creative writing – Grow Mindfulness

Managing Chronic Illness

The November Creative Meetup was facilitated by Jennifer Crystal, author of One Tick Stopped the Clock. Jennifer is a “story coach” with the Health Story Collaborative which hosts the online Meetups. She also conducts the Writing to Heal Immersive at the Grubb Street Center for Creative Writing. Jennifer has a long history in writing about her experience with Lyme Disease and sharing her knowledge with others who have contracted the disease and other tick-born illnesses. Since 2013, she has been the writer of a weekly column for the Global Lyme Alliance and her enlightening and inspiring blog posts can be found on the Alliance website.

Jennifer’s medical journey

Jennifer was bitten by a tick on a camp when she was 19 years old but had to experience many frustrating years of misdiagnosis. At 25 years of age, she was finally diagnosed with Lyme Disease which led to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection that causes Mononucleosis. Jennifer was bed-ridden and experienced multiple symptoms that doctors had not been able to explain. In her period of misdiagnosis, she was variously told “to rest”, “eat things close to the ground” (e.g. chicken and turkey), and “talk about your feelings” (assuming that the illness was psychosomatic, not real). Grace Currey from Australia (bitten by a tick in the US) provides a vivid description of what it was like to have Lyme disease that was not recognised by medical professionals in her home country.

Jennifer Crystal had a five-year journey to wellness and remission of the Lyme disease. However, she then had to experience a “searing relapse” and eventually found a new balance and developed her teaching-coaching career. Earlier, she was unable to commit to relief teaching because of her inability to guarantee that she could manage physically or emotionally. She is now a leading proponent of the multiple benefits of sharing your health story and teaches people how to write-to-heal.

Stimulus questions during the Creative Meetup

Typically the Creative Meetups begin with a writing stimulus of some kind such as a poem, article or book extract. Jennifer introduced herself to the group and read a few brief sections from her book which served as a basis for creative writing by group members and story sharing in the group. Jennifer’s stimulus questions flowed naturally from her book extracts:

Write about a time when you felt brushed off and what you wished that person could have seen on the inside, or
Pick a single object related to your story and write about it in a poem or prose – see where it takes you!

These were both challenging and fruitful questions that led to some insightful, creative writing by the group and follow-on sharing and discussion. The level of creativity, resilience and insight in the group always amazes me. The Creative Meetup process illustrates the healing power of storytelling and demonstrates the benefits of this approach to “narrative medicine”.

Jennifer’s healing strategies

Besides the medical solution of months of antibiotics, Jennifer identified the need to change her mindset about her chronic illness. She adopted a number of strategies to achieve this:

Integrating chronic illness into her life – she established a “new normal” which addressed the question, “How to live well in the context of a chronic illness?”. This very much involved self-acceptance and avoiding denial. It also meant acknowledging that there was “no going back”.
Shedding an identity made impossible by the chronic illness – Jennifer’s dream was to become a skiing instructor – a role very much tied up with her self-image and personal goals. This identity was no longer possible given her disabilities precipitated by her chronic illness. She had to shed her ”skier instructor identity” and find a new sense of self. She asked herself the question, “if I can’t [follow this dream], who am I?”. This required her to value herself for who she was, not who she might be or could become. She recognised that she was still a caring person, who had friends that she connected with, and was still a writer.
Pacing herself – slowing down and recognising that she needed frequent sleep and suffered from brain fog and other debilitating symptoms. It meant napping each day, taking on freelance writing, listening to her body and sharing the load by moving in with her parents. It also meant building stamina gradually, not trying to achieve her previous “workaholic” status. It required her to accept that things would take much longer than previously to complete and that healing from chronic illness is not a linear process, but an undulating journey of indeterminate length.
Learning to say “no” – part of self-care during chronic illness is to being able to say “no”. Jennifer reiterated the view that “No is a complete sentence”. Saying “no” enables us to set personal boundaries. Jennifer encouraged us not to fall into the “explanation trap”, which itself consumes energy and can lead to exhaustion and frustration. We don’t have to explain everything or give a reason for our “no”. She suggested that we could use her phrase, “No, that would not be healthy for me now”.
Writing – the process of writing enables our inner landscape to become outer, to express the feelings that are hidden inside us. Writing can change our mindset and create freedom. Initially, Jennifer could not write about her illness and all that it entailed, so she concentrated on writing to her friends and family. Eventually, she was able to address the issues of her chronic illness, including the challenge of “not being seen” or understood. She found that writing enabled her to be more honest and vulnerable. It helped other people to see the effects of chronic illness and to become more compassionate in their interactions with others.
Joining a community – the Health Story Collaborative (HSC), for example, provides a community where people are encouraged to share their health stories either verbally or in writing. Their Creative Meetups are one form of regular online interaction in a community that provides social support and encouragement. Jennifer found that undertaking a course in creative writing enabled her to share her chronic illness with her classmates who did not judge her, were in a learning mode too and were exploring making the “inner world” visible. She also noticed that people were better able to assimilate information about an individual’s chronic illness when it was shared in written form.

