WELCOME to One Year of Writing and Healing, a site designed to explore a myriad of connections between writing and healing—and to facilitate your own exploration. If you’ve visited here before, you may notice that things are looking a bit different these days. I’m in the process of merging my two sites and redesigning so […]
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 […]
One way to think about healing is to think about it as a story, with a beginning and rising conflict and plot twists and with things not always—or even often—going the way we expected, or hoped. But somehow, all the same, working to make a story of it—even perhaps a good story of it. A […]
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. These lines are from “The Way It Is” by William […]
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ——from The Wild Geese by Mary Oliver There are a large number of poems that could be offered as potentially […]
This is a task I didn’t have in the original framework of One Year of Writing and Healing, but as I’ve been working on revision I’ve come to think it’s important—finding ways to grow the habit of writing and make it part of one’s practice. Thus, I’ve given this its own room—and not just one […]
As with the previous task, developing the habit of writing, listening for the voice(s) of the body is a relatively new task I’ve added to the framework of one year of writing and healing. At the core of this task is using a process of writing and imagery to listen more closely to the voice […]
There’s a story by Anton Chekhov entitled, simply, “Grief”–also sometimes called “Misery”–which speaks beautifully, I think, to what grief may require–and to how the process of writing might contribute to the healing of grief. Not so much the erasure of grief. And not, certainly, the erasure of memories. But the healing of grief. I’ve included […]
The title for this month springs from an essay, “The Good Part,” written by Dennis Covington and found in the anthology, The Healing Circle. Covington’s essay is such a good essay, funny and sharp. It asks and re-asks what I think are terribly relevant questions to writing and healing: What’s the good part? Have you […]
If we’re going to engage in the process of healing for longer than a weekend—or longer than week—or a month—we’re going to need resources. There are so many possibilities here, and this too is a room I have intentions to expand. But meanwhile, here are some places to begin. Words as a resource for […]
In the fall of 2010, for one week, I made a point of tracking searches to One Year of Writing and Healing recording some of these. During this particular week in early November, a little over 200 people visited the site. Someone in Hanoi got there by searching for the Yeats’s poem, “The Lake Isle […]
This room is right now in development as I consider what makes the most sense for a thirteenth month. I think it’s going to have something to do with looking over one’s material and figuring out the important questions and holding the questions and figuring out the next step. Maybe. Right now it’s a room—waiting. […]
Like many of these rooms, writing and healing prompts needs a bit of housekeeping attention. I initially started out, years ago, numbering prompts—and then at some point I stopped numbering. Keep the numbering? Let it go? Organize the writing prompts by category? The first 44 prompts I posted were numbered and are listed here with […]
So many healing books! So much housekeeping to be done in the library. Meanwhile, here are links to a few of the books I’ve written about. If you’re more interested in healing poetry you can find that here. The Cure by Andrea Barrett. A short story, complete with a cure cottage, set in the Adirondacks. The Magic Land by […]
This is room dedicated to touching on some of the healing work being done around the world—and includes a few posts on such. This room is in its infancy. So many possibilities for expansion. Meanwhile, please feel free to explore the bits I’ve managed to collect so far. Photo from Wikimedia Commons
I’m one of those people who’s been interested in meditation for a long time. But I’ve been mostly interested from a distance–because I also find it really, really hard. I find it hard to hold a thought—or my breath—in my mind, to concentrate on that thought, or to try and work with it. I’m one […]
The research on writing and health has made some interesting connections and contributions, much of it based on James Pennebaker’s model of writing for twenty minutes in 4 sessions in response to writing prompts. I wrote about research early on in my work on this site so much of the research I wrote about occurs […]
