Welcome to my blog, designed for us to post poems, ideas about writing for healing, and any topic related to writing for healing.
More on writing for healing grief
Have you wanted to use creative ways to heal from grief? There are many paths. First, it is important to understand whether this approach is right for you at this time. As with any healing process, you may be ready for different endeavors at different times. To be ready to add creativity into your healing it is important to feel stable enough so that you won’t be derailed emotionally by the material that comes up. This means that you may want to have a therapist or doctor if you are on medication to help you decide if this approach is right for you. Sometimes dipping your pen or a crayon onto paper may give you some idea of how you will react. If the writing or drawing, painting, collage, etc. is too upsetting or brings up difficult symptoms of anxiety or depression, then it is good to give yourself a little time before you try again. Learning how to follow your intuition (wise mind) about this is very helpful.
If you want to try writing, and are having trouble getting started, you could start with images, memories, and stories about the person you are grieving. In Perie Longo’s book of poetry With Nothing Behind but Sky, written during and after the loss of her husband, several memories and evocative images show up throughout–her husband taking his last breath, and her husband returning either in dreams, signs, or fantasies that he would actually return. What are the memories, images, colors, things about the person you have lost that you could write down? Did they have beautiful hands, love wearing a certain color, did their hair shine a certain way in the light, or were they going bald? Were they old or young, like a tree or a mountain, what are your first memories of them? Start with lists of free writing and see how it feels. This could lead to a story or a poem.
Some people find it very comforting to have this way of making meaning and remembrance for their beloved lost one. I hope it will be helpful for you.
A tree is just a tree
Here is a way women are put down:
“She has the right to change her mind.” This means she is fickle, a tease, wishy-washy, not to be taken seriously.
A tree is just a tree. It gets to be itself and grow how it needs to. It gets to change its mind and grow towards the light without being humiliated or criticized into conformity or submission.
Posted in Writing and healing
Tagged how trees grow, tree, women self esteem, women's rights
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When hope is called for
What gives you hope, lifts up your mood? In the wintertime, when it’s darker and viruses haunt the hallways, it is important to find hope and light. Yesterday it rained in the SF Bay Area for the first time in a couple of months. Usually the storm gate opens in December, and the rainstorms pile up like traffic at metering lights on the freeway. But this year it’s been nothing but sunny and dry. All talk last week was about the rain expected on Wednesday. It finally came on Friday. Usually by now we are dreaming of beaches in Hawaii, watching the creeks and rivers for signs of high water. But this year, the rain brought relief and hope. Some things about nature seem so simple that we want to take them for granted. Nature may be trying to teach us something about life!
Now there will be snow for skiing, and at least a little water for the trees and plants that need it. By next month the rains may have saturated our spirits until we are begging for relief. I hope that’s what happens.
What gives you hope, lifts up your mood? What do you hope for?
Posted in Poetry, Writing and healing
Tagged hope, hope in nature, hope in winter, lift your mood
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“The true meaning of life…
is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” This wonderful message comes from a Brush Dance Calendar called “Flower Silhouettes” that I just purchased for the new year. The words were written by Liz Kalloch.
In thinking about the new year ahead, what acts of generosity and meaning might you want to set as an intention? This could include writing a poem for someone you love or admire, giving a “random act of kindness” gift–something no one expects and is spontaneous in the moment for someone you know or for a stranger. A common example of this is to pay for a bridge toll for the car(s) coming next.
Are there people in your life you have been meaning to visit or communicate with. If you haven’t done it, is this a good time to make the time to do it?
And how do we put intentions into action? Resolutions often peter out quickly, leaving guilt and remorse. Try starting small and seeing if you can follow through. If not, go smaller without giving up.
Another quote from the calendar to close:
“Look deep into nature, and then/you will understand everything better.” Is this activity on your list of intentions for the new year?