Reflection

In the discussion that followed the creative writing of participants, one major issue emerged. This involved people not understanding the hurt that their well-intentioned words can cause to someone who is suffering from chronic illness. Comments such as “You look good” or “You don’t look ill to me” can be particularly hurtful when someone with a chronic illness has gone to the trouble (despite the difficulty involved) to “dress up” or put on a “façade” when they are going out in public (leaving their bed and track pants behind)!

The well-intentioned comments can be experienced as “devaluing” the experience of a person with a chronic illness. It can also trigger memories of mistreatment by the medical practitioners who were unable to relate the presenting symptoms to their “medical cookbook”. Annie Brewster (founder of HSC) contends that many patients with chronic illness experience “frustration, invalidation and exhaustion” when their ongoing symptoms don’t fit neatly into the “diagnostic algorithms” of medical practitioners.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and sharing our stories, we can increase our sensitivity to the situation and needs of others and experience what Jennifer describes as developing “greater compassion for others”.

During the creative writing segment of our Meetup with Jennifer I wrote the following poem to reflect some of the earlier sharing and my own experience of dealing with medical professionals who consider the existence of MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome – my chronic illness) as controversial as the concept of Lyme disease:

Validation and Accommodation

There’s no place for me in cookbook medicine –
so I don’t have an illness,
it’s all in my head.

Until something happens that is considered serious –
then perspectives change.

I appreciate my body –
the millions of daily decisions,
the miracle of breath,
the ability to write, walk, run and play tennis.

Now my body seems to be letting me down –
treating good food as invaders,
hypervigilant, ever on the alert.

My new bodily reality –
reflecting the dark and light of nature,
creating a challenge to accommodate the “new normal”,
with its remissions and relapses,
enabling and disabling in unpredictable ways.

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Image by Márta Valentínyi from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Mindful Approach to Memoir Writing

Hay House Publishing recently provided a Book Writer’s Bootcamp which was held over 4 days with two hour Zoom sessions each day conducted by Reid Tracy CEO and Kelly Notaras (a 20 year veteran of the publishing industry – including a role as VP and Editorial Director for Sounds True which specialises in spirituality publishing). Reid and Kelly covered a wide range of topics associated with book writing including identifying your audience, deciding the genre of your book, the “hook” for your book, basic research, developing an outline, the roles of editors, deciding your perspective (first, second or third person or a combination) and getting published.

Both Reid and Kelly make the point that once you get started as a writer, you never know where your writing will take you. Kelly is a very experienced editor and she eventually started her own business, KN Literary Arts, where she offers book coaching, writing support, editing and assisted self-publishing. Through her website and YouTube channel, she offers free, ongoing advice and encouragement for authors. Kelly is also the author of The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World.

