Issue 2

Catching-On Corner

Writing as Healer
By Rebecca Meredith

Some things you catch on to early, and yet can develop a sustaining relationship with that lasts a lifetime. When I was small I learned that reading and writing were ways to find comfort in hard times and when the people around me just didn’t seem to understand. I found my own feelings in others’ words—I may have been overwhelmed, but Black Beauty kept a strong heart. Alice took me on her strange and wonderful journeys. Frost taught me about being brave enough to take the “other” road, knowing that I would look back someday and see where that decision had led. Poe and Bram Stoker let me stare death in the face with twelve-year-old eyes and be as morbid and fascinated as I wanted to be, at a safe distance from the real thing. And in my teen years those two wonderful “catches,” Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 taught me to laugh when things are so wrong that they’re just plain crazy. It didn’t take long for me to want to put my own heart on the page, and with my writing talk to others about the deepest feelings that beat there. I wrote my first story at nine, and never looked back.

As a therapist who not only still writes, but uses poetry and literature in my psychotherapy practice, I delight in seeing others find themselves in the pieces that we read together, to really think about the fact that as human beings we are not alone in our experiences. Not only can we draw sustenance from others’ written-down lives, we can give others and ourselves a deep sense of understanding and being understood by writing down and sharing our own.

I have done poetry therapy with diverse groups of people, every one of which has taught me the power of sharing our stories. I have heard the poetry of young girls in a children’s prison, whose lives are so different, and yet whose feelings, hopes and desires are so similar to my own that I was moved beyond judgment. I have heard the fear, anger and wonderful wry humor of cancer patients who come together to read and write about grief, dying, and the absurdity and hidden blessings of it all. I have helped children who experienced terrifying flashbacks to write about the events that caused their symptoms, and then to take control and write new and better endings, endings that belong just to them. We know they are fantasy, but creating a world where we can simply imagine it to be better helps.

I am not alone in my love of writing as a therapeutic practice. Dr. James Pennebaker of The University of Texas at Austin has conducted years of research on the positive physiological changes that writing about one’s health issues causes in the writer. The National Association for Poetry Therapy provides training and support for a cadre of professionals who work in mental health settings all over the country. We feel cutting-edge, but in fact are only working with something that has come naturally to human beings from the time we gathered around storytellers at the fire. Whether in grief or celebration, sharing ourselves through writing can make us feel heard, understood, appreciated for our own unique way of seeing and expressing. It can let us know that, no matter how difficult things may be, in our human feelings we are not alone.

Rebecca Meredith is a therapist in private practice in Bellevue, Washington. She can be reached at 425-369-2288.