Diane Morrow | Writing and Healing

One Year of Writing and Healing: A Retrospective: Nine Metaphors

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 26, 2007 in Revision

Well, I took some of my own advice and made a clean copy of some pages from my site. What I ended up doing was printing out the pages under the category of Healing Images. The first surprise—more pages there than I realized—it printed out to 38 pages—which makes me wonder if the site isn’t getting a bit too bulky. Not sure what to do with that observation yet. So what I decided to do instead is attend to those images that seem now to resonate. And when I did, what emerged was nine images—nine images which could also, I suppose, be called metaphors. Nine Metaphors for Writing as Healing Each offered with a link to its post—and to some of the poems that were a source of these images: A CLEAN WELL-LIGHTED PLACE Writing as a café. Or as any clean well-lighted place that stays open and is there when you need it. In the story by Hemingway, an old man sits on the terrace of a café at closing time. It is late, but the old man, the last customer of the night, is reluctant to leave. A young waiter wipes off the old man’s table with a towel and tries to shoo him out. But a second waiter, older than the first, understands the old man’s need to linger. “Each night,” he says, “I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café.” A PUMPKIN Writing offering a sense of possibility. Like the pumpkin in Cinderella. That moment in the story when all seems lost—the stepsisters have torn Cinderella’s dress, they’ve gone on to the ball without her. Cinderella’s heart is breaking. And then the godmother comes. The pumpkin becomes a carriage. It maintains the lines and shape of a pumpkin, but now it has wheels—and a door. Cinderella climbs inside. The carriage begins to move. . . . Something there—that moment. The godmother comes. The pumpkin becomes a carriage. Writing is like that—or it can be like that—that possibility of transformation—the pumpkin becoming a carriage—and the carriage beginning to move— A BROOM Writing as a way to sweep out the guest house that is the self. From the poem by Rumi. The Guest House. If being human is a kind of guest house, and if every morning we can expect a new arrival—including, sometimes, those more difficult guests—sorrow and so forth—and if those guests are capable of sweeping out the house of the self—preparing us—for something (who knows what?)—then maybe, just maybe, writing can facilitate all of this. A way to name the visitors and help them sweep. Writing as a broom. A MAP Writing as a kind of map to the healing quest. It’s there in Adrienne Rich’s poem. Diving into the Wreck. “The words are maps.” First, you gather the resources you’ll need for your quest. In this particular poem, this involves a book of myths, a camera, flippers, a mask. A ladder appears and you begin to climb down. To explore the wreck or to search for treasure—or both. Writing offers the map. A way perhaps to keep track of where you’re going—or where you’ve been—or where you’d like to be going. “I came to see the damage that was done/ And the treasures that prevail.”...

I write because. . .

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 24, 2007 in Revision

For me, part of the process of revision—in this case, looking again at One Year of Writing and Healing—has been going back to the basics and beginning (again) to ask myself some very basic questions: Now, why again am I doing this site? What have I done so far? What do I want it to become? What might I want a second year of writing and healing to look like? And, in the middle of this process, I was inspired by Sharon Bray to ask an even more basic question: Why do I write? Her question inspired me to do a search on “I write because. . .” and then to make a page of quotes of writers who have responded to that question. I made the page and brought it into a writing workshop at Cancer Services that is just forming, and I can tell you that the words carry even more resonance when read aloud. That’s what we did. We just went around the circle and took turns reading the lines aloud: I write because. . . It was a bit like reading poetry aloud. For me the words became more powerful and clearer as I heard them read. They became more alive. Hearing them aloud—particularly in different voices—it became easier to hear which lines carried a particular resonance–which lines struck a chord. Here are the lines we read. (Can you hear us reading them?): I am going to write because I cannot help it. —Charlotte Bronte I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still. —-Sylvia Plath I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means, what I want, and what I fear. —-Joan Didion I write because I want more than one life. —Anne Tyler I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. —Oscar Wilde I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say. —Flannery O’Connor And, from Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech: I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write to be alone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write to be...