Adopting a mindful approach to writing your memoir

Memoir writing requires mindfulness – being conscious of what you are doing in the moment and why you are doing it. It entails dealing with your thoughts and feelings as they occur (rather than pushing them aside). You have to be mindful of your audience, understand their needs and distil the wisdom of your life for their benefit. Throughout, you need to be patient, be prepared to be immersed in your focus and allow time for the book to germinate (after developing fertile ground through mindfulness). Writing will demand openness to the lessons learned in your life and in the act of reflecting and writing. Below are some things you can do to develop a mindful approach to writing your memoir.

Dealing with your own negative messaging: Seth Godin, multi-award bestseller and expert marketer, reminds us that you have to quiet your lizard brain when attempting something new. You naturally tend (through fear) to identify all the objections and potential problems. You might think that “I am not good enough”, “I am going over old ground” or that “I am not good at writing”. Mindfulness practices can help us overcome negative thinking and remove this barrier to progress. Reid and Kelly remind you that no one has had your unique life experiences or been in your position to experiment with your insights or ideas. You can bring your own “mindset and methodology” to existing knowledge areas (such as raising children, handling grief, overcoming setbacks). In relation to writing skill, one of my Professors always said that to learn to write, you need to “write, write, write!” Writing begets writing skill and I have seen this in children in primary school – by beginning with something that is achievable in the first instance and then progressively expanding their capacity. In the early days (2016) of this particular blog with its special focus on mindfulness, I was struggling to write 300-word posts; now, after more than 700 posts, I have trouble restricting my writing to around 1,000 words (my desired length).

Identify your audience: It takes discipline and considerable thinking time to understand who specifically you are writing for. Kelly reminds us that writing a memoir is “80% thinking time” and the rest actually writing and doing related tasks. The more specific you can make your audience (even just focusing on someone you know or a particular small group you have had experiences with), the easier it will be to decide what to include or exclude. If you try to write “for everybody”, you will tend to ramble and this has no appeal for, or traction with, the reader. Kelly maintains that “the more niche, the greater the success” – the more you can target your message to a specific audience “who needs what you have to share”, the more likely you are to be successful.

Know your genre: According to Kelly and Reid, memoirs tend to fall into three categories – (1) Narrative Memoir, (2) Prescriptive Non-Fiction or (3) Teaching Memoir. A narrative memoir focuses on a particular period of your life (a story) and a related theme; prescriptive non-fiction focuses on “how-to-do” something, for example, writing, meditation, cooking or managing time; and the teaching memoir melds storytelling with “lessons” (e.g. through exercises or guides). Kelly helps you to delineate these different genres by providing a free download to subscribers in the form of Three Classic Book Outlines – outlines that cover each of the three types of memoirs mentioned above. An outline is critical for structuring your writing and determining your outline is typically an iterative process as you begin to write and understand your audience and your theme/focus. Kelly also talks about the differences between memoirs and autobiographies in one of her many YouTube videos.

Check whether your book has resonance with your audience: Both Hay House and KN Literary Arts focus on transformational non-fiction – this is where someone who has experienced some form of “transformation” wants to share their acquired insights and wisdom by writing a self-help book, an inspirational memoir, or focusing their book on personal growth or spiritual development. In one of her videos, Kelly provides the Three Keys for effectively undertaking transformational non-fiction. Besides focusing on your own wisdom (not that of someone else you admire), Kelly encourages you to take the time necessary to distil your wisdom from your own experience and to identify what will have resonance with your audience. She suggests “teaching before you write your book” is a good way to undertake what she calls “resonance and development” – through research, identifying more completely what your audience needs. Kelly argues that “books tend to germinate slowly” and will develop according to their own schedule, not yours. She maintains that you need to take the time necessary to build greater resonance with your audience and to develop the insight to discern the connections amongst seemingly discrete events/experiences. Too often, intending writers have failed to achieve the necessary immersion in their topic/theme to achieve the required level of clarity to facilitate effective writing. Lack of immersion will be reflected in “poor digestion” of the issues/problems being addressed and leave the reader confused and uncertain and unwilling to recommend your book.

