Dear Friends,
This past week, I took a tumble while walking my dog, Maggie, landing on my right wrist and…breaking it rather badly. OUCH! I am now in a cast for several weeks, and since I am right-handed, my writing has come to a stop until my wrist heals. My monthly posts are on hold, but you can find many prior posts in the archive to help inspire your writing…
Wishing you a pleasant summer with one finger at a time,
Sharon
Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. — Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Many people have experienced or are living with serious illnesses, like cancer, heart failure, organ transplant or other challenging health experiences. Some of us may have experienced more than one serious medical condition. In my teenage years, I became seriously ill. During my recovery from neurosurgery, writing became my regular release. Notebooks and journals have been my companions ever since. Many years later, an early-stage cancer diagnosis led me to research “expressive writing” and its emotional and physical health benefits. Within months, I was motivated to initiate a writing group for cancer patients, and the workshops continued to expand. Then, eight years after my cancer treatment, I was diagnosed with heart failure. My writing workshops did not cease but instead have since expanded to other patient groups, including those living with organ transplants and heart failure/cardiac conditions.
The patient…is, at first, simply a storyteller, a narrator of suffering–a traveller who has visited the kingdom of the ill. To relieve an illness, a patient must first begin to tell his story.—Siddartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies
Now, two decades later, there are many different therapeutic writing groups widely available in many medical and community settings for patients or those living with hardship and traumatic life experiences. The online format is now the predominant mode for access to programs, but a major advantage the online workshop attracts patients from other locations who may not enjoy the same wealth of health resources I do. Whether in-person or online, the groups offer a safe and supportive place to share stories of illness, pain or suffering.
When COVID forced us all inside, my writing groups continued, but online via ZOOM. As much as I was grateful for being able to continue the programs, the ZOOM sessions presented a greater challenge for me than I’d anticipated. Instead of a group of patients sitting together in a classroom, my computer screen was populated with the disembodied heads of the participants. (A few would choose anonymity online, opting for a blank screen with only their name visible). It wasn’t long before I realized the online format required a far greater amount of energy from me to facilitate the writing group vs in-person. Despite the power and beauty of the writing some participants chose to read aloud, the computer screen diminished the sense of community usually experienced when we wrote together in person, most apparent in the greater reluctance for several of the group to share their writing with the group.
Sharing the stories of our illness experiences is an important part of emotional healing. Doing so helps to alleviate the feelings of loneliness and isolation that are often by-products of serious illness. We need to share our stories and hear those of others because, as Anatole Broyard wrote,” Our stories are “antibodies against illness and pain” (Intoxicated by By Illness, 1989).
Writing and sharing our stories with others who have also experienced some of the struggles that we have can give us a fresh perspective or find commonalities that help us manage the loneliness and pain that accompanies living with illness, trauma or loss. We are our stories. When we share them with others who have also experienced hardship, we also affirm our uniqueness and discover what is most meaningful. Sociologist Arthur Frank, a survivor of heart attack and cancer, described the importance of sharing our stories. “I did not want my questions answered,” he said, “I wanted my experience shared” (At the Will of the Body 2002).
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. – Joan Didion
Sharing each other’s stories of illness or hardship helps to alleviate the loneliness and isolation many of us experience living with a life-threatening illness. We know that loneliness is not good for our health. Yet the reliance on online communication during and after COVID is a bit of an unwelcome conundrum in some ways. I think it can sometimes increase a sense of loneliness instead of diminishing it, which I sometimes experienced in the online workshops. I wondered if the participants in my groups felt similarly. While I was grateful we could continue the writing workshops online during the pandemic, the richness of the personal experience was diminished. The online format inhibited the willingness of some participants to interact and share their writing to a far greater degree than the in-person meetings. (I thought about this recently after enrolling in an online art-related class and finding the online format so deadening, it only intensified my longing for face-to-face interaction.)
Stories…foster compassion, through the exchange of stories, we help heal each other’s spirits. –Patrice Vecchione, Writing and the Spiritual Life
Now, with the opportunity for an in-person workshop this month, I feel renewed excitement and energy. The opportunity to lead another “Writing the Heart” workshop at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research is something I am truly grateful for. I think even the writing group leader needs an in-person boost from the community of others who share their stories of the illness experience through writing.
