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Writing and Healing Idea #36: A Letter for Breaking Through Resistance
If you want to write and you can’t write, and when all else has failed, you can always write a letter—a letter perhaps something like this: To Whom it May Concern: I have not written a word in six weeks. Please send any advice or encouragement that you can muster. Sincerely———- And then, if you like, you can write yourself a letter back. And you can, if you like, go ahead and mail either of these letters to yourself. There’s something about getting a letter in the mailbox that can give it that certain extra...
read moreWriting and Healing Idea #35: My Favorite Piece of Writing Advice from Natalie Goldberg
In her book, Writing Down the Bones (published in 1986), Natalie Goldberg includes a wonderfully direct piece about how hard it is to get the conditions just right for work to flow. What she says here is true of writing, and it can be true of healing, and it can be true, I suppose, of any serious work. And sometimes, she suggests, the antidote may simply be to acknowledge this—that the conditions are not perfect, never perfect, that the world is filled with competing demands and distractions. So—-her advice: Okay. Your kids are climbing into the cereal box. You have $1.25 left in your checking account. Your husband can’t find his shoes, your car won’t start, you know you have lived a life of unfulfilled dreams. There is the threat of a nuclear holocaust, there is apartheid in South Africa, it is twenty degrees below zero outside, your nose itches, and you don’t have even three plates that match to serve dinner on. Your feet are swollen, you need to make a dentist appointment, the dog needs to be let out, you have to defrost the chicken and make a phone call to your cousin in Boston, you’re worried about your mother’s glaucoma, you forgot to put film in the camera, Safeway has a sale on solid white tuna, you are waiting for a job offer, you just bought a computer and you have to unpack it. You have to start eating sprouts and stop eating doughnuts, you lost your favorite pen, and the cat peed on your current notebook. Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write. There it is. Just write. For ten minutes or fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. About anything at all. About, if you like, the dog that needs to be let out, that solid white tuna on sale, your mother’s glaucoma. . . In the teeth of resistance, make one definitive act. Just...
read moreRunning: An Image for Writing and Healing from Natalie Goldberg
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg is one of those books that just seems to have had an influence. It was first published in 1986, but still now, it’s one of those books, people seem to find their way to it. Not too many years ago now, I was at my younger brother’s wedding, I was talking to one of his friends, he was beginning to take an interest in writing, I asked him if he’d heard of the book, he said, yes, in fact it was the book right now on his nightstand. I first came across the book myself nearly twenty years ago now. April 1988. I know the month and year because I was on a trip to New Orleans at the time. It was the first time I’d ever been to New Orleans. One morning, while my husband was in meetings, I rode the St. Charles Streetcar (which, I’m pleased to report, is due to be back up and running its old route at the end of this year). In any case, I got off the streetcar at a stop near Loyola University and I went into a small bookshop and I came across Natalie Goldberg’s book, Writing Down the Bones. It’s not a long book—as I remember, I read much of the book while I rode the street car around on its loop a couple of times, and I still had time to look out at the city. I was very taken with the book. What I liked most about it, and still like, is this sense she conveys of writing as a practice, a lifelong habit, something that one does, and can continue to do, through different kinds of weather—different moods—the sense that one can stay with it—like with running—or meditation. And that staying with it in this way can lead to something of value. She writes [p. 11]: This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It’ll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. And in the middle of the run, you love it. I’ve never been a runner, but at different times in my life (not right now—sigh) I’ve been a regular swimmer. And I feel as if I’ve had similar conversations over and over, in the locker room at the University pool in Missouri, at the YMCA in Durham, North Carolina, at the Rockville Swimming Pool in Maryland, and here, at the YWCA and then the YMCA. Conversations with wet hair after swimming. Someone says, I wasn’t going to come this morning. I know,...
read moreThe Journey by Mary Oliver: A Poem for Writing and Healing
A few weeks ago now a reader of this site sent me some poems by Mary Oliver. (Thank you.) Out of the poems she sent, the one that strikes me most—the one that seems to fit best with the thread of this month—two steps forward and one step back—is this poem by Oliver that I’ve seen in a number of places. It’s a poem that speaks to that in the world which would pull us back. It’s a poem that speaks to what can sometimes be required in order to move forward. The full text is here. It’s a poem that seems to have touched a chord with a number of people. Ten years ago, the NAPT (the National Association for Poetry Therapy) did a survey of poetry therapists, asking them which poems they most often selected to use with clients, and it turns out that of twenty-two poems frequently selected, this poem—The Journey—was at the very top of the list. The poem speaks to a stark truth—that sometimes—in certain situations—one has to do what is necessary to save one’s own life—first—– It’s a poem of rather haunting images and I suspect that’s one of the reasons it so often touches people. The way that images—poetic language—can sometimes touch us at a deep place when other kinds of ordinary language can’t quite— Today, these images—these eight lines from the middle of the poem—are the ones that strike me most: You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations— though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and...
