Archives | Writing and Healing

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 29, 2006 in Healing Places

Ernest Hemingway was a genius at creating healing places with words. Here are two. The first is set in Michigan. Hemingway’s family had owned a cottage on a lake in Michigan and he spent summers there as a boy. Consider this place which he recreates in a story called, “Summer People,” one of his Michigan stories. Halfway down the gravel road from Hortons Bay, the town, to the lake, there was a spring. The water came up in a tile sunk beside the road, lipping over the cracked edge of the tile and flowing away through the close growing mint into the swamp. In the dark Nick put his arm down into the spring but could not hold it there because of the cold. He felt the featherings of the sand spouting up from the spring cones at the bottom against his fingers. Nick thought, I wish I could put all of myself in there. I bet that would fix me. It’s the details that bring the place alive. The water lipping over the cracked edge of the tile. The close growing mint. The featherings of sand. A second healing place that Hemingway created is a more famous one—a clean well-lighted place in a story by the same name: In the story an old man sits on the terrace of a café at closing time. It’s late, but the old man, the last customer of the night, is reluctant to leave. A waiter wipes off the old man’s table with a towel and shoos him out. This waiter is eager to get home to his wife, his warm bed. But a second waiter, older than the first, is sympathetic to the old man’s need to linger. First, he tries to explain this to the younger waiter, and then, when the younger waiter loses interest, he tries to explain it to himself, or to whoever will listen—what it is about this particular place that is important: “It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music.” This waiter is very clear about what is necessary for him. This is something writing can do—allow us to become very clear about what is necessary for us. What kind of place? What kind of light? Music?...

Writing and Healing Idea #4: The Easiest Writing and Healing Exercise Ever

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 28, 2006 in Practice, Writing Ideas

Take a moment before going to bed. One minute or three minutes—five at the most. Make a cup of tea if you like. Then open a notebook. And write a single word that describes the day. Just one word. An adjective perhaps: LOUSY. SWEET. DIFFICULT. A noun that could describe a moment from the day: PURPLE CROCUS. PANCAKES. NEW SHOES. A verb: SWIMMING. HURTING. RUNNING. Any word at all. Or, if you are too tired to write that word, write down, simply, I am too tired to write tonight. And that can be enough. The idea here is to grow the habit of writing every day–even if it’s only to write one sentence–or one word. This can be how a writing practice begins. Photo is from a time lapse video of a crocus opening by Neil...

Terabithia and Tangalooponda: Healing Places in Books

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 24, 2006 in Healing Places

I never had a fort when I was a kid. Maybe that’s why the fort in Bridge to Terabithia holds a particular pull for me. Or maybe it’s the details that Katherine Paterson, the author of the novel, lends it. Jess and Leslie are eleven when they find the perfect place to build their fort—a clearing among dogwood at the edge of the woods. They build the fort out of scrap board. They lay in provisions—clean water in old Pepsi bottles, a coffee can filled with crackers and dried fruit. Then at some point the fort and the land around it become a kingdom—and they give it a name—Terabithia. Such a lovely name. There’s a passage in the novel where Katherine Paterson describes what it feels like for Jess, the boy, to cross over into Terabithia: Just walking down the hill toward the woods made something warm and liquid steal through his body. The closer he came to the dry creek bed and the crab apple tree rope the more he could feel the beating of his heart. He grabbed the end of the rope and swung out toward the other bank with a kind of wild exhilaration and landed gently on his feet, taller and stronger and wiser in that mysterious land. That’s what interests me—right there—the change possible in the body upon entering certain places. And there’s another place, in another novel—A Map of the World, by Jane Hamilton. The central character, Alice, is looking for her bathing suit one summer morning when she comes upon a series of maps she had drawn as a child. Her mother died when she was a young girl and the maps carry her back to a place, Tangalooponda, that she conjured in the wake of that loss: I took out the sheaf of papers and knelt down, spread them on the floor, ran my fingers over the lime-green forests, the meandering dark blue rivers, the pointy lavender mountain ranges. I had designed a whole world when I was a child, in secret. I had made a series of maps, one topographical, another of imports and exports, another highlighting mineral deposits, animal and plant species, another with descriptions of governments, transportation networks, and culture centers. My maps had taken over my life for months at a time; it was where I lived, the world called Tangalooponda, up in my room, my tray of colored pencils at my side, inventing jungle animals, the fish of the sea, diplomats and monarchs. Although there were theoretical people in my world, legions of them, all races and creeds, when I imagined myself in Tangalooponda I was always alone, composed and serene as an angel in the midst of great natural beauty. When I imagined myself in Tangalooponda I was always alone, composed and serene as an angel in the midst of great natural beauty. Is it possible then? Can being among natural beauty effect a change in the mind? Can drawing a map of a place with natural beauty effect this kind of change? Can writing about natural beauty do this? Bridge to Terabithia can be found here. A Map of the World can be found here. Image from...

The Shelter of Poetry

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 22, 2006 in Healing Places, Healing Poetry

Several years ago now, in the May/June 2001 issue of Poets and Writers magazine, a series of articles appeared on the topic, “Writing as a Healing Art.” Among these, perhaps the most compelling was a feature by Felicia Mitchell on Frances Driscoll, the author of a volume of poetry, The Rape Poems. Driscoll was working as a poet, beginning to publish her work, when in 1987 she was raped. She stopped writing after the rape. She believed, she said, that she would never write again. And then, gradually, poems began to come. One such poem is entitled, “Island of the Raped Women.” It contains these lines: We all sleep through the night. We wake eager from dreams filled with blue things and designs for hats. At breakfast, we make a song, chanting our litany of so much collected blue. We do not talk of going back to the world. We talk of something else. . . In the article in Poets and Writers, Driscoll speaks about the responses she gets to this particular poem: Little girls barely out of their teens ask. Sometimes college women ask. The question is always whispered. The question is desperate and urgent. The question always breaks my heart. The question is, ‘Where is the island? Where is the island? It’s such a moving question, such a poignant question. It also points to what is possible: words powerful enough to create an island. Words powerful enough to create shelter. If you were to imagine an island for healing, what details might it have? What colors would recur? A full text of “Island of the Raped Women” can be found here. Another article from this site about the poem can be found here. Pictures from Paris in Color via...

Writing and Healing Idea #3: The Body as a Healing Place

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 21, 2006 in Writing Ideas

This idea for writing begins before you ever put a word on the page. It begins by bringing attention, first, to the body. Your hands. Your arms. The arrangement of your limbs and body in space. Notice, for a moment, what you feel when you bring this kind of attention to your body. What do you feel in your hands? What do you feel in your feet? What do you feel in your hips? You can, if you like, write a word, or a few words, that describe this sensation. Next take a moment to notice what you could do, right now, to make your body more comfortable. Take off your shoes? Change into more comfortable clothes? Something else? Write this down too. And then if you’d like, go ahead and do it. Get settled again. Now take a moment and just invite your feet to relax. And notice what happens. Write a word, or a few words, about what you notice. And then, if you’d like, begin to notice what you are feeling in the rest of your body. Move upward from your feet to your calves. Your thighs. Your hips. Your belly. Consider your back muscles. Your neck muscles. Your shoulders. Pay attention. Notice what happens when you invite each of the different parts of your body to relax. Notice the sensation. Make a few notes about the sensations you are experiencing. This process of noticing your body is sometimes called a body scan. You are literally scanning each part of your body with your conscious attention. Writing can facilitate this process. It can amplify the experience of noticing. And this kind of noticing can, in turn, facilitate...

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