Overcoming writer’s block: There are numerous suggestions on the Internet for overcoming writer’s block. Some people encourage mindful walking to clear your mind and develop self-awareness. Other suggestions include journalling (and naming your feelings about writing), speed writing or writing poetry. Nancy Levin, author of Writing for My Life…Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me: A Poetic Journey, offers insights into how to explore your own vulnerability and connect with others through poetry. Reading memoirs of others can also act as a stimulus to free up your thinking and writing (Kelly and Reid suggest that this reading research is a necessary component for effective memoir writing anyway).

Consciously overcoming the tendency to perfectionism: Both Reid and Kelly maintain that you should write your first draft of your book before you begin editing. This avoids the tendency to perfectionism – a tendency that can create a severe blockage in your writing. If you don’t hold off editing until you finish your first draft, you can end up in a process of continuous writing and rewriting without achieving any substantial progress on your manuscript. The same principle applies to your efforts to write a hook for your memoir or an initial outline. Start with a tentative hook and outline and refine them as you go – you will gain greater clarity for both as your write.

Reflection

What is very clear from the Hay House Bootcamp and related writing and videos is that in writing a memoir you are processing yourself as well as providing a resource for others. As Kelly points out, your book itself can actually be a milestone in your own learning (or spiritual) journey. Elsewhere, I have written about the Healing Power of Storytelling. Creating a reflective blog can also help you to discover your inner author and develop the mindfulness necessary to produce a successful memoir.

In participating in the Bootcamp, I became aware of a number of options that I have for advancing my own writing. One is a teaching memoir based on my varied life experiences as a contemplative monk, academic, consultant, manager, father and writer. The other is a form of prescriptive non-fiction focused on my action learning experiences. With the former, the teaching memoir, I need to do considerably more research to fill in the gaps in my life history and decide a particular focus or theme to write about (I view this as an iterative process). The prescriptive non-fiction option is something that I can start immediately because I have already completed the requisite “resonance and development” having conducted numerous workshops with my audience over more than a decade, undertaken PhD studies in the area, conducted participative presentations, written book chapters and articles on the topic and used this blog as a form of reflective journal. Reid and Kelly maintain that these kinds of activities along with the use of social media provide a “platform” for your book launch.

As I grow in mindfulness by adopting different mindfulness practices, I look forward to gaining greater self-awareness, consolidating my message (in both genres) and developing my concentration and writing processes. At the moment, I am exploring self-publishing options through the resources and guidance provided by Kelly’s KN Literary Arts and Balboa Press (a division of Hay House).

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Image by Anna from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Healing Through Creative Storytelling

I have previously written about the Health Story Collaborative created by Dr. Annie Brewster M.D. The Collaborative provides an online platform for individuals to share their story (through any medium) about their health challenges and their road to recovery. The stories provide healing for the storyteller and ongoing inspiration for others to overcome the challenge of ill-health in whatever form it takes. Annie Brewster is the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.

Creative Meetups

One of the programs offered by the Health Story Collaborative is Creative Meetups that are designed to cultivate “writing for expression and connection”. They are based on the firm belief that artistic expression of a person’s story can help them “find hope and healing”. These free workshops are offered every second Wednesday via the Zoom platform – they only require prior registration through the website.

The Creative Meetups are currently facilitated by Annie Robinson, who has completed a Masters in Narrative Medicine and is a qualified meditation, mindfulness and yoga teacher. In her private practice, Annie helps health professionals, including nurses and doctors, by training them in wellbeing, reflection and resilience. She also assists individuals in various life transitions and is co-curator of the podcast for health professionals, Thriving in Scrubs.