After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the things we need most in the world. — Philip Pullman
Earlier this past week, a close friend’s longtime pet, a West Highland Terrier, died peacefully in the night. The grief she felt was deep—and many of us also felt sorrow at the news. Not only had he been her constant companion for all of his fifteen years, he was also a favorite among many residents in our building.
His death, and my friend’s grief, brought back the memories of losing our own Westie to old age several years ago. He had burrowed himself into our family’s hearts with his steadfast loyalty and his humorous antics. When he died after 17 years of life, we felt his absence for months afterward.
Any death, whether a beloved pet, family member, or friend triggers grief that resides in our hearts for months afterward. I doubt anyone ever masters the sorrow that comes with loss. The deaths of loved ones and friends force us to learn and re-learn how to deal with grief when they disappear from our lives. We are forced to consider mortality—not only theirs but our own. And we are reminded of losses that can happen unexpectedly to ourselves, no matter our age.
Nearly every year that I’ve led writing groups for men and women living with cancer or other progressive health conditions, disease or illness takes a member’s life. This has been most frequent among men and women living with cancer. It’s been well over two decades since I first began these groups, but each time a life is lost to illness, I am forced again to confront my grief as well as the collective grief of the group. Several years ago, three group members, living with terminal cancer, died within weeks of one another. It was a very emotional time for the entire group, igniting fear for themselves as well as the sorrow they felt for their colleagues. Fortunately, a strong and supportive community had grown from the weeks of writing and sharing their stories—not only of the cancer experience but those from their lives. Several members came to the memorial services that honored the deceased members, listening to and sharing the stories of their former colleagues.
I am learning the alchemy of grief, how it must be carefully measured and doled out, inflicted—but I have not yet mastered this art. – Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Cruel Country, 2015)
I doubt any of us masters the sorrow that comes with loss, whether friends and loved ones or, as we age, of the loss of who we were and the older self we are becoming. We’re forced to learn and re-learn what it means when someone’s life ends and they disappear from our lives, whether unexpected or anticipated. We’re forced to consider mortality, not only theirs but our own. How do we remember those who’ve mattered in our lives? How will we be remembered by those we leave behind?
One of the most moving books on loss, grief, and immortality I’ve read in recent years is The Cruel Country, by Judith Ortiz Cofer (U. of Georgia Press, 2015). She shares her hard-earned wisdom on coming to terms with the loss and grief she suffered at the death of her mother. She writes:
…I have learned that story assuages grief, and it also grants the chaos of our emotions some shape and order…Even as I watch my mother become more and more distant from the lives around her …I am doing what I have been preparing all my life to do: listening again to the old stories and committing them to memory in order to preserve them. I am still doing my work in terms of what I have come to believe defines immortality. Being remembered.
When my father was dying from lung cancer many years ago, he told us how he wanted to be remembered. He was, as his brothers also were, a storyteller. Every holiday celebration with the extended family was defined by laughter and memories as they told and retold, tales (some of them tall) of my grandfather, grandmother, and childhood in Northern California. Not only did I learn about my heritage and family history, but those stories kept the memories of my grandparents alive. As Dad’s last days grew near, he made his request. “I don’t want people sitting around crying because I’m gone. I want you to throw a party for my friends and family and tell funny stories”— ones we could remember him by.
In the writing groups I lead, it is the stories, written and shared, of illness, struggle, and earlier lives that I remember about each person. When I think of my father, it’s his stories, the twinkle in his eyes, and the quiet chuckle as he told them to us again and again. My family and I still share stories of our parents and grandparents just as we share amusing remembrances of the dogs and cats who’ve entered and departed from our lives. Our stories, remembered and shared, are an important—even necessary—way to help us heal from the grief of loss. As Judith Cofer reminds us, “Writing transforms. And on the page, it is always now.” (Italics are mine).
We will share the stories of our friend’s dog in the days to come. He was, without a doubt, a canine companion who won the hearts of anyone who met him. Stories help to keep alive our memories of those we have loved and lost. They are an antidote to grief and offer us a path to healing. “Death,” as the writer Jim Harrison reminded us, “steals everything but our stories.” (from his poem, “Larson’s Holstein Bull”). Our stories matter.
Writing Suggestions:
February 5, 2024
“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting… It can take you right back, years back, to the moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.” — Aretha Franklin
Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I attended a concert at Toronto’s wonderful Koerner Hall. The performer was Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson. He has dedicated his entire 2023-2024 concert season to a world tour of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as his new recording of the music will be released this year by Deutsche Grammophon (for those of you who love classical music).
