Diane Morrow

Stronger than Dirt: A Recommended Book [Part One]

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 8, 2007 in Recommended Books, Writing about Goals and Vision

This is a book about a flower farm. It’s written in two voices, that of Kim Schaye and Chris Losee, a married couple in Brooklyn who moved out of the city to upstate New York to realize a dream—a vision. I’m quite sure that one reason I’ve enjoyed this book so much is because I get a kind of vicarious pleasure out of reading about someone—anyone—cultivating acres of flowers. But I also like the way this book begins at the beginning—when the flower farm was no more than a notion—and it proceeds to articulate the process of going from nothing—from scratch—into the realization of a vision. Interestingly, the story of the farm begins in failure. Chris, the husband, had been running his father’s construction business in New York for several years, business was booming, when in 1994, and rather abruptly, the construction boom busted and he found himself running the business out of his home and without the benefit of an income. In July of that year a concerned friend took him out to the tip of Staten Island to visit a place called Gericke Farm, a tiny farm which had once been a working farm and was now preserved as a demonstration farm inside a state park. They walked among the rows of crops. They picked tomatoes and zucchini and large bunches of flowers, and his friend told him he could show him how to make ten thousand dollars a year working part-time and on half an acre. The seed was planted. Between July and October of that year, and with a stack of books about small farming growing on his nightstand, Chris became convinced that he had stumbled upon their next venture. Of note, writing played a key role in moving what began as an idea—a dream—a vision—to a thriving farm. Chris writes: I’m not actually sure what made up my mind, but it might have had something to do with all the paperwork I was creating. I still have a time line, printed in choppy type on my old Apple dot-matrix printer from this period. It shows the months July 1994 through December 1996, and for each quarter of the year there’s a two- or three-sentence plan of action and a one-sentence goal. My wife says that I’m an obsessive list maker. But for me there is a quality of lists that is something like magic. Items on lists can acquire a certain inevitability. These are things that are supposed to happen, that will happen if given time and effort. And perhaps the gradual accumulation of books and lists had reached some critical mass that made the decision inevitable: write something down enough times and it becomes a fact. With writing as a catalyst, the facts begin to accrue for this couple. They find and then purchase thirty acres in the Hudson Valley with a stream running through it. Chris begins building them a house. He pores over seed catalogs. He orders seeds. He rigs up a system of plywood benches and grow lights—and a watering system no less—in the attic of their row house, and, after a decision to grow some vegetables along with the flowers, proceeds to start over three thousand tomato and pepper plants. They put up a fence at the farm, hire...

On Looking Ahead: Pema Chodron’s Teaching on Living Life as an Experiment

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 5, 2007 in Writing about Goals and Vision

To have a vision is risky. To say aloud what one wants—or to dare to write it down—is to take a risk. This seems especially true when one is daring to find words for one’s deeper goals and dreams. And it seems to me that this kind of thing should be acknowledged somewhere at the outset. Two summers ago, my daughter, then fifteen, volunteered for Horse-Sense, a nonprofit organization which then offered horse therapy—the grooming and riding of horses—to children and adults with developmental disabilities. It was a small operation—a pasture, a single riding ring, and a barn—fueled primarily by the sweat and energy of one woman, Kat, a woman whom we met when I first drove my daughter out one Friday afternoon in June. I was impressed that first day by how neat Kat kept the barn, how much she cared about the horses, and also her sense of vision for the place. She walked us around back and showed us trails she was clearing for clients. She told of setting up tables at horse shows on weekends to sell cookbooks and fund-raise. Later, doing chores with my daughter, she told her that she felt that God had called her to do this work. For several weeks my daughter went out once a week, and helped with horse chores. Later, she got an opportunity to work at a clinic, this with a group of children with disabilities who’d ridden up in a yellow school bus from Salisbury, North Carolina. Susan, a behavioral therapist was there, along with a number of volunteers from Kat’s church. Kat and Susan had set up three stations for the clinic. One station in the ring, this where my daughter was working, leading children around the ring on the ponies. Another station where the children were able to groom the ponies. And a third station, this in the shade, where the children were gathered around a table with crayons and paper, drawing pictures. It was hot, but all of the children—and most of the volunteers—seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. There was a sense of purpose and energy. I knew that Kat had moved out to this space less than a year ago, and I knew that she did not yet have the number of clients that she hoped for, but on that particular day, watching the children move through the various stations and then pull out in the school bus, I could see Kat’s vision—the thriving place that she imagined, with the horses at the center and something of value being offered to the children. I was glad that my daughter could be a small part of it. It seemed all good, if tenuous, with the success of the venture resting primarily on Kat’s shoulders. Then, some time in late July, Kat called. My daughter was out. I ended up talking to Kat a bit. “I need to tell you,” she said, “that we’re going to close.” Just like that. In order to keep the place afloat, she said, she really needed at least thirty clients a month. She hadn’t been able to reach those numbers and she’d tried everything she knew and it just wasn’t happening. And just like that. It was over. The risk of vision is failure. This seems to...