read moreWriting and Healing Idea #34: The Next Step
This idea is a continuation of Writing and Healing Idea #33: Imagining Refuge. It picks up at a moment after the old woman in the cottage has invited you to tell her your story. It picks up after you have talked and talked—and she has listened. She is, as it turns out, a good listener. And, it turns out that nothing in your story seems to rattle her. She’s interested—and concerned—but not rattled. She’s seen a lot. She’s no stranger to reversal. There is also a kindness in her. Her face is very very kind as she asks you: Did you think it was going to be like a rose garden? That it would be easy? That it would be possible to move forward on a matter of such significance without any danger? Have you not read the books? Seen the movies? The Lord of the Rings? The Harry Potter series? When you were young, she asks, were you not told the fairy tales? She smiles. It’s a rueful smile. It’s all right, she says. She knows it can be terribly terribly difficult at times. But she also tells you that she doesn’t want for you to remain too long in a place of such difficulty. She sits with you and begins to talk about a plan. The first step and then the next and the next. She tells you that one step in the right direction can often be enough—and then one devises the next one, and the one after. She reminds you that, as with the story of the handless maiden, the baby is not ugly, that the baby was never ugly. She explains about the messenger falling asleep and about the twisted messages getting through. Then, after enough time has passed—when it is just the right time—when you are rested—and well-fed—and perhaps a bit clearer—she rises from the table and begins to pack you a satchel. What do you imagine that she might pack for you? What would you like her to pack for you? Where does she think might be a good place for you to go next? (Does she, for instance, think it best to stay with her a bit longer? Or does she suggest some other companion? Or a group of companions? Or does she suggest that it may be time now to go on for a while alone?) What does she think might be a next step? What do you...
read moreWriting and Healing Idea #33: Imagining Refuge
Imagine for a moment that you are at a point in the arc of healing when momentum is carrying you forward. There are positive signs, whatever those might be. There’s a feeling of hope. Of possibility. Of forward movement. And then imagine that just as you are beginning to consider it’s possible—healing is possible—imagine that you receive news of a reversal. Perhaps the reversal is felt in your body—pain, as bad as before, or worse. The fatigue has returned, and you’re mired in it. Or perhaps the reversal comes by way of a lab test or an x-ray. The tumor has grown. Or perhaps you encounter a rejection of some sort. Or perhaps, like Stephen Dixon, in his poem, “Sweetness,” that I wrote about here in February–perhaps you can’t bear “one more friend waking with a tumor”, or “one more maniac with a perfect reason”—- Perhaps you are discouraged by the violence and heartache in the world—- Or perhaps you simply have one of those no-good awful terrible hopeless days. Perhaps it’s raining, hard, and you find yourself without an umbrella, the car parked another three blocks away, and maybe you’re carrying a paper bag, filled with groceries, and it’s wet, it breaks, the contents spilling down the sidewalk. . . . Imagine now—at this very moment—in the wake of a sharp, and potentially devastating reversal—imagine that a figure appears. Perhaps an old woman? She has a kindness about her, and, also, she’s been through some things, she seems to know things—there’s something about her eyes. She can see, for one thing, the obvious—that you are cold and wet and tired. But she can also see that you have come to an abyss. A place of frustration. A dashing of hope. She knows that this is a particularly difficult juncture for you. And she also knows that the first step out needs to be of the most basic kind. She invites you to come back with her to her cottage. She leads you back, ushers you inside. She shows you where you can take a hot bath. She lays out towels. A clean robe. When you come out of the bath she’s laid a place at the table for you—a bowl of soup, a basket of bread, a pitcher of water. You eat and drink, and, after you have done so, she shows you to a bedroom with a clean soft bed. You sleep and sleep, and she lets you sleep. When you wake you find her out in the kitchen. She offers you a cup of tea, or perhaps a mug of coffee. She asks you to sit at the table. And it’s only then, after you are warm and fed and rested, that she asks you to tell her all about it. About all that has happened and what your hopes were at the beginning and how, at least in some ways, those hopes have been dashed. She has, she tells you, plenty of time. She has all the time in the world. What would you tell...
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