Never Expected to Be So Busy
November 5, 2025
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Writing poetry has exceptional healing power over trauma.
I have been invited to guide a weekend of Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing January 16-18, 2026, at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, Connecticut.
This comes on top of the healing poetry retreat I’m facilitating this weekend at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut.
Many of us are turned off to poetry because a high school English teacher thought poetry is about answers. Poetry is not about answers, it’s about questions. And the kind of healing verses discussed during my poetry weekends can go a long way toward smoothening some of life’s rough edges.
Many studies have shown that writing poetry has exceptional healing power over emotional trauma, enhancing immune system function, reducing physical symptoms and pain, and improving sleep.
The healing poems discussed in my program are easy to understand, beautiful, uplifting, and helpful in easing the stresses of a bad diagnosis, a divorce, death of a loved one – just about any emotional trauma we face.
Participants do their own writing throughout the program and share if they want to. It’s a supportive, no-critique, safe space – not an academic class about writing better, but more a contemplative approach to feeling better.
Topics covered during the weekend include:
• The science of Expressive Writing & its therapeutic benefits
• Poetry versus journaling
• Writing to heal: three secrets
• Loneliness and healing poetry
• Writing poetry for self-discovery, self-healing, and self-reliance
• Life’s silver linings – Humor, Gratitude, Hope
• Cherishing yourself
Wisdom House, pictured above, is an interfaith retreat and conference center that presents programs in spirituality, wellness, the arts, and ecology, while offering hospitality to academic, civic, nonprofit, and business organizations.
This former college and convent for the community of Catholic sisters, the Daughters of Wisdom, continues as a ministry of the Daughters of Wisdom and provides an environment for reflection and expression.
In addition to weekend programs, I hold:
• A weekly healing poetry hour at Hope Lodge, a facility of the American Cancer Society in New York City
• Zoom Workshops for patients at Mount Sinai Cancer Center in New York City
• Programs for the Sisters of Peace congregation near Seattle, Washington
• “Healing Verses” writing workshops via Zoom every other week for ongoing support in writing healing poetry
Here's what some past participants have said about their experience in the programs:
• “Your workshops unlocked something inside me that yearned to come out!”
• "Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.”
• “I will treasure these memories in the future, and plan to continue on this path of self-discovery and appreciation for everyday life.”
• “Writing poems has been a great outlet for me and I thank you so much for introducing me to this. It’s very therapeutic and healing.”
It was novelist Thornton Wilder who said seniors need to stave off death through work – even if it’s work that no longer drives a career.
Three years ago I took Wilder’s wise advice and made it my “old man’s project” in retirement to teach people how to write poems that help them feel happier and healthier.
It’s not only the act of writing poetry that is enabling me to give the Grim Reaper a run. Teaching others to do it makes my life sweeter than ever.