For nearly two hours, I sat captivated by and in awe of his non-stop performance. I was transported back in time to receiving a gift from my father-in-law of pianist Glenn Gould’s first recording of the Variations, shortly after my husband and I were first married and living in Ottawa. It quickly became a favorite, and some years later, when Gould released a newer recording of the Variations, I bought it immediately, playing his recording again and again and losing myself in the music. The Goldberg Variations were soothing and exhilarating at once, part of what carried me through the aftermath of a traumatic and painful chapter of life.
It’s no surprise. Listening to music activates more regions of our brains, heightening positive emotions and also improving memory functioning. No wonder, then, that the use of music as a therapeutic tool has a long history in medicine and healing. The ancient Greeks believed music could heal the body and the soul. Ancient Egyptians and Native Americans used singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals. “The power of music to integrate and cure is quite fundamental,” Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote, calling it the “ profoundest non-chemical medication.”
In a number of studies, music has been shown to help reduce stress, aid relaxation, and alleviate depression. The U.S. Veterans Administration began incorporating music after World War II, using it as an adjunct therapy for shell-shocked soldiers. “Just listening to music activates more brain regions simultaneously than any other human activity,” according to Alexander Pantelyat, director of John Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine.
Today, music is commonly used in conjunction with cancer treatments, helping to reduce pain and improve mood. and decrease stress. Music can also affect patients’ ability to communicate their feelings of fear or sadness. Most recently music is being explored as a “promising, new non-pharmacological intervention for cardiovascular disease, “suggesting music may “have even more profound benefits” especially for cardiovascular health.” (Front Cardovasc Med, September 12, 2023).
Google “music and healing,” and you’ll find many articles attesting to the physiological and emotional benefits of music, for example:
I recall a poignant moment with my mother shortly before she died of Alzheimer’s disease several years ago. At one of my last visits with her, I was shocked by the physical and mental deterioration in the few weeks since I’d last visited her. She was unresponsive, not recognizing me at all, no longer able to walk, sitting motionless in a wheelchair, her head drooping toward her chest. I took her outside, pushing the wheelchair around and around the grounds of the building, before stopping to rest. I stationed her wheelchair next to a bougainvillea furious with red blossoms, hoping to see a glimmer of life—some vestige of who my mother had been. As we sat together in the afternoon sunlight, I took her hand in mine and recalling the lullaby she sang to us as children, I began singing.
“Let me call you sweetheart,” I began, “I’m in love with you,” I struggled to remember the lyrics. “Let me hear you whisper…” My eyes filled with tears, but I kept singing as much of the song as I could remember. After a few minutes, my mother raised her head slowly and fixed her gaze on my face. Then she smiled. “Why, it’s Sha-ron,” she said, remembering I was her daughter. She nodded and smiled once more, before closing her eyes. “I’m hap-py,” she said again. So, as it happened, was I. It was the last time I saw my mother alive, but the memory of the moment of happiness she felt in hearing an old familiar song has stayed with me.
I think I should have no other mortal wants if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music. — George Bernard Shaw
Writing Suggestions:
January 3, 2024: One Word for 2024: Gratitude
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to name them. — William Stafford
At the beginning of January every year, I continue a practice begun together with two writing friends several years ago. I choose a single word that serves as my intention for the coming year and place it in a small frame on my desk as a daily reminder.
Despite over a decade of this yearly practice, the words rarely come quickly. And in these first days of January, I have struggled to find that single word that inspires my daily life in the coming year. I’ve reflected on my past year, the daily writing in my notebook, and written long lists of possible words that capture the guiding word and intentions behind it
2024 marks the beginning of a new decade of my life, yet a reluctance to face the inevitability of aging, for example, living with a progressive heart condition or a painful, arthritic knee that diminishes my freedom of movement. Sometimes, those things can challenge my outlook, as if my life is diminishing rather than expanding. When I find myself focusing on those unwanted changes, my spirit suffers; my mood goes south. The actress Bette Davis summed up the challenges of growing older when she remarked, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies!” Each year, as I grow older, I am beginning to understand why.
