Writing as My Contemplative Practice
December 31, 2018 § 6 Comments
By Diana Raab
Writing has been my escape, savior, and contemplative practice. My childhood set the stage for my life as a writer. It all happened the day my grandmother committed suicide in my childhood home when I was ten years old. It wasn’t brutal; it was an overdose of sleeping pills, but the unusual part was that my parents were at work, and I was the one who found my grandmother. It was ten o’clock in the morning on Labor Day weekend, and my friend had called to see if I wanted to swim in her pool. I cracked open my grandmother’s bedroom door, and she lay completely still in her bed with an open book on her chest, a Graham Greene novel, The End of the Affair. On her headboard on its side was an empty bottle of sleeping pills. The sheer curtains on her window swayed in the fall breeze as if waving good-bye. I called her name, but she didn’t answer. With a child’s intuition, I sensed that something was wrong. I ran out to call my parents on the pink dial phone up the hall. The year was 1964.
Within moments, my mother and father, an ambulance, and the police pulled into the driveway. Commotion took over our ordinarily quiet suburban neighborhood. My grandmother was taken away on a stretcher, never to be seen again. I didn’t understand the permanence of death, and my parents wanted to protect me from the experience, so they did not allow me to attend the funeral. Instead, my mother handed me my first journal—one with Kahlil Gibran quotations across the top of each page. My journal became my best friend, confidant, and escape from the reality of losing my grandmother. I poured my deepest sentiments onto its pages.
Many children take events such as these in stride, and only looking back from the adult perspective do we realize the gravity of our earlier lived experience. This all happened in the 1960s, long before therapy was commonplace. For hours on end back then, I sat on the floor of my walk-in closet and wrote about how I missed my grandmother, reflecting upon all our special times together. Writing also helped me come to some level of peace about losing her. That was the beginning of my understanding that the practice of writing really does heal.
Healing Through Words
When confronted with trauma, life transitions, or epiphanies, many writers turn to writing to help them because it empowers and facilitates the healing process. D. H. Lawrence sat at his mother’s bedside while she was dying and wrote poems about her. He also began writing an early draft of his novel Sons and Lovers, in which he explored the complicated, loving, painful, and close relationship between him and his mother. Marcel Proust wrote Remembrance of Things Past while sick in bed with asthma. I wrote my first book, Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant: A Guide to High-Risk Pregnancies, in 1983 while on bed rest with my daughter.
May Sarton and Anaïs Nin also used journaling to pull them through difficult times. In her book Recovering, Sarton chronicles her battles with depression and cancer. Nin used her journals to help her escape, and thus cope with her deranged father, who left the family when she was young. Nin’s journal entries became a springboard for her life as a writer, and also a six-volume collection of her journals.
Writing can be used as a contemplative practice or as a way to feel better. This is a common reason that people crack open their journals. These days, therapists suggest journaling in conjunction with talk therapy. Since my grandmother’s death, I have pulled out my journal during other difficult times, such as while navigating a turbulent adolescence and then three pregnancies laden with bed rest. While acknowledging its transformative results, I once again turned to journaling during my two bouts with cancer.
Indeed, the challenges surrounding illness can become a catalyst for writing. During graduate school, one of my writing mentors told me something to remember when navigating difficult times: “When it hurts, write harder.” This made complete sense to me. Writing provides people with an opportunity to vent.
Writing about what’s on your mind helps you make sense of your situation and results in a feeling of release and an increased sense of awareness. Writing can also offer us a window into our ancestors and their legacies. A prime example is when I found my grandmother’s journal many years after her passing. Sometimes journals might even turn into books, as was the case with my first memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal.
Write from Your Heart
Writing from the heart means that instead of just recording something that has happened like a journalist would report, you write about how that experience affected you and the person you’ve become. This type of writing leads to self-discovery and transformation.
The best way to start writing is to find a journal and a writing utensil that inspires you. Then, try doing stream-of-consciousness writing, or as Andre calls, automatic writing or writing continuously for 15 minutes without stopping. Write down whatever pops into your mind. You might also consider writing a letter to a deceased love one, or you might want to write about a life-altering experience. Maybe you wish to write about what you do to escape from reality, or how you cope with your problems.
