Months 1&2: Creating a Healing Place
The idea here is to begin the process of writing and healing—to ground the process of writing and healing—in a healing place. But you don’t need to live at the edge of a lake or at the foot of a mountain in order to do this. That’s the beauty of writing: you can begin by creating your own healing place—with words. And you can draw on the healing places of others to do so.
Photo is by Camerman from Geograph. It’s of a cottage near Snowshill in Gloucestershire, Great Britain
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Ernest Hemingway was a genius at creating healing places with words. Here are two. The first is set in Michigan. Hemingway’s family had owned a cottage on a lake in Michigan and he spent summers there as a boy. Consider this place which he recreates in a story called, “Summer People,” one of his Michigan stories. Halfway down the gravel road from Hortons Bay, the town, to the lake, there was a spring. The water came up in a tile sunk beside the road, lipping over the cracked edge...
Terabithia and Tangalooponda: Healing Places in Books
I never had a fort when I was a kid. Maybe that’s why the fort in Bridge to Terabithia holds a particular pull for me. Or maybe it’s the details that Katherine Paterson, the author of the novel, lends it. Jess and Leslie are eleven when they find the perfect place to build their fort—a clearing among dogwood at the edge of the woods. They build the fort out of scrap board. They lay in provisions—clean water in old Pepsi bottles, a coffee can filled with crackers and dried fruit....
The Shelter of Poetry
Several years ago now, in the May/June 2001 issue of Poets and Writers magazine, a series of articles appeared on the topic, “Writing as a Healing Art.” Among these, perhaps the most compelling was a feature by Felicia Mitchell on Frances Driscoll, the author of a volume of poetry, The Rape Poems. Driscoll was working as a poet, beginning to publish her work, when in 1987 she was raped. She stopped writing after the rape. She believed, she said, that she would never write again. And then, gradually, poems...
Emily's Healing Place: A Place to Heal from Anorexia
[Please note that, as with any patients I write about here, unless otherwise stated, names and certain identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.] Writing about a healing place can offer the kind of moment that changes things. In fact, simply imagining a healing place can sometimes change things. I’ve seen this happen. One particular place that comes to mind is a place that a woman named Emily imagined. Emily was twenty-seven years old, and weighed, when she first came to see me as a patient, fifty-two pounds....
Writing and Healing Idea #1: Designing a Healing Retreat
Imagine for a moment that you go to your mailbox. You find there an envelope—a small white square. You open the envelope to find an invitation–to a healing retreat. A sheet of paper accompanying the card offers details: For six weeks, it has become possible for all of your ordinary routines and responsibilities to be suspended. Work schedules have been rearranged. Children will be safe and well-cared for. Any appointments (or medical treatments) have been rescheduled such that they will not interfere. In fact, any and all obstacles standing...