I’ve struggled with lists of potential words for 2024, but none seemed quite right or were genuinely uninspiring. But this morning, as I read the daily poem posted by Garrison Keillor in The Writers’ Almanac, the final four lines of David Budbill’s poem, “Winter Tonight: Sunset,” seemed to flash neon-like in front of me. He wrote:
I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age
and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening
A prayer for being here, today, now, alive
in this life, in this evening, under this sky.
(In While We’ve Still Got Feet, 2010)
“Gratitude for getting to this evening…” I look back on some of my challenges over the past year, physical and emotional. There were losses, gains, disappointments and successes, and health challenges. Yet there was extraordinary medical care, the joy of leading writing workshops for cardiac, cancer and organ transplant patients, and the inspiration I received from them. Old and new friendships added so much to my life, as well as other losses and gains, disappointments, and successes. I have the utter joy of three remarkable grandchildren in my life. My life is full and enriched by all these things and more. Budbill’s poem reminded me that gratitude far outweighs any regrets or times of pain and struggle I have experienced.
What is gratitude? It’s an emotion that makes us feel happier. Studies have confirmed that cultivating gratitude has many positive social and psychological benefits. Gratitude boosts our happiness and strengthens our physical and psychological health. Counting our blessings consciously can help us feel happier and less depressed. (Psychology Today, 2024; Mind & Body, 2017)
Well, I am counting my blessings, and like Budbill, I am grateful for “ being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky.
Now, I’ll print out the word “gratitude” and place it in the small frame that has held my “word for the year” since I began this practice—a daily reminder to pause and pay attention to all I am grateful for.
Writing Suggestion:
What word or phrase have you chosen for a guiding word in 2024? Write about why you chose it, what it signifies, and how you want to navigate the year ahead. If you haven’t tried this exercise before, do. Play around with several words. Choose one, clarify it and explain why you’ve chosen it as your intention for 2024.
Wishing you a most fulfilling year ahead!
I live where the winter season can stretch well beyond the calendar date for spring’s arrival. Wind, rain and cold have already forced us into our winter coats, thick neck scarves and knitted toques adorning our heads. Increasingly, the temperature does not invite stepping outdoors to run errands in the neighborhood or walk the dog. The light has changed, as has the angle of the sun. Days are shorter; nights are longer. In these winter mornings, I awaken to darkness, and a chilly bedroom does not inspire me to rise as early as I typically do. But I fight the temptation to stay buried under my duvet, knowing that the winter months will be long, the temperatures even colder. But there is comfort in dark mornings, too, rising well ahead of my husband, tiptoeing into the quiet and peacefulness, and, for an hour or so, embracing my solitude, a time for writing and reflection. Despite the increasing grayness of skies, I am sometimes greeted by the sun rising above Lake Ontario in the distance, the dawn a palette of brilliant gold and rose, a gift of Mother Nature before the sun disappears behind the curtain of grey cloud.
I cherish these dark mornings, unlike my ancestors of long ago. Darkness was not comforting for them. As days grew shorter and winter approached, they feared the sinking sun would completely disappear, forcing them into permanent darkness and unending cold. The first stanza of the poem “Winter Solstice” by Jody Aliesan touches on that primitive fear of winter’s darkness.
When you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding, breathing fast
sitting bolt upright, staring into
dark whirlpool black hole
feeling its suction…
Thursday, December 21, marks the longest day and the fewest hours of sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere. Our ancestors associated death and rebirth with the winter solstice. And even though winter continued for many weeks, the solstice was a time for celebration because it signaled warmer seasons to come.
According to anthropologists, many cultures celebrate the Winter Solstice, going back 30,00 years. Stonehenge may be one of the most familiar to us, where even today, people dress as the ancient Druids and pagans to celebrate the arrival of the winter solstice. But there are other customs in many different cultures, for example, the “Yalda” festival in Iran, the ancient Romans’ Saturnalia festival, or the Scandinavian “Juul,” celebrated with the burning of Yule logs, which symbolize the returning sun and warmth. Even our Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations have been influenced by the ancient rituals tied to the winter solstice. In his poem “Toward the Winter Solstice,” Timothy Steele acknowledges the many different cultural celebrations passed down to the modern day:
…Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days…
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.
(From: Toward the Winter Solstice, 2006)
The Winter Solstice may feel cold and strangely foreboding as the nights lengthen, and the sun is less prominent, but it is a time which also promises rebirth. It offers us a sense of hope even though the year is ending. Perhaps the “death” of the previous year sparks memories of past celebrations too, of people who have been part of our lives, family traditions passed on year after year, and of gratitude and hope. It is a time not only to celebrate but to look forward to the hopes we have for the year ahead. And in our troubled world, there are many hopes among us all.