A Research Study on the Health Benefits of Writing About Goals

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 3, 2007 in Map

In 2001, Laura King, one of the researchers in the field of writing and health, conducted a study in which she looked at what happened when college students wrote about something she calls “their best possible future self.” By this time, a large amount of data had already been collected on the benefits of writing to work through difficult past experiences. King became interested in exploring what other kinds of writing might be beneficial to health. Her study is one that I don’t think has been written about enough. She looked at 81 undergraduate students, randomly dividing them into four groups: a group which wrote about their most traumatic life event; a group which wrote about a best possible future self; a group which was asked to write about both; and a group which wrote about a non-emotional or control topic. Each group wrote for 20 minutes a day for 4 consecutive days. Those students selected to write about a best possible future self were instructed to write in response to this prompt: Think about your life in the future. Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all of your life goals. Think of this as the realization of all your life dreams. Now, write about what you imagined. A couple of interesting results came out of this study. First, when students were tested three weeks after writing, it was found that writing about a best possible self was significantly less upsetting than writing about a traumatic life event. Second, the distress of writing about a traumatic life event was short-term. It had dissipated by five months. Third, both kinds of writing were beneficial. That is, when students were studied five months after writing, those students who wrote about a traumatic life event, those students who wrote about a best possible self, and those students who wrote about both—all of them experienced a decrease in illness. Only those students who wrote about a non-emotional topic showed no change. The study is published in the July 2001 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. In her discussion, King draws the following conclusion: The act of writing down our deepest thoughts and feelings is key to the benefits of writing. However, and importantly, the contents of our deepest thoughts and feelings need not be traumatic or negative. Quite the contrary, examining the most hopeful aspects of our lives through writing—our best imagined futures, our ‘most cherished self-wishes’—might also bestow on us the benefits of writing that have been long assumed to be tied only to our traumatic histories. I think this an enormously interesting and useful study. What I do not think is that this study should be used as a reason to counsel anyone and everyone to “move forward” to “think about the future” and “let go of the past.” Rather, I think what this study does is offer evidence that both are fruitful. Looking back toward unfinished business in the past is fruitful. Looking forward to a possible future is fruitful. And it seems reasonable to conjecture that in the best possible circumstances, each person would be permitted to choose for themselves—perhaps at times with some guidance—when to look back—and when it might be time to look...

Writing and Healing Idea #43: Imagining the Future

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 1, 2007 in Writing Ideas

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been handed a ticket. And imagine that this ticket grants you admittance aboard a vehicle which can then carry you to any point in your future that you desire. Six months from now? One year? Five years? The vehicle is navigated by a kind and skilled conductor. You simply need to tell him to which period of time you would like to travel. Then close your eyes. And let yourself begin to go there. Imagine that upon your arrival at this moment in the future, you discover that everything has gone as well for you as it possibly could. Imagine that things have gone the way that in your deepest heart you have most wished for them to go. Imagine the details. You may find that a particular scene emerges in your mind’s eye. Notice yourself in this scene. What are you doing? Who and/or what is around you? What does a typical day look like? What else do you notice? And what...

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.”...

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