Each month I participate in an online Meetup of a group of writers-with-chronic-illness sponsored by the Health Story Collaborative (HSC). In our February Creative Meetup, we were introduced by our facilitator, Jennifer Crystal, to the concept of writing a letter to our chronic illness. Jennifer who has Lyme Disease herself, read out a poem by Bonny van Geffen, titled One Lyme Warrior’s Letter to Herself.
In the letter to herself, Bonny exhorts herself to admire her own strength in dealing with her illness and to avoid guilt, shame, self-hate and self-accusations. She compassionately encourages herself to forgive others for their lack of understanding of her illness and its debilitating effects. In her final paragraph, she suggests to herself that she blame the tick and it’s bite, not herself, for her chronic illness.
Writing prompts
Following the reading of Bonny’s letter, Jennifer invited us to spend 20 minutes writing prose or poetry in response to one of the following writing prompts:
- Write a love letter to your illness or yourself
- Write a letter to someone involved in your story (such as a doctor, family member, or friend). What do you need them to know?
Participants in the group shared their insightful letters to their illness or self, some with humour that they explained was a coping mechanism for them. One participant wrote A letter to My Father expressing appreciation and love for his tolerance and support during his mental illness. Synchronistically, I wrote A Letter to My Son who recently suffered a mental health episode that resulted in his hospitalisation.
The context of my letter- its connection to my chronic illnesses
I have MCAS and histamine intolerance along with hypertension. So the stress generated by my son’s behaviour over a week, affected me not only emotionally and mentally but also physically. It resulted in increased blood pressure along with elevated histamine levels leading to rashes and hives, that alternated between being excessively itchy and generating very dry skin with a burning sensation.
Writing poetry as a mindfulness practice
I found that writing poetry during this time helped me to deal with the stress and enabled me to achieve some degree of emotional regulation and capacity to assist my son and other affected family members – a result of poetry as a mindfulness practice (as recommended by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer).
My mixed emotions and hopeful thoughts were expressed in my poem, A Family Crisis:
Disturbing distress,
disrupted sleep,
distracted concentration,
confused feelings.
Concentric circles of disorientation,
extending to family and friends,
putting life on hold,
family’s peace and privacy punctured.
As I experienced a deepening divide between my son and myself during his mental health episode, I wrote a poem with the title, The Great Divide:
Anger and aggression rear their ugly head,
an unbridgeable chasm,
a physical, mental and emotional divide,
Therein lies grief – separation and loss.
Lives in disarray.
Stretching out across the void,
seeking connection,
unable to reach the other side,
into the tunnel, no light at the end,
dislocation, disturbance and dismay.
As I began to empathise with my son’s mental health condition, I came to realise that we were living in Parallel Worlds:
Parallel worlds of exhaustion,
of mind, body and spirit,
loss of control, freedom and choice,
shared experience of anxiety, uncertainty and deep distress.
As his condition began to improve through medication, I was able to experience some relief (together with mixed emotions) – expressed in the poem, Light at the End of the Tunnel:
Grateful for the care,
concern for the future,
admiring resilience,
trusting intention.
Relief floods in as aggression abates,
freedom, control and choice partially restored,
regret and shame emerge,
revisiting trust and faith.
New insight into “elevated”,
shedding psychosis,
re-emergence of sensitivity,
growing self-awareness.
Mixed emotions –
trust, patience and tolerance restored,
pain and hurt linger beneath,
still unease remains.
A way forward emerges,
light appears at the end of the tunnel,
faith and hope abide,
welcoming home what was lost.
My response to Jennfer’s writing prompts
I chose to write to the second of the writing prompts provided by Jennifer (listed above), so I wrote A Letter to My Son:
You are in pain and lost in your world.
I see you emerging out of the darkness of a deep tunnel.
We have been in parallel worlds.
Hurt and distrust lie within.
I look for the thoughtfulness and sensitivity that is the real you.
I treasure the times when you showed me love and concern.
I savour your presence, personality and power,
your insight, kindness and intelligence.
Reflection
At the end of the Meetup session, after we had shared our writing with other members of the group, Jennifer suggested that we write a short process journal entry. The aim here is to identify what the session brought up for us in terms of insight and feelings. It surfaced for me, my love for my son despite the hurt, pain and resentment. It helped me to deal with my nervousness by focusing on what I truly value and savour in my son who is very likeable and loving.
I felt especially grateful to Jennifer for introducing us to the poetry of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Writing poetry during this family crisis was an important anchor for me as everything around me was in freefall. I had read the introduction to Rosemerry’s book, Exploring Poetry of Presence 11: Prompts to Deepen Your Writing Practice, and started writing poems frequently, rather than as a one-off exercise.
In a previous Meetup, Jennifer reinforced the added value of sharing our writing by reading our poem/prose to others in the group. Jo, a participant, reinforced this idea by commenting to me, “I felt calm just listening to you”. I have subsequently listened to a number of interviews with Rosemerry about her anthologies of poems. In an interview about her new anthology, The Unfolding, she states that she really loves doing poetry reading around the world and conducting classes where “we read poems and talk about them”. Rosemerry maintains that she finds this process “ecstatic”, “Juicy“ and yummy” because “we all translate it [the poem] through the lens of our own experience”. There are times that Rosemerry is “shocked” or experiences “utter admiration” for the different translations of a poem that people bring to the conversation.
Writing poetry can help us to grow in mindfulness because it makes us more present to what is, develops insight into our inner world and encourages us to value and appreciate our outer world, its beauty and awe-inspiring nature.
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Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)
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