My experience of a Creative Meetup

I recently participated in my first Creative Meetup – initially with some uncertainty, not knowing what would be involved and how vulnerable I would feel. The Meetup facilitated by Annie had about 12 participants, both male and female. The process usually involves Annie providing some form of stimulus for reflection followed by a period for individual creative writing that can take any form a participant desires, e.g., a poem, picture, narrative or dot points.

Annie explained at the outset that she was departing from her usual practice of having two participants read out a piece of writing, e.g. a poem, that can act as a stimulus to reflection. On this occasion, she shared an abstract painting that featured a number of colours with a pattern that suggested “reflection” to me.

Our Meetup process involved an initial two minute writing task where we reflected on what the painting meant for us as individuals, there being “no right answer”. This was followed by a brief sharing by some people who wished to share with the larger group. We were then assigned the task of taking a sentence from our earlier reflection and expanding on this over a period of 20 minutes of individual creative writing (with no restrictions on form or length).

When we had completed our creative writing, Annie placed us into Zoom “rooms” of three or four people to share at another level. Participants were encouraged to share only what they felt comfortable sharing with no pressure for full disclosure. The small group environment enabled rapid rapport building and a degree of openness that was disarmingly honest (destroying any erroneous first impressions that may have been formed).

As one participant commented in the larger group, there was a common bond amongst participants in that we were all dealing with a health challenge (however varied in nature and complexity) and were seeking healing through writing and sharing. Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning, would describe us as “Comrades in Adversity” (or as others put it, “Comrades in Opportunity”).

The environment created through the Creative Writeup process was one of trust that facilitated openness and vulnerability by participants. There was a shared sense of journeying towards healing with the aid of the understanding, empathy and mutual support offered by fellow participants. Annie’s low-key facilitation style and active listening modelled appropriate behaviour for participants.

I was blown away in the small group by the creative writing that was shared. In one case, this involved a poem that expressed the meaning for the participant of each of the colours in the painting – an insightful and revealing piece of writing that we asked the storyteller to read a second time because it was so rich. Another involved an allegorical story that was emotive and self-disclosing and left us all feeling loving kindness towards the person who shared so vulnerably.

One of the features of the small group was the way that one person’s shared reflection stimulated reflection by another person and achieved a deeper level of self-disclosure. Participants could relate to some aspect of a shared situation, response or recovery approach. We were each able to learn from the storytelling.

Reflection

During the small group sharing, I was able to share with others how expressing gratitude for what I am able to have and do was a recovery mechanism for me following my diagnosis of multi-level spinal degeneration. It also empowered me to seek alternative medical assistance in the form of an exercise physiologist who helped me return to tennis when my doctors told me that I would never play again.

The painting that Annie shared reminded me of the art of reflection – having spent most of my working life in studying, teaching and practicing action learning. Reflection underpinned the way I played tennis, conducted workshops, managed people and interacted with others.

More recently, through reflection, I came to understand that one of my personal barriers to active listening was my need to come from an “I know” perspective rather than what Frank Ostaseski recommends as a “don’t know mind”. The “don’t know” approach is foundational to action learning, so my listening behaviour was not congruent with what I espoused about action learning. Reg Revans reminds us that, ”If you think you fully understand something, you are not only going to get yourself in trouble but others as well.” Reg encourages us to “ask fresh questions” and to develop “questioning insight”. He frequently quoted Isaac Newton’s comment about studying some interesting shells and pebbles in his lifetime “whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.

At the time, I attributed this personal barrier to active listening to my many years as an academic. I realised, too, that the “I know” perspective accounts in part why I had so much resistance when trying to introduce action learning into my university. It also explains why in the first year of an action learning program that I was facilitating in another university, the hierarchy insisted on removing “become a learning organisation” from the vision statement for the program (they re-inserted it after their experience of the first year of the program and its outcomes).

As I grow in mindfulness through reflection and activities such as the Creative Meetups, I am better able to develop resilience to deal with life’s challenges, gain increased self-awareness and cultivate deep listening to enrich my relationships.

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Image by Peter H from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.