A wise Student on the Literary Magazine staff at my daughter’s school
predicted no students would want to write something for the magazine over
their holiday break “since no one likes to do homework on vacation.”
Her comment triggered a flood of memories, of how writing so often saved
me on the rocky, slippery slope of adolescence – and continued to be my
way of sorting through relationships or incidents I felt intensely but didn’t
understand -- right up to the present day! The poet John Fox, founder of
the Institute for Poetic Medicine teaches cancer patients and physicians
how to discover poems within them that can put them on the path to
healing. I recently spent a whole Saturday with him and other adults writing
and reading poems, not for publication, but to focus our attention, and sort
through the experiences that have shaped us. Some experiences I
honored by noticing them, others I was able to let go of once the pain or
anger was laid down on paper.
Writing is a way to get access to thoughts and feelings we don’t have time
for as we speed through our days.One of my favorite writers on writing called her book: Writing Down the Bones. I’m guessing she called it that because when you go bone-deep
with your writing, tell the truth about your experiences, you reap huge
rewards of self-knowledge, healing and peace .
The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, wisely says that "Anger is the
garbage of all emotion, but it takes garbage to make compost, and it takes
compost to make a flower."
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