tsunami disaster, most Acehnese people use a religious approach so that it is proven that a disaster that shakes body and soul.
Attempts to translate these experiences into writing that require great effort to make bloody memories into a story, whether written in the form of essays, short stories, or poetry. Literary writing or an academic report, both of which make old wounds open again.
Digging memory is an effort and presenting these pieces of facts in written form, is another effort that is no less painful (or even fun), especially for those who are writing it for the first time. There is pressure - both from personal and community - to present beautiful writing has become a burden. Advice from mentors to let go of all burdens when writing, sometimes even carrying burdens in other forms.
However, writing is indeed a long process that cannot be finished immediately even under the mentoring of a good writer. Some say writing that is easy to implement is difficult, while writing that is difficult to implement is easy.
For writers who have experienced bad experiences during a conflict or disaster themselves, special preparation is needed so that it does not become an effort to deal with the problem of vinegar on dry wounds. Or it could be a writing that is full of scornful anger.
In full of resentment and anger, how can the atmosphere give birth to interesting writing? Writing requires mutually supportive thoughts and feelings, in addition to other technical requirements that can be studied self-taught or directly from leading writers, such as those given by Zubaidah Djohar and Kurnia Effendi to members of Creative Minority Universitas Malikussaleh.
So that a writer does not become a space for revenge and tends to blame certain parties, the writer must make peace with the past. The past, no matter how bitter or painful it is, has become a memory.
People can have various motives to raise the past in writing, but when they do not build psychological distance from the past, self-goals through non-creative information will be optimally achieved.[]