If you would be a poet
Go often among trees…
This is the title and first line from a poem by Timothy Walsh in Tree Magic, Nature’s Antennas. During this time of cold weather and more darkness, it is even more important to find time with nature. Here in the Bay Area there are infinite numbers of places to visit. I recently heard about a park in the SF Tenderloin district called the Tenderloin National Forest (http://www.carbonfarm.us/tenderloin.html) located in Cohen Alley off Ellis Street in the San Francisco Tenderloin. This is an oasis amidst traffic, grime, poverty, and humanity. I hope to get there soon with
a notebook and pen ready to go. It’s helpful to try to find time during any busy season, for writing, meditation, and reflection. Let me know where you find refuge in nature.
Posted in Writing and healing
Tagged refuge in nature, solace during winter, writing and nature
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Tree gifting
Tree gifting
Send a tree to all your friends
for a canopy of birch, poplar, or cedar
leaves to spread humanity
around us.
He who plants a tree plants hope–Lucy Larcom
I found a wonderful book available free online called Tree Magic, edited by Jackie Hofer. www.sunshinepress.com/tmhome.htm
In the preface, she says that research has shown trees to have therapeutic value in our lives. Apparently people driving past green space on their way to work perform better during the day. People in hospitals do better when they can see green out of their window. Neighborhoods are safer and neighbors get along better when trees grow in the area.
Rob Rossell, in his blog post Giving the Gift of a Tree, on Into the Bardo tells about how he was declared an “environmental hero” by sending trees as gifts for the holidays. He explains how to do it: You buy a virtual tree (each tree costs only a dollar) from MokuGift and/or send one to a friend as a gift, and a real tree will be planted in various part of the world where trees will do the most good in fighting global warming and reversing environmental degradation. Rob had 134 trees planted through his gifts and the inspiration of 97 others who passed the gift on to their friends. Would you like to join in?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged holiday gift idea, tree gifting, tree magic, trees as gifts
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What makes writing healing?
I just Googled writing for healing and found all sorts of interesting websites such as One year of Writing and Healing. I really like this web site! There are great ideas for using writing as a practice for healing and a calendar to take you through the year. The webmistress and author, Diane Morrow, is a former physician, now English teacher. And she has a great list of poems for healing including authors such as Mary Oliver, Marie Howe, Rumi, and Adrienne Rich. Seeing Marie Howe’s name reminds me that Terry Gross just interviewed her on “Fresh Air” radio show on NPR–a very lovely interview.
Wandering through this rich website I also came across another interesting place, Grief, loss, and recovery.com
Here are some interesting titles like “How can grief be good when you are grieving?” “Eight ways to let go”, and many many grief poems.
Getting back to my question about what makes writing healing, I think an important element in the mix is getting what is inside of you out and down on paper or on a computer screen. Once you have words on some form of a page, they can be put away, read out loud, sent to others, or saved to be read later. Whatever you decide to do with your writing, the page can become your safe container that holds whatever you need to say just like a safe with a combination lock holds valuables.
Writing for healing grief
Perie Longo, a licensed marriage and family therapist and registered poetry therapist in Santa Barbara wrote poems about her husband Phil’s struggle with leukemia. After he died, Perie’s poems were published in the book,
With Nothing Behind but sky: a journey through grief. I chose to include the following poem in this blog (with permission from the author) because I have read it many many times and it is still new and profound to me.
I think that writing poetry is a very powerful tool in working with grief. The last stanza of this poem points to the ways that a poem can lead us towards wisdom and truth in the midst of heartbreak.
While Watching A Video of the Dalai Lama
Everything I see or hear is about him
since he has been gone.
This morning, the Dalai Lama
says there is so much suffering
in the world he can’t do much.
With his monks he sifts colored sand
into an intricate design for peace,
then sweeps it away. They collect
the remains in a small jar, sprinkle a little
on top of their heads for tranquility.
While I held my husband in my hands
as ash, like finest sand,
all the hard edges of us disappeared
with the smoke. I rubbed him on my skin
then flew him into light.
Such tragedy! how it takes death
to put everything in its right place,
how it takes death to perfect a life.
Perie Longo 8/01