Healing with literature

Reading beautiful, heartfelt fiction and poetry by classic and contemporary writers, puts your pain in a larger, human perspective. Many great works depict physical and emotional suffering and efforts of healers and patients to grapple with them. You may feel less alone when you read works that describe experiences that you thought were yours alone.

Healing with writing

The field of Narrative Medicine (medical humanities) is sensitizing doctors-in-training to the needs of their patients and their own effects on patients. During this training, they read and discuss literary works and write their own essays on their experience. By sharing selected readings with family and friends, this writing can educate and sensitize families, colleagues, and medical teams to your psychological and medical issues.

Merle has taught in the field of Narrative Medicine, where medical practice is structured around the narrative. Narratives take the form of personal essays and memoirs by people with medical problems, by medical professionals and by medical professionals who have their own medical problems. She can direct you to essays that might be good models for your own writing, and help you to write your own. Some clients report that conversations about this work are as healing as the writing itself.

Writing your own poems, essays or stories can impose order on emotional chaos through the structure of a literary form. For instance, some writers find the villanelle and pantoum especially comforting. Merle offer examples of these forms, such as Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” and helps you craft them for your own benefit.

Some writers say they feel as if they are
“transcending hurt through beauty.”
They may find satisfaction in the crafting or
the beauty of the finished creation.

Writing for relief, discovery, or inspiration

Writing also brings catharsis — relief through emotional expression — by getting thoughts and feelings onto the page. Getting the words on paper (or screen) also gets them out of your head, making it possible to concentrate on other things.

Some people who write for the purpose of healing make unexpected discoveries. As they read their work, they discover insights they didn’t know they had.

Some of Merle’s clients use writing in a different way. They write spontaneously and bring in selected creative writing or journal entries that they think will be good springboards for therapeutic discussion.

Contact Merle today to learn how writing and literature therapy can help you in many areas of your life. You’ll see Merle’s contact info after the testimonial below: