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Writing and Healing Idea #2: Freewriting
If you’ve ever read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones or if you’ve ever written morning pages in the style of The Artist’s Way, or if you’ve ever run across freewriting in one of its thousand other permutations, then you may already be quite familiar with the process of freewriting. If not, the gist of the matter is that when you choose freewriting you really do have a free ticket: you can write whatever you like. And you can write in whatever style you like. Freewriting, at its essence, is about reclaiming permission—permission to write a lot of words and sentences that no one else ever needs to see, and then beginning to notice, gradually, that something is beginning to emerge. Meaning perhaps. Or insight. Surprising words. Surprising sentences. Small nuggets of value. Gold of a sort. Jewels. You can choose a time when you know you will have fifteen or twenty minutes of uninterrupted time. The first thing in the morning?. The last thing in the evening? You can make a mug of tea, or coffee. You can find a comfortable chair. And then you can, simply, start writing. You can, for instance, write in response to the invitation to design a healing retreat. You can, if you’d like, write in response to this whole notion of writing and healing. What are some of your secret hopes for writing and healing? What are your secret fears? And what in the world is writing and healing anyway? If you can, as you write, try to keep your pen moving as much as possible. Worry not about spelling or punctuation or grammar, or whether what you are writing makes any sense for that matter. All of this is a part of the permission that freewriting offers. You can write that you have nothing to write about. That you have no clue where you’d go for a healing retreat. That you wish you’d bought a different pen. You can begin with your secret hopes for writing and healing, and then in the middle you can stop and switch directions and you can write about. . . what? The ants in your kitchen? Your aunts? The street you lived on as a child? The sky’s the limit here. And beyond that—stars, constellations, galaxies. You can make a list of all the constellations you know, and some you’ve never heard of but you wish they existed, and then you can if you like, come back to this notion of writing and healing and you can write about what in the world the stars might have to do with it. You really can’t do this...
read moreWriting 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 in the way of this retreat have been removed. In addition, your house or apartment will be cared for in your absence. Plants will be watered. Floors swept. The refrigerator cleaned out. Your task, now, is simply to design—in writing—or perhaps with drawings—this retreat. In order to design this retreat you may find yourself needing to suspend disbelief. (Someone is really going to clean out my refrigerator for me?) Go ahead. Suspend. Once you’ve done so you may find the following questions useful in designing your retreat: Where would you like the retreat to take place? What weather do you like? What kind of light? What resources would you like available close by? Walking trails? A piano? A swimming pool? A lake? What kind of accommodations do you prefer? Will the place have a porch? A window? Would you like to be alone in this place? Or do you prefer company? And what kind of company? Do you prefer quiet? Or noise? What sounds do you imagine in this place? What about smells? What does the sky look like in this place? How does the air feel? Where will you sit? Where will you sleep? What will you eat? How will the refrigerator be stocked? Who will prepare your food? What would you like to do on the first day? On a typical day? Is there anything else that’s important to the design of this retreat? What else? Please note that the seed for this invitation to design a healing retreat comes from a short chapter in Deena Metzger’s book, Writing for Your Life. The chapter, entitled, “Setting Up a Retreat,” can be found on p. 81. Photo is of the original Wildacres Retreat Cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where I had the good fortune to spend a week of writing retreat on two different occasions. You can learn more about Wildacres Retreats here. They’ve added two additional cabins since I stayed...
read moreWhy One Year of Writing and Healing?
I had for some time been mulling over a way to explore the possibilities in writing and healing. Then I happened across a book, Fern House: A Year in an Artist’s Garden. That whole notion—the cycle of one year in a garden—it called to me. The book is by Deborah Schenck, an artist from England, who, several years back, moved into a nineteenth-century house called Fern House in a small town in Vermont and began to transform the land around her house into a garden. Her book—mostly photographs and drawings—lovely photographs and drawings—records the first year of that transformation. She begins in winter. A wrought iron bench set against a snowy hillside. The silvery bark of birches. Maple sugaring. Then spring. Apple blossoms. Fiddlehead ferns. Hyacinth. Then summer. Pink roses. Hydrangea. Nasturtiums. That first summer they built a pond and bought one hundred goldfish to put in the pond. She made jam. She put in an herb garden. Then the frost came—autumn. Cider pressing. Pumpkins. Thistle. Then winter. A year, it would seem, is long enough for something to happen. When I originally began writing One Year of Writing and Healing, several years ago now, I began in August and moved through the year until July. But a person could (of course) begin the year at any month. The photo is from A Poet’s Garden at Deborah Schenck’s site Her book can be found...
read moreMonth One: Creating a Healing Place
TABLE OF CONTENTS Writing and Healing Idea #1: Designing a Healing Retreat Writing and Healing Idea #2: Freewriting Emily’s Healing Place: A Place to Heal from Anorexia Writing and Healing Idea #3: The Body as a Healing Place The Shelter of Poetry Terabithia and Tangalooponda Writing and Healing Idea #4: The Easiest Writing and Healing Exercise Ever A Clean, Well-Lighted...
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