Therapeutic Writing
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Family Photographs
After my mother died, a box arrived in the mail. I didn’t go back home to Cumberland, Maryland, to attend her funeral, despite the fact that I was her only child. She had a brother and several nieces and nephews who took care of the arrangements. They cleaned out her house and disposed of her Continue reading
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Writing about Our Obsessions
At a writing workshop I attended several years ago, the facilitator said, “Find your obsession, and write about it.” I have to admit that I was resistant to the idea. An obsession is not necessarily a healthy or positive thing, right? I mean, I thought about my obsessive need to check repeatedly to make sure Continue reading
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Art or Therapy? Two Important Facts about the Benefits of Writing
The terrain of your memories may be a minefield. As you venture in looking for past experiences to write about, you may happen upon stories that you feel you shouldn’t tell. You may find things that you don’t want to think about, details about people that you think should be kept private, or past life Continue reading
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Writing about Family Secrets: God, Father, Power
My career-long exploration of contemporary memoirs has led me to examine stories in which writers choose to reveal family secrets—those skeletons that families try to keep locked in their closets, those uncomfortable truths that they choose not to share with others. Two memoirs stand out for me as good examples of instances in which a Continue reading
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How to Leave Your Problems on the Page
Do our problems define us? Have our past experiences, especially those that were difficult or troubling, made us who we are? Are they an integral part of our identity? In their 1990 book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, family therapists Michael White and David Epston observed that people sometimes define themselves in terms of their Continue reading
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This Is Only Partly True
Try this. Freewrite about a time when you faced a personal conflict. You might choose a time when you felt vulnerable or embarrassed, a time when you thought that you were treated unfairly, a time when you believed that you failed at something, or any other tension-filled time. Begin anywhere and write about the experience. Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 