Welcome to One Year of Writing and Healing, a site designed to explore connections between writing and healing.
Discovering and writing about and creating healing places can become a powerful way to ground the process of writing and healing.
A new story can change everything. One way to find one’s way to this new story is to explore others’ stories and then begin to write one’s own.
Writing can be a way to map out where one has been and where one would like to go. It can be used to discover a sense of purpose and set goals.
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 […]
Writing and health research with brief summaries and commentary.
