Invitation

How Much Does a Person Need to Write to Experience a Healing Benefit?

Posted by Diane Morrow on February 21, 2016 in Invitation

Possible Answers: 1. The most true answer: No one knows. 2. What the research says: Studies have shown that as little as 60 to 80 minutes of writing—twenty minutes on three to four consecutive days—can create positive benefits when it comes to health. (For instance, in the study on fibromyalgia and writing, a mere sixty minutes of writing—twenty minutes on three days—led to a decrease in pain and fatigue and an improvement in psychological well-being four months after writing. This benefit was not sustained, though down the road, ten months after writing. Which points, I think, to a good reason to sustain the writing over time.) 3. A nice round number: 90 minutes a week. Writing some number of minutes every week can foster the growth and development of the writing. It can also, potentially, allow the health benefits to be sustained, and perhaps, even, to begin to accrue. 90 minutes a week could be accomplished by writing 15 minutes a day 6 days a week. Or 30 minutes on 3 days. Any more than this could be gravy. And less could be worked with if need be. 4. The most practical answer: Write when you can. I suspect that one sentence a month, if written from a place of honesty, has the potential to make a difference to the process of healing, and—who knows?—perhaps one word can. The best advice I ever received about writing came to me when I was in high school from a teacher who told me, “If you want to be a writer then what you must do is to write every day, even if it is only to write, ‘I’m too tired to write today.’” If you want to practice writing for the purpose of healing, you might want to consider writing every day, even if it is only to write that you are too tired to write. (Of course if you find yourself with just a tiny bit more energy you could write another sentence, perhaps a bit about why you are tired, or perhaps a few lines about where you wish you could go to find rest.) Note: in the classic Pennebaker study on writing and health, college students who wrote for twenty-minute sessions on only four occasions reaped health benefits. Many other studies have used this twenty-minute increment of writing as well. Photo is from a print, Wind Flower by Deborah Schenck...

What’s a Good Way to Begin?

Posted by Diane Morrow on in Invitation

So often getting started is the hardest part. Sometimes one can begin simply by jumping in. Or wanting to jump in. Sometimes it can be enough to suspect there might be something of value here and then be willing to give it a try. To write as an experiment—and then see what happens. Here are five possible ways to begin the experiment: Freewrite Just write Design a healing retreat Start with once upon a time Start with gratitude Photo is from a print, Narcissus, by Deborah Schenck...

What About Safeguards?

Posted by Diane Morrow on in Invitation

There are three pieces here that may be of particular interest if you’re considering writing about difficult experiences. The first is advice about what to do if writing becomes too painful. The second is a kind of preventive remedy and has to do with setting up lifelines. In the end perhaps what’s most important to remember is that you’re the one in charge—you’re the one who decides what you do and do not write about—you’re the one who decides how to pace yourself—and you’re the one who decides when it’s time to rest. Which brings me to a third piece—which has to do with rest. The photo is from the print, White Clematis, by Deborah Schenck...

Why One Year of Writing and Healing?

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 10, 2006 in Invitation

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. You can get an overview of the year here. The photo is from a print, Kipling, from A Poet’s Garden at Deborah Schenck’s site Her book can be found...

Is There a Conflict Between Writing for Wellness and Writing Well?

Posted by Diane Morrow on October 26, 2006 in Healing Images, Invitation

Not all writing is done with the intent of healing. And not all healing requires writing. Perhaps this is obvious–but perhaps it’s also worth saying upfront. I’m interested in the place where the two might overlap. The place where writing and healing might overlap. I’m also aware that each person’s area of overlap might be somewhat different. A tiny sliver? A wide swath? And, at this place of overlap–intersection–I found an article of particular interest: Writing Well: Health and the Power to Make Images. The article, written by Mark Robinson, a poet and critic in England, appears in the journal, Medical Humanities. In the article, Robinson presents his hypothesis: “that the writing process itself is an integral part of any [health] benefit.” In other words, those same elements that foster good writing may also be some of the same elements that foster health. And one such element is the use of vivid imagery. The entire article is available online, and is well worth reading, but I’ll mention a few highlights here: • Virginia Woolf, in a diary entry from 1926, links her depression to having “no power of phrase making.” In turn, she links her lifting of depression with a gradual recovery of the ability to write. She writes: “Returning health: this is shown by the power to make images; the suggestive power of every sight and word is enormously increased.” • In a survey of 34 poets—including not only poets receiving mental health services, but also poets with no particular physical or mental illness history and poets with several published books—84% responded that writing had had a therapeutic use for them. These poets reported that they’d used writing to deal with stressful incidents in their lives, including the death of parents and children. They reported using writing, among other things, to deal with emotions, to sort out thoughts, and to provide a means of catharsis. • Interestingly, a number of these poets who were surveyed reported that when they did not write as regularly as they wanted they experienced negative mental and physical effects. More than one poet mentioned that when (s)he was able to begin writing regularly again (s)he felt better. • Finally, Robinson also reports on some work—a bit complex—but very interesting—in which a professor at Adelphi University, Wilma Bucci, proposes a model for why writing has an effect on physical and emotional health. She proposes that writing works particularly well at stimulating health when the language of writing is grounded in specific and concrete images. She describes a process whereby a person begins with a kind of amorphous knowing and then through the process of writing begins to form images, allowing for a “breakthrough in writing.” A person moves from amorphous—literally no form—to an image. A form. A shape. A something. And this breakthrough can foster health. This last point seems to resonate with Virginia Woolf’s reported experience (thus the title of Robinson’s article) and also resonates with my own experience. When something that has been amorphous emerges as an image—a concrete something with a concrete name—this can offer a kind of breakthrough—and that breakthrough can both make for better writing, and at the same time, it can feel good—it can look and feel like...