Diane Morrow

Looking at the Language of Sickness

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 12, 2006 in Healing Language and Healing Images

When I went back to Visual Thesaurus and entered the word illness I didn’t get much in the way of synonyms. But then I put in the word sick—and here’s what I got: Unlike the graphic of healing which I found appealing—and filled with a sense of possibility—this graphic took me aback. Especially that cluster of words around the word disgusted. And then that cluster of words around the word demented. This graphic got me thinking, not for the first time—but in a new way—about all the meanings and connotations that have gotten attached, at least in some instances, to sickness and illness. Maybe some of these words fit for some people. Maybe some of them don’t. I suspect a person could write an entire book about this cluster of words that radiates from this single word: sick. Maybe one of you will—or maybe one of you will write a poem about it or a paragraph or a something. Or maybe you will revise this graphic–or construct an entirely new graphic that contains entirely new words and new...

So What is Healing? (Part 2): Images and Metaphors for Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 10, 2006 in Healing Language and Healing Images

The World Book Dictionary defines heal this way: “to make whole, sound or well; bring back to health; cure”. At WordNet, an online database developed at Princeton University, healing is defined as “the natural process by which the body repairs itself”. And here is how three women—all in various stages of recovery from cancer—and all participating in an ongoing writing and healing group—pictured healing on one morning in North Carolina a couple of years ago. The following excerpt is from my notes: “Healing is movement,” E. said. “What do you see when you hear the word movement?” I asked her. “What do you see inside your head?” “I’m mulching,” she said. “I’m working in my garden, raking. I’m thinking about this tee shirt I have that says, ‘I’m not getting older, I just need repotting.’" “Healing is the apex,” S. said. “Healing is eureka.” “What do you see with eureka?” I asked. “I see myself throwing my hands up in the air,” she said. “After I’d gotten good news on the telephone. The doctor called. I was so afraid it was going to be bad news, but then it was good news.” Healing is mulching, raking, repotting. Healing is the apex, eureka. Healing is not just one thing. “Healing,” N. said, “is a taskmaster.” There was this pause, I remember, after N. spoke. I could feel a slight shift in the room. N. had stage four breast cancer. The tumor had spread to her liver and bones. In the past couple months she’d become so much frailer than when I first knew her. But, still, the fierce intelligence was there. “Would you mind terribly,” I asked, “If I were to ask you what you see in your head when you hear the word taskmaster?” N. answered immediately. “Ichabod Crane.” Ichabod Crane is that stooped and bony schoolmaster in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” He teaches in a one-room schoolhouse. When students don’t study properly he strikes them with a birch rod, the rod landing with a sharp thwack on their shoulders. Is this what healing is like sometimes? Is this what healing is like sometimes for some people? Is this what healing can be like sometimes for all of us? Healing is therapeutic, sanative, alterative. It’s making whole. It’s making well. It’s the natural process by which the body repairs itself. Healing is repair, therapy, movement, mulching, raking, repotting. Healing is the apex. Healing is eureka. Healing is a taskmaster. Healing is not just one thing. What do you see inside your head when you hear—or say—the word healing? What are the words and images that get at the truth of it?...

So What is Healing?

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 8, 2006 in Healing Language and Healing Images, Listening

This is one of those questions that seems so basic we could almost forget to ask it. But I think it’s important to ask it–and to keep asking it. As a way to begin, here is a graphic from a site called Visual Thesaurus. If you visit the site you’ll discover that it also allows you to try out a couple words for free without purchasing any subscription. You simply type in a word and it gives you a kind of thesaurus map. I like the site because it’s a way of giving a word a shape—two dimensions. If you like, you can use this pictorial definition of healing as a kind of template for creating your own definition—beginning to map out your own synonyms and...

A Apple Pie and Finding What You Didn’t Lose

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 6, 2006 in Healing Language and Healing Images

This week I was thinking about a book that was magical for me in childhood—a book that connected letters and things—a book called A Apple Pie by Kate Greenaway. Perhaps you’ve read it or seen it. Well, I typed “greenway apple pie” into google and google knew that I really meant greenaway (with an a) and it led to me this magical site, “The Celebration of Women Writers” which publishes online editions of out-of-copyright books by women authors. I found there reproductions of all the pages of A Apple Pie, a book first published in 1886 and which I first received as a gift when I was four or five (a bit later than 1886). After I discovered–actually rediscovered–those pages online, I made my way down to my basement and managed to locate the actual book—a bit worn and water-damaged and with my name and childhood phone number written on the inside page. Those pages evoke something for me. They evoke a particular time. They evoke for me something of that mystery of language that Helen Keller experienced and wrote so well about. What does this have to do with writing and healing? I’m thinking now of a book by John Fox called Finding What You Didn’t Lose. The premise of Fox’s book is that creativity can be reclaimed by reconnecting to early or significant experiences that may seem lost—but they’re not lost. Finding what you thought you lost but you never really lost it; you only perhaps misplaced it, or forgot it. On p. 7 of Fox’s book he quotes Albert Camus: A man’s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. Perhaps it would be helpful here to restate this quote in a more inclusive way. (I suspect Camus would have done this himself if he’d written in a different time.): A person’s work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence the heart first opened. Sometimes we don’t know when our heart first opened. We don’t remember or we think we don’t remember. Writing is a way to get back there. Writing can reclaim an early experience by conjuring its details. The slant of light in a particular room. The billowing of curtains. The sounds out in the street. I think all of this has something to do with healing, but then I have to admit that I tend to think of healing in very broad terms. I tend to think it’s all connected—the healing of creativity—the healing of the mind—the emotions—the healing of the soul—the spirit—the body—all of it—I think it’s all connected—though not necessarily in simple or uni-dimensional ways. (I don’t happen to think, for instance, that people who are experiencing illness in their minds or bodies are necessarily any less healed—or whole—in their souls and spirits than people who are at the moment without illness.) What do you think? Is any of this connected? Is Camus on the right track? Do those early experiences of the heart opening matter? Does reclaiming those experiences matter? And does this have anything to do with...

Writing and Healing Idea #9: The Mystery of Language

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 4, 2006 in Writing Ideas

In Helen Keller’s memoir, The Story of My Life, she describes a now famous moment that occurred between her and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, when she was seven: We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. Helen Keller made a connection: between the cool stream gushing over one hand and the shapes of the letters traced upon the other: w-a-t-e-r Do you remember the first connections you made between letters and words and things? Do you remember, for instance, your first phonics book? The pictures in that phonics book? Or any of your early readers? What about the way the ABC’s looked in your first-grade classroom? What about the shapes of those letters? Or the way it felt to hold a pencil and write those letters? What about that paper with the dotted lines? Do you remember what you felt when you first discovered letters? Or what you felt when you first discovered that words and letters were connected to actual things? Choose one particular moment of remembering. Perhaps a moment in a classroom. Or perhaps you were riding in a car and you were able to read a sign for the first time. Or maybe you remember one particular book from childhood. Pick one moment or thing. And then conjure the details of it. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? Write the words that conjure the details. Make the words into sentences if you...

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