For now, though, I treasure the gifts I find in the beauty of winter’s darkness: a winter moon rising, the dawn of a winter’s morning, the solitude and time for reflection. Like my ancient ancestors, I sense the promise of rebirth, beautifully captured in poet Jody Aliesan’s “Winter Solstice”:
already, light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day
you have nothing to do but live.
(From: From: Grief Sweat, Broken Moon Press, 1990)
As the winter solstice approaches, take time to remember nature’s life cycle: birth, death and rebirth. It is humankind’s cycle, too, woven into our holiday celebrations and repeated in times of darkness or struggle. It is a time of moving into light and healing, whether from illness, loss, pain or suffering. The symbolism in the winter solstice gives us a rich metaphor to think about the human cycle of life, health and illness, aging, loss and love, or times when hope may have faded, and we fear little but endless darkness. It is good to remind ourselves that somehow, there is always rebirth, and in that recurring cycle, there is hope. You have nothing to do but live.
Writing Suggestions:
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ( From The Velveteen Rabbit, By Margery Williams, 1922)
Sooner or later, our body changes, betrays or fails us, whether illnesses, surgeries, or just growing older. At times, I’ve found it difficult to admit how I’ve taken my physical health for granted, shocked into awareness by cancer, heart failure, injuries, surgeries, or waking up to discover I’m getting older.
It is inevitable. Our relationships with our bodies continuously change. Sometimes it’s a struggle, a “difficult friendship,” as Jane Kenyon once described in her poem “Cages.” (in: Otherwise, New and Selected Poems, 1996). Other times, it’s something simple, like seeing a photograph of yourself, feeling a finger throb with pain as your fingers move across the computer keyboard. And there are those times, like the grey days that are more frequent as winter beckons, that you notice that you, too, are shifting into a different season of life.
It’s difficult to accept our changing bodies, whether it’s illness, injury or aging that leaves its imprint on you. I remember when my life was full of athletic pursuits, whether rough and tumble play of youth, girls’ high school basketball, or the jazz dance classes I enthusiastically participated in as a single mother. In those times, I didn’t imagine an older self, that my joints would stiffen or see the older face staring back at me in the mirror, one, apparently, that is my own. My ring finger makes me wince as I type, but when I touch it, I now remember the constant injury it suffered when I played girls’ high school basketball. Our bodies hold memories, sometimes ones that seem to surface unexpectedly.
For the past several years, due to the reality of growing older and the times my body has failed me, I have sometimes struggled with the inevitability of a body in slow decline. In his book, The Wounded Storyteller, author Arthur Frank examines the effects of serious illness on one’s body. His first word immediately caught my attention: “Serious illness is a loss of the ‘destination and map’ that had previously guided the…person’s life: “ill people” (and I would add “aging” people”) have to learn to think differently.” (p. 1, 1995).
Learning to “think differently” about one’s body and its changes is not easily mastered. The person we were gradually fades into the person we’ve become or are becoming—whether the impact of illness or aging. Yesterday, I had a follow-up conversation with my orthopedic doctor. A few years ago, I had fallen, twice in one month, landing hard each time on my right knee. Since then, I’ve experienced a gradual descent into constant knee pain. The doctor had recently tried another, stronger injection to relieve the pain, but it not only failed but seemed to make it even more uncomfortable.
When I put on my knee brace this morning, another old memory surfaced of a time in my thirties when I was hit by a car. I was out for a morning jog and, at an intersection, started crossing the street as the light turned green. A driver who was stopped by the red light began turning right but was not paying attention to anyone being in the crosswalk. The next thing I knew, I was struck by his car, flying up in the air and landing on all fours on the hood, staring at the driver’s horrified face seconds before he suddenly braked. I flew off the hood and landed on the pavement on my right knee. A few hours later, after the emergency room physician had examined me and sent me home for bed rest, he remarked, “You know, you are going to have arthritis in that knee one of these days.” I hadn’t remembered his words until today when I began writing. Then, I was only in my thirties, and words like “grey hair” or “arthritis” were not in my vocabulary.
