Writing to Feel Better

During the weekend of November 7 - 9, I will conduct a program on “Writing for Wellbeing—Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing” at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut.

If you attend, I’ll show you how easy-to-understand poems can be beautiful, uplifting, and healing. Our discussions will center on what poetry is all about, and how famous writers have created poems to address their own personal issues. I’ll show you how to write poems to better manage any emotional trauma – from the stresses of illness or grief to the rupture of a relationship or the loss of purpose and hope. 

I’ll share my two secret hacks to get you writing your first poem, and there will periods of reflecting, writing, and sharing.

For details and to register.

That’s in November, for a weekend. On September 12, I will be in Manhattan to conduct a workshop on the healing power of poetry. 

My poetry program will launch the Friday Arts initiative at New York City’s Mount Sinai Cancer Center. Friday Arts is a monthly enrichment program designed to nurture creativity, community, and healing for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers.

This session at Mount Sinai is in addition to the healing poetry gathering I host each week at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge, also in New York City. 

And you already know about the “Healing Verses” workshops I hold every other Wednesday via Zoom.

We read set a theme for the meeting, read a poem that speaks to that theme, and then write our own poem.

This Wednesday, September 3, we’re going to talk about the poem, “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. I’m going to tell the Zoom group what I think is the real definition of hope – and its true healing power.

The Wednesday workshops have a one-hour format:

• Reading and discussing a famous poem that has healing properties

• Quiet time to write your own poem

• An open period when you can read something of your own if you want to

To join my Zoom room – open to everyone – enter this link into your browser: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89034950365?pwd=DEFfvQ1bMqlUX1Wu1qK3mApkR0Q1gH.1

The foundation of the teaching I do is Expressive Writing, a therapeutic discipline developed at the University of Houston in the early 1980s and replicated more than 2,000 times since then.

It’s a kind of writing unlike journaling, and research has shown it yields significant benefits in alleviating emotional trauma, with general enhancement of immune system function, physical health, pain symptoms, sleep, and overall functioning. 

In the long term, trauma victims report feeling happier and less negative than before practicing Expressive Writing.

And isn’t that what we all want?