Episode 310 - Writing to Heal with John DeDakis
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John DeDakis discusses WRITING TO HEAL, including how writing can help us process grief and loss, why moving toward pain rather than away from it can lead to emotional growth, and how journaling, memoir, and fiction each offer unique ways to heal through storytelling. John DeDakis shares how facing difficult experiences on the page builds authenticity, courage, and connection—insights every writer can use to turn pain into powerful, meaningful stories.
Grief and loss are subtexts in all six award-winning mystery / suspense / thriller novels written by John DeDakis. John is a former White House correspondent and former editor on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” John is currently a writing coach, manuscript editor, podcaster, and rank amateur jazz drummer.
Episode Links
Episode 219 - The Productive Power of Organization and Procrastination with John DeDakis
Summary
In this episode of The Indy Author Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with John DeDakis about writing as a path to healing, including how writing can help us process grief and loss, why moving toward pain rather than away from it can lead to emotional growth, and how journaling, memoir, and fiction each offer unique ways to heal through storytelling. John shares how facing difficult experiences on the page builds authenticity, courage, and connection—insights every writer can use to turn pain into powerful, meaningful stories.
WRITING AS A BYPRODUCT OF HEALING
John begins by explaining that when he first started writing fiction, he wasn’t consciously “writing to heal.” Instead, healing emerged as a byproduct of the creative process. His first novel drew directly from two traumatic experiences: a car–train collision he witnessed as a nine-year-old and the suicide of his sister in 1980. These real-life events became foundational to his fiction, lending authenticity and emotional depth to his stories. As he continued writing, grief and loss remained constant subtexts, culminating in his fourth novel, which addressed the fatal overdose of his 22-year-old son in 2011.
Over the course of writing his novels, John came to recognize that his writing had served as a means of processing grief. He didn’t set out to heal, but through storytelling, he sees how each book traces his own emotional journey and how writing about pain can help others better understand theirs.
THE POWER OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Matty asks whether John ever struggled with deciding what was too personal to share. John replies that “personal” is subjective. While some readers might be triggered by certain topics, authenticity requires honesty. “I think it’s important to be personal because that then makes the story authentic,” he says. Writing that draws from personal experience naturally carries emotional truth. He believes that characters inevitably reflect their creators: “You are the character in many ways. Even if the character is very different, a lot of me is her.”
John’s characters may differ from him in gender, age, or circumstance, but they carry pieces of his lived experience. For him, the writer and the character are inseparable. This blending of self and story, he suggests, is what makes fiction a powerful vehicle for exploring loss, fear, and healing.
MOVING TOWARD THE PAIN
John shares a pivotal idea that shaped his approach to both grief and writing: “Move toward the pain.” This advice came after his sister’s death, though at the time he didn’t understand it. As a journalist, he had been trained to observe tragedy with detachment, covering other people’s worst moments without emotional involvement. “Moving toward the pain was an alien concept,” he says.
It wasn’t until years later, when he began writing fiction, that he grasped the wisdom of confronting pain directly. Society, he observes, often teaches us to anesthetize pain—through drugs, distractions, or denial—but unacknowledged pain festers. Writing allows people to “mine the pain,” whether through fiction, poetry, journaling, or another creative outlet. Expressing pain, rather than numbing it, becomes a form of self-understanding.
John sees this process as deeply healing: “Whatever you can do to dig more deeply into yourself and let it out—as a catharsis—is healing.” Writing, he adds, helps transform raw emotion into insight, and that transformation becomes a path toward acceptance and meaning.
UNDERSTANDING AND CONTROL
Matty draws a comparison between emotional and physical pain, noting that ignoring pain can often make it worse, while analyzing it—understanding its nature—can make it more manageable. John agrees, saying that deconstructing fear and pain can defuse their power. “Part of the pain of loss… ignites fear,” he explains. “Fear of what your life is going to be like going forward.” Examining that fear helps reveal its roots and prevents exaggeration of the unknown.
