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As a victim of post traumatic stress disorder, I want to make a difference.

According to the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, approximately 60 percent of men and 50 percent  of women experience at least one trauma in their lives. Women are more likely to experience sexual assault and child sexual abuse, whereas men are more likely to experience accidents such as physical assault, combat and disaster, or to witness death or injury.

Why it affects some people more would be difficult to say. But, as Dr. M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist and author of "The Road Less Traveled," puts it, “life is difficult.”

What can we do about it? We can write.

“Long before there were therapists, there were poets and from time immemorial man has struggled to cope with his inevitable inner turmoil," Molly Harrower, a clinical psychologist and author of "The Therapy of Poetry," has said. "One way of so coping has been the ballad, the song, the poem. Once crystallized into words, all engulfing feelings become manageable, and once challenged into explicitness, the burden of the incommunicable becomes less heavy.”

From the richest to the poorest, to those in-between, we all have crosses to bear that would push us under if we don't have a creative release.

My safety valve has been writing.

From the time I was in high school, living in an orphanage, to being a minister's wife, trying to keep up my perfect front, to now, at the age of 70, I find great joy in releasing my thoughts upon the page. But it does take courage to bare your soul.

When we are young we often start out trying to appear to be that perfect person until we finally learn that perfection can be a chore and tends to drive away more people than a perfect front job attracts.

Who wants to be around a perfect person if there is such a creature?

Writing allows your true self to come through, although most of us want to guard our private lives.

We don't want to be hurt. It is only human.

It's only when we let down our guards, a little, that we allow others into our world.

Nobody really wants to hear about all of our money or the trappings of our success.

People want to know that somebody cares.

One way of expressing concern is to write your thoughts down and encourage others to write.

This life is just too short to keep our stories to ourselves.

We all have a story, whether we know it or not. We can numb our minds by background noise and party talk and never learn who we really are.

President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Many people live in quiet desperation, knowing neither victory nor defeat.”

By being open, transparent in our writing, we draw others into our lives. We can leave a legacy for our heirs, allowing them to know where they came from and inspiring them to make a difference with their lives.

Leaving your memoirs to your children is priceless.

I treasure the poems, stories, letters and old pictures I found in our old family trunk, helping me find living, long-lost relatives who shared their memories with me. What I learned encouraged me not to give up.

In 1983, Jack Gore, an English teacher from Plain Dealing, told me that unless your writing is personal no one will ever understand what you are trying to say.

That advice helped me to write more than anything I've ever learned.

Writing can be just what's needed most to survive.

It's not what happens to us but how we use it as a tool to achieve our dreams is what makes the difference.

Leaving my story is my way of making a difference to someone who might be going through difficult times themselves.

Sarah Hudson Pierce lives near Mooringsport. Contact her at

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