Something else to write about is what obsesses you. For example, what do you think about all the time? Or what you’re grateful for, or what you can do to bring greater joy into your life. It’s okay to begin writing about one thing, and end up writing about something completely different. The beauty in journal writing is that it is not like an essay that needs a beginning, middle, and end. It can wander aimlessly through the forest of your life. The idea is to just let it rip and get the words onto the page. This, in and of itself, is a transformative and empowering experience and can be a great escape from all else that’s going on in your life!
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Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a memoirist, poet, blogger, speaker, and award-winning author of nine books. Her work has been published and anthologized in over 1000 publications. She frequently speaks on writing for healing and transformation. Raab blogs for Psychology Today, Medium, and Thrive Global. She’s editor of two anthologies: Writers and Their Notebooks and Writers on the Edge; two memoirs: Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal and Healing with Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey, and four poetry collections, including Lust. Her latest book is Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Program for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life, along with Writing for Bliss: A Companion Book. Visit her at: dianaraab.com.
An Open Letter to Brian Arundel
April 4, 2018 § 9 Comments
Dear Brian,
In lieu of a Thank You note, I should be sending you a royalty check for all the times I have printed your essay The Things I’ve Lost published in Brevity 22. Perhaps writers should team up with musicians to claim monetary compensation for their intellectual property.
Brevity will also want a piece of the take, as will state and federal entities. I don’t know about you but, I am not feeling very generous toward the government these days. As I watch your imaginary check dwindle in size, it occurs to me that cutting a check is as antiquated as placing a stamp on a letter. I feel, however, that I should publicly give credit where credit is due and since I cannot find you elsewhere this is as good a place as any to connect with you.
I work as a nurse who works with patients receiving chemotherapy, and, thanks to a generous donation, I have access to a healthy supply of notebooks and journals. Some are jeweled and bedazzled, while others have faux leather covers. I delight in selecting just the right one for my patients. I imagine I am kin to Ollivander who selects the perfect wand for fledgling wizards.
There is time to talk in the space between lab work, pre-hydration fluids, and administering the poison that may be their salvation. Shelly was interested in alternative medicine options and I discussed a body of research demonstrating improved health outcomes for people who write about their illness. Shelly said she wanted to journal during her first cancer treatment, but the chemotherapy made it difficult to clear her mind enough to write a coherent sentence. Now, on her second time around, I suggested she make a list of the things she lost. Start with: I lost my hair. I lost my fear of hospitals, I lost my virginity…. Shelly and I talked about how writing helps take you out of the moment and allows the writer to look at the totality of their experiences. It is not illness that defines us but all the other things that make up the lost and found of a life.
Illness is the door most apparent when I write with my patients, but the illness is not who they are. It is a place to start. Shelly embraced the idea and held tight to the journal I gave her — a striped journal, reminiscent of Fruit Stripe chewing gum.
As I talked with Shelly, her mother-in-law sat quietly on the sofa. She later came out to the nurse’s station and asked if we could talk. The HIPPA alarm was raging in my head since there was nothing I could discuss with her about Shelly’s care. My brain said “No” but my lips said, “Of course.” As we stepped into an empty hallway she explained that she had been listening to the conversation. She is a high school teacher and she wondered if I had heard about the shooting at her school. She said she hated going back to the school until today. She said, “For the first time, I can see a path forward. I can write with my students about what we have lost. I can help them through their grief” She thanked me and gave a sincere and tender hug.
Both the hug and thanks are yours to claim and do not belong to me.
I cannot begin to send you a royalty check to cover this exchange. Please know you are rich in good karma credits even if your 401(k) is feeling rather depleted.
With your permission, I will continue to use your essay for inspiration because even teenage boys show enthusiasm for a writing project that begins, “I lost a lot of blood.”
Your appreciative fan,
joey
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Joey Elizabeth is a mom, MFA student, and registered nurse who tries to insert biblio-therapy between rounds of chemo-therapy because healing is not the same as curing. A fellow nurse calls her an anecdotal artist. Her work can be found on the back of envelopes, via Blackboard posts, and in notebooks in the bottom desk drawer. You can find her in the kitchen making dinner or at joeyelizabeth@hotmail.com.