He shares an analogy from his own experience recovering from a shoulder injury, where he was able to self-administer morphine. Having control over the dosage helped him manage the pain. Similarly, writing offers a sense of agency: “In the case of writing, that’s administering more pain,” he says, “but it has the same healing effect.” Writing about painful experiences can bring tears, but he views crying as an “emotional safety valve” rather than a weakness. “I wish more guys did cry,” he adds.
THE IMPORTANCE OF VALIDATING ALL PAIN
The conversation turns to how people sometimes minimize their own grief, telling themselves that certain losses—like the death of a pet—aren’t as worthy of mourning as others. John insists that emotional pain should never be ranked. “Emotions are in a sense illogical,” he says. “You can’t control them per se. They just are there.” The loss of a pet, he argues, can be as emotionally intense as the loss of a person, and writers should never dismiss their own pain as unworthy of exploration.
VULNERABILITY AND CONNECTION
John discusses how vulnerability is not something a writer consciously sets out to achieve but rather something that emerges naturally when writing honestly. “Vulnerability is a byproduct,” he explains. Facing pain, mining it for meaning, and sharing it through story all require courage. That courage can foster connection. “As soon as you share it,” John says, “you get a response of, ‘Oh, that makes sense, because I’ve felt that way too.’”
This sense of shared experience is one of writing’s greatest gifts. By being open about loss, writers invite others to reflect on their own. John recounts how readers and audience members often approach him after talks to share their own experiences of grief—sometimes for the first time. He believes that hearing another person speak openly about pain gives others permission to do the same.
JOURNALING AS A TOOL FOR HEALING
John has kept journals since childhood and describes journaling as one of the most powerful tools for emotional processing. “My journaling is basically looking at the day previous and examining it,” he explains. Writing things down allows him to reflect not only on what happened but also on why he felt a certain way.
He shares an example of a student who rediscovered his own anger when rereading old journals after his wife’s death—evidence, John says, of how journaling captures emotions we might otherwise forget. Journaling doesn’t require publication or sharing; it’s simply a private form of catharsis. His grief counselor even told him, “You don’t need me anymore. You ask yourself all the right questions in your journal.”
FROM JOURNAL TO MEMOIR
When writing his memoir, John drew on decades of journals but approached them selectively. He describes the process as “selecting.” Memoir requires discernment about what to include, especially when others—like family members—are part of the story. Before showing the manuscript to his wife, Cindy, he had her best friend read it first as a “canary in the mine.”
John learned to balance honesty with respect for privacy. “You can tell that story without airing the dirty laundry,” he says. Details that aren’t relevant to the broader emotional truth can be omitted. This principle, he notes, mirrors journalism, where one must decide what is most essential to the story.
WRITING TO CONNECT
By the time he shared his memoir with others, John realized that his purpose had evolved from writing to heal to writing to connect. “When you write a book, you’re writing it so that someone else will read it,” he explains. “It’s a connection between what you have to say and what the reader needs to hear.” Healing remains part of that process, but the deeper goal is to build understanding between writer and reader.
LESSONS FROM GRIEF COUNSELING
John credits grief counseling with reinforcing his courage to face painful truths. In one session, he recalls telling his counselor, “There’s something I really need to tell you, and the only other two people I’ve ever told this to are dead.” When she flinched, he added, “That’s not why they’re dead.” Sharing that long-buried secret was liberating.
Through counseling and writing alike, John learned that courage is “fear in action”—moving forward despite fear. “The byproduct of facing pain and facing your fears is courage,” he says. “It’s freeing, not frightening.”
THE REDEMPTIVE ARC OF MEMOIR
Matty notes that readers expect memoirs not just to recount pain but to offer resolution or insight. John agrees. “A memoir shouldn’t be settling scores,” he says. “There really should be something redemptive.” His final chapter, titled “So What?”, asks the reader to consider what meaning can be drawn from the story.
He believes that both life and writing come down to that same question: What now? What do we take away from our experiences, and how do we move forward? John sees writing as an essential part of that process—an act that turns loss into learning, and pain into purpose.
In this episode, Matty and John demonstrate how storytelling, honesty, and vulnerability can serve as bridges from grief to growth. Whether through journaling, memoir, or fiction, writing becomes not just an act of creation but an act of healing.