But I remind myself that I’m still lucky. Thanks to extraordinary medical care, I am living well with heart failure, and other serious surgeries, illnesses or childhood mishaps are now faded scars on my body. The other changes, the ones impossible to escape, now sometimes weigh my spirits down. Like it or not, we all grow older, which requires us to face our natural, but not necessarily appreciated, bodily changes like greying hair, eyeglasses, visible lines in our forehead or around our eyes, age spots—and more. My sense of a younger self, which still resides in my head, is constantly challenged by the slow but steady inevitability of aging, mirroring Nature’s seasons from Spring to Winter.
The seasons of Nature have been on my mind these past weeks. I gaze out our windows and see the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves, a canopy of pale yellows, oranges and scarlet. The leaves are beginning to fall now, and the chill in the air signals a shift to winter coming soon. Every year at this time, I recall a film I saw many years ago during my graduate school years, when the Toronto Film Festival was just a few years old. One of the characters in the film was mourning the loss of his youth. A companion kindly listened to his complaints before offering him a different way to think about aging. Using the metaphor of seasons, she replied, “Remember, autumn is just the other side of spring.” The fall has always been my favorite season in Nature. Now I remind myself, just as the actor in that long-ago film, that there is beauty in the autumn of life–and color too!
I recall a writing retreat I led several years ago. As we neared the end of the day, I offered the group a “fun” writing prompt. I spread several dozen colored paint chips on the table. None were “ordinary” colors, like “red,” “blue,” or “green.” Instead, each colored chip was labelled with wildly amusing names like “Sultry Burgundy, “Autumn Queen, “Moment of Promise,” Poised Taupe,” “Crushed Oregano, or “Almost Ripe.” I invited the writers to choose one or more oor the paint chips and use them to inspire a short written piece. The responses were often humorous and sometimes captivating. All were novel. Yet one writer’s poem, written in less than 30 minutes, was extraordinary, enthralling us all. She had selected a single paint chip, a grey shade named “Hickory Smoke,” as her inspiration. Her poem was wonderfully celebratory of grey and greying. When I asked, she volunteered to read aloud. We were all captivated. That one chip, the grey of “Hickory Smoke,” had inspired a poetic celebration of aging! Here’s an excerpt from the complete poem:
… Grey is the color of “yes, life has been here,”
and “don’t you know I have a story to tell?”
Grey is the color of pregnant clouds,
waiting to gift us with all they’ve held up inside…
Grey is the color of tree bark,
weathered into cracks, a kaleidoscope of “not white, not black…”
a bumpy canvas for green shoots,
for shocking white buds waiting to gain the wisdom of grey
White is before, but give me the after
Give me the ninety-year-old under her old grey comforter.
Has she lived? Well, tell me the color of her soul.
Show me the spots of grey, and tell me how you’ve lived,
the story printed dark and true in the deepest, most imperfect,
ugliest and sweetest shade.
(From “Grey,” by S., April 2016)
Whenever I re-read this poem, I smile. Her words remind me to embrace life’s seasons and be grateful for a life that includes grey.
Writing Suggestions:
Whether you’re wrestling with bodily changes due to illness, accident or aging, write about your body.
I began a new series of my “Writing Through Cancer” workshop two weeks ago, and like every new series, I sense the anxiety some feel as I offer the first exercise, and then more, when I invite those who wish to share aloud what they have written. No more than one or two may volunteer, in the first sessions, which is not unusual. I can still remember how nervous I felt in the workshop shortly after completing seven weeks of radiation therapy. Yet I was doing what the majority of my writing group participants have done, attempting to re-ignite one’s creativity or simply write through their experience of a life-threatening illness.
I was nervous. I had turned away from my writing during a long detour through a soul-destroying corporate career. Not only did I worry I was out of practice, but I feared that my writing might be inferior to the rest of the class. What on earth was I going to write about? I took a seat in the circle of participants, trying to mask my nervousness as the instructor introduced our first writing exercise.
Our curiosity was captured as she quietly began taking objects from a large bag and laying them in the center of the circle. It was a random assortment of things, all worn from age and use: a set of old keys, a rosary, a well-used wooden spoon, an old shaving brush and many, many more. “Every object is full of story,” she began. “Objects are how the world comes to us.” She invited us to choose an object and write for twenty minutes, whatever the object suggested to us. Some were quick to choose and begin writing, but I held back, not knowing what I would choose.
