You are right, I would have loved to have more Christian influences, but I did as best I could with what I had. It was just me and God and my Bible for a long time.
Even still now, I have a hard time making Christian friends, which I am currently working on trying to. I have never been really good at making face-to-face friends, even when I was growing up. You can say that I wasn't socialized much with other children, and it didn't help that I was extremely shy either.
Yes, writing about our expeierences DO really help us heal.