Speak the Language of Healing: A Book for Making Peace with the Body When the Body Has Cancer

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 21, 2007 in Recommended Books

Writing earlier this week about making peace with the body prompted me to pull out a book that I haven’t looked at in a while. Speak the Language of Healing: Living with Breast Cancer without Going to War. It’s an intriguing title. An intriguing book. And one I was introduced to a few years ago now by a patient, Norah, who found the book during a time when she was trying to figure out how to live with metastatic breast cancer. I’d known Norah two years before she got her diagnosis of cancer. She was a patient of mine, had seen me on and off for some stress-related symptoms and had been doing quite well. She’d suffered an enormous amount of pain in her early life, and she’d found a way to work through some of her grief about that time, and she’d begun to feel a sense of freedom—and possibility. She was preparing to move away from North Carolina and take a new job in a large city. She was excited about the move. She’d just made a trip to look at housing. And then one evening, not long after she’d made this trip to look at her new city, she came in to see me, and she was carrying a large brown grocery bag. She sat down, and she proceeded to take from the bag a bottle of wine—and then two glasses. And she handed one of the glasses to me. This was entirely unlike anything she’d ever done. In fact I can’t say I’ve ever had a patient bring wine and glasses to an appointment—not before or since. She opened the wine. She asked me if I’d take some. Sure, I told her. Sure. She poured a bit of wine in my glass, and then a bit more in hers. I waited. And then I asked. What are we toasting? To breast cancer, she said. I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer. And so we toasted breast cancer. She’d found a lump. She’d been in to see her internist a month before and at that time everything—her exam—including her breast exam—all was normal. And then she’d found this lump. And she’d gone in for an evaluation—a biopsy—the lump was cancerous. Sometimes patients go through a phase of denial where they believe a serious condition is not going to affect their lives. And, sometimes, it would seem that physicians go through this. In this particular case, I was the one who stayed in denial for a bit. I thought—she’s doing so well, she’s just taken this new job, she’s excited, she has a breast tumor, she’ll get treatment, maybe it will delay her move, she’ll still get to go. Norah suspected it was going to be a bigger deal. Norah was right. Further evaluation revealed that she had disease in her liver and her bones. Stage four disease. She changed her plans. She began chemotherapy. And as she went through her treatment—and her illness—and all the changes that this brought—and as she began to write about some of this, well, Speak the Language of Healing was the kind of book that she needed to find. The book is authored by four women—Susan Kuner, Carol Matzkin Orsborn, Linda Quigley, and Karen Leigh Stroup. Each of the women has...

Writing and Healing Idea #42: Making Peace with the Body

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 19, 2007 in Writing Ideas

Sparked by Sara Yates’ Call for Submissions, which appears below, I thought I’d offer some ways to begin writing about making peace with the body. It also occurs to me that there may be a way to tie this in to the practice of revision. Here then are some questions that might spark writing on Making Peace with the Body Question 1: When you hear the phrase, Making Peace with the Body, what image pops into your head? What word? What picture? What scene? What body? Question 2: Is there anything you’ve already written—ever—that touches, even remotely, on making peace with the body? Can you find it? Would it be worth digging up and looking at again? Might it provide the clean copy of pages that you could look at again and use to practice revision? Question 3: Have you written anything—ever—that touches, even remotely, on the topic of someone or something making war with the body? Would this piece be worth digging up and looking at again? Could it become a springboard for writing about making peace with the body? Question 4: Might one of these lines offer a springboard to writing? I remember a moment when I made peace with my body—– I remember a moment when I felt at peace with my body—— I remember a moment when I really needed to feel at peace with my body—– I have never made peace with my body—— A person I know who has really made peace with her/his body is———– I started to make peace with my body when—— The next step to making more peace with my body would...

Love Your Body Exhibit: Winston-Salem

Posted by Diane Morrow on in Submissions

Submissions are closed for the Love Your Body exhibit—BUT—the art is up. Find photos of the show here. Sara Yates, the show’s founder, writes, about the exhibit: The idea began as a way to increase awareness and understanding of eating disorders, but has grown to encompass any body issue (such as abuse, sexuality, body image, aging, illness, disability, etc.). The goal of the show is to facilitate healing by allowing contributing artists to share their stories while encouraging viewers to have a compassionate relationship with their body. Sara works as a teacher’s assistant at a school for students with special needs and disabilities. This, combined with her own personal experience of recovery, led to the idea for the exhibit. In her own words: Because of my personal struggle with anorexia and my connection to children whose lives are affected by disabilities, I have become profoundly interested in the sweeping changes that occur when individuals heal their relationship with their bodies. In my own struggle, I found that art spoke when I could not. Telling my story through art was probably the first meaningful step I took towards recovery. I hope the Love Your Body show will allow participants to find compassion for their bodies as they share their own stories (through whichever medium best suits them). She’s definitely onto something—— The visual art is on display in the South Corridor Gallery at Salem College and the written work–primarily poetry and short prose—is collated in a booklet that viewers can take away from the show. Sara also has a new website which includes updated information about the show. ...

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