Then, among the assortment of objects, I spotted a half-empty pack of Camel cigarettes. I picked it up and looked inside, noticing the odor of stale tobacco. I was transported back to a memory, sitting on the passenger side in my father’s old Chevy pickup truck, the one he used to deliver appliances to his customers all over rural Siskiyou County, California. Memories surfaced in rapid succession: my father, seated behind the steering wheel, a cigarette in his left hand, driving the rural roads as he spun yarns and tall tales from his childhood. I began writing: “He tried them all, Camels, Marlboros, Pall Malls…” So many memories of my father were clamoring for attention—all from a half-empty pack of old Camel cigarettes.
In a 2016 essay by Maria Mutch, “Ghost in the Machine: A Typewriter, A Postcard, and the Objects of Memory,” which appeared in Poets and Writers’ magazine, she recounts the story of her search for an old black manual typewriter, not realizing that the memories of a friend who had committed suicide several years earlier, were embedded in her search. Her friend had tried to give her a manual Smith Corona typewriter shortly before she died. Mutch’s essay was beautifully rendered, reminding us of how our memories and stories can be triggered by ordinary, everyday objects—trinkets, toys, utensils—from our past, objects dear to us for the memories they hold, but insignificant to others.
When I walk in my house I see pictures,
bought long ago, framed and hanging
—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—
that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,
yet my eyes keep returning to the masters
of the trivial—a white stone perfectly round,
tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,
a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,
a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettable
detritus that my children will throw away
as I did my mother’s souvenirs ….
(“The Things,” by Donald Hall, In: The Back Chamber, 2011.)
Objects, the everyday tools of our lives, tell stories, real or imagined. We visit museums and gaze at the artifacts of ancient civilizations, of our ancestors, gleaning a bit of history, but we know little about the person or the events that are carried in what we see behind the glass. What stories might those objects tell us, if only they could speak?
Some years ago, when I was leading “The Writers’ Workshop” at Stanford Medical School, I came across a poem by Ted Kooser, “Abandoned Farmhouse,” that illustrated the stories that are prompted and contained in the everyday objects people leave behind.
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn…
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard….
(In: Sure Signs: New & Selected Poems, 1980)
There are times that my journals are filled with little but insignificant musings; I may even complain I have nothing to write. But I do. If I take the time to look around my writing space, on my bookshelves I see the collection of various cherished objects, large and small. Each carries a memory of a time, place or person, reigniting the memories of life lived and those people, places or events that have been important at different times throughout my life. In each, a story waits to be told.
A Writing Suggestion:
This week, look around your home at those keepsakes, the objects that line your shelves or sit on your desk, a side table. Each has its story to tell. Begin there—with those objects you cherish. Choose one; let it speak. What memories do they trigger; what stories or poems are waiting to be discovered? Begin, as we begin in my groups: set the timer for fifteen minutes or so. Place the object in front of you or, recall it in detail, and re-discover the memory, a story waiting to be written.
There is something in us that yearns to tell the stories of our lives and have them listened to in return. Not only do our stories give us a way to engage with one another, but in doing so, we discover common themes and experiences. —Mimi Guarneri, MD, The Heart Speaks, 2006)
At the beginning of summer, I took a hiatus from writing and posting this blog until now. Despite that pause in that particular writing task, I spent the summer immersed in writing a series of stories: stories of my life from childhood to the present–not for my entertainment, nor to be shared widely. Rather it’s a set of stories intended to be shared with my three grandchildren, to share with them a part of my legacy and their own.
My love of stories, of storytelling, began in childhood. Unlike my daughters and their children, I grew up in a large extended family. Of my grandmother’s nine living offspring, eight lived in Siskiyou County in Northern California. I remember the first stories, told to me as a youngster, when I visited my grandmother after kindergarten each day. Her house was just across the street from my elementary school, and for just over two years, I spent many afternoons listening to her humorous tales, learning to bake my father’s favorite cakes and cookies, and being entertained by the tales of her first experiences as a homesteader, and those of my father’s childhood.
My grandmother died when I was in third grade, but the family stories were told and retold at the Bray family’s gatherings every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Looking back, I understand how rich an experience I had, and how my father’s past, shared through story, gave me a strong sense of identity and history. They also created a lasting sense of place and appreciation for the land in which I spent my childhood.
