Welcome to One Year of Writing and Healing

Welcome to One Year of Writing and Healing, a site designed to explore connections between writing and healing--and to facilitate your own exploration. 

Here, you'll find writing ideas, recommended books, and food for thought, all grounded in a growing body of research on expressive writing and health, and also grounded in my own work--as a writer, a teacher of writing, and as a physician.   

For a long time now, I've had the notion that it would be kind of wonderful to open a bakery, or a cafe, or maybe a whole house, where a person could come, have a blueberry muffin, a mug of coffee or tea, and then sit at a table and write.  There'd be a well-appointed library lined with books.  Comfortable rooms for reading and conversation.  A room with a long table for writing workshops. There'd be a large porch.  Perhaps a courtyard.  A garden.  A fountain in the garden.   

And all of this contributing to a kind of clean well-lighted place that would foster writing.  A place where persons could come and be nourished for writing.  And perhaps in turn be nourished by writing.

I haven't managed to open the cafe yet, but I do have this website. And you can, if you want, think of it when you visit as a small and virtual and clean well-lighted place.

You may find this site of particular benefit now if you're dealing with something large--for instance, if you're facing a diagnosis of cancer--or facing some other life-altering illness--or if you're dealing with grief or loss.  Thus far, I've found that people who seem to resonate most with this site are those who have been "through something."  Although that something may be one of a variety of different things.  For a long time now, there have been those who've known, mostly from experience, that writing or journaling can have a healing effect.  It strikes me now that this interest may be growing and that more and more people are beginning to discover that writing can be healing in many of the same ways that meditation can be healing, or yoga.  More and more people are discovering, I think, that the process of creativity itself--engaging in a creative process--can be healing.

So, welcome.

This site is best explored using the blue tags on the left. In addition, if you're visiting for the first time, you may find it helpful to begin with one of these two pages:

1. Five Questions for Getting Started

2. One Year of Writing and Healing on a Single Page

You may also be interested in visiting A Healing Library which I am beginning now in September of 2008 as an extension of this site--a kind of reading room--one which I am adding to weekly, and one which can be reached by clicking on the blue picture on the upper right corner of this page.

This site is a work in progress.  As I continue to work on it, I welcome your feedback---your thoughts and questions and suggestions and such, all of which help to grow this site.  Or you can just e-mail me to say hello, that you're visiting.  (If I could offer you a cup of coffee or tea I would.  But perhaps, for now, an image of one?)