…In life all our stories contain the stories of others and are themselves contained in larger, grander narratives, the histories of our families, our homeland, or our beliefs. (–Salman Rushdie, The New Yorker, 2015)
Stories are uniquely human. Our ancestors told stories as a way of making sense of their worlds. Traditions and wisdom were conveyed by the stories passed from one generation to the next. The writer Ursula LeGuin considered story as a cornerstone of human existence, stating “There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. Our ancestors told stories as a way of making sense of their world.” ―The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1979
Stories are how we make sense of our lives, past and present. They offer release and help us gain insight. Shared stories, as I witness again and again in my expressive writing workshops, are valuable in another important way. Research has demonstrated again and again that forming a story from our experiences is associated with improved mental and physical health, whether verbal or written. In recent years, the skills of storytelling have also been recognized as invaluable to health communication. Narrative medicine, pioneered by Rita Charon, MD, involves using patient stories in clinical practice, research and education—important as a way of promoting healing. “Telling and listening to stories,” according to Dr. Thomas Houston, “ is the way we make sense of our lives…We learn through stories.” It’s a natural extension to use stories as a way of helping to improve our health. (New York Times, 02/10/2011).
The family stories told and retold during my childhood fostered in me a love of stories, of writing and reading them. It’s no doubt that it has influenced my decision to write and lead expressive writing groups. From the group experience, I carry others’ stories with me long after they are written and shared. Stories are also legacies, what we leave behind, and how we are remembered. “Death,” poet Jim Harrison wrote, “steals everything but our stories.” (From the poem, “Larson’s Holstein Bull,” 2009).
Our stories, mine and yours, matter. We are our stories. They shape us and act as the lens through which we understand and see the world. It’s through the telling and sharing of them that we create community. We learn that our voices and our stories have the power to inspire and touch other’s lives. Our stories are also our legacies. We tell our stories, in part, to transform ourselves, to learn about and share our histories and experiences.
The power and necessity for capturing and sharing our stories are probably best expressed, for me, in the words of the Native American writer, Leslie Marmon Silko from her first novel, Ceremony:
“I will tell you something about stories…They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.
Writing Suggestion:
Think about your life and the legacy you want to leave. What is the story (or stories) you want to tell?
Now that spring has arrived in earnest and summer is knocking at the door, my spirits have lightened, and my energy is re-charging after a long grey Toronto winter. The days have warmed, a canopy of green softens our view of the concrete towers of downtown, and I am welcome the summer months. It’s a time that signals not only new activities, but the chance to pursue some creative pursuits I have put on hold for too long.
For the next three months, my Zoom meetings, blog posts and weekly workshops will pause. As much as I love what I do, taking the summer off is a bit like that sense of freedom I felt as a kid when the last day of school arrived in June. Summertime was synonymous with new adventures: swimming. hiking, mounting neighborhood circuses and theatrical performances, spending the long evenings playing “Mother, May I?” or a game of softball in the streets, and family camping trips to swim and water ski. Nevertheless, as September drew near, I was, again, eager to return to school and begin a new year.
The advent of summer still signals a break all these years later—from the dreary indoor confinement of winter, a life filled with too many Zoom meetings, and instead, freedom to focus on regular outings: long walks, day trips, afternoons of music and easy socializing with family and friends. Still, there is something more that the summer months offer: a time for reflection, solitude and freedom from “to dos” or deadlines. It’s the necessary kind of time that replenishes and fuels our spirits and our creativity. British psychiatrist, Anthony Storr, author of Solitude: A Return to the Self, writes about the necessity for being alone, stating “Learning, thinking, innovation, and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world are all facilitated by solitude.”
“Fertile solitude,” psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes, echoing Storr, “is not only essential for creativity, but for happiness.” Solitude, quiet reflection, and play are also the raw material of art. We need time and space away from external input and social strain in order to “fully inhabit” our interior lives—to really pay attention to life.
For the next several weeks, I plan to also make regular time for my own kind of “fertile solitude,” turning my attention to self-renewal, a few creative activities and a longer writing project I’ve been intending to tackle for months. Perhaps you have activities and plans for your summer–and hopefully, they will serve to renew your spirits too. My monthly schedule of blog posts will resume in September. If you are searching for “new” writing ideas, feel free to peruse the many older posts in the Archive.
To those of you who follow this blog, thank you. I wish you a happy summer–and do keep writing!
— Sharon
When Life Hurts, Writing Can Help 