Main description:

Writing can support our wellbeing under the most difficult of life circumstances, helping us to adapt to significant change and to make sense of loss. Numerous Expressive Writing studies have confirmed this and methodologies for practice underpin its effectiveness. However, few detailed accounts have previously offered explanations of how and why putting pen to paper can be so beneficial. This book of 14 chapters enters the landscape of Writing-for-wellbeing: it demonstrates the transformative power of writing in a wide range of contexts. Topics include how two young widows used writing to foster post-traumatic growth, the empowerment and healing potential of Black women's blogs, playwriting exploring LGBTQ identities and queer belonging, how writing helps the newly literate give voice to their trauma in the Australian outback, and how the smuggled writing of Behrouz Boochani gave the world access to the voice of refugees held in offshore detention. This resource discusses the theory and research at the foundation of writing and poetry as a therapeutic and reconstructive practice. It aims to make the topic accessible and affirms its key place alongside visual arts and music-based therapies. This book contains individual and global perspectives, addressing at its core the ubiquitous nature of trauma in our culture and the potential for its reshaping. This volume is a holistic and inspiring resource for those who would use or teach Writing-for-wellbeing.

Contents:

Introduction

Reinekke Lengelle and Katrin Den Elzen

Chapter 1: When your Partner Dies: A Conversation about Writing and Post-Traumatic Growth in Widowhood

Katrin Den Elzen & Reinekke Lengelle

Chapter 2: Poetry and Connection: Encounter, Surprise, and Dialogue

Reinekke Lengelle, Jon Sayers, & Geri Giebel Chavis

Chapter 3: The Write Road to Self-Discovery, Recovery, and Growth

Stephanie Dale

Chapter 4: Managing Life Writing and Trauma: A Reflection

Sue Joseph

Chapter 5: The Self as Chambered Nautilus: Discovering the Healing Power of Writing as a Graduate Student

Jennifer Bertrand

Chapter 6: Writing as an Antidepressant in a Pandemic

Jeffrey Berman

Chapter 7: Teaching Therapeutic Writing in a Higher Education Context

Claire Williamson

Chapter 8: Narrating Grief and Loss: A Writing-For-Wellbeing Study

Katrin Den Elzen and Robert A. Neimeyer

Chapter 9: Life Writing as Resistance: Human Rights Defender Behrouz Boochani and Australia's Offshore Detention Regime

Rahel Den Elzen and Adrienne Munro

Chapter 10: A Black Woman's Blog Posts: Writing for Personal and Social Empowerment and Healing

Menah Pratt

Chapter 11: Creative Writing, Reading and Queer Belonging: Gender Insubordination in the American Deep South

Dallas Baker

Chapter 12: Doctors Hold Untold Stories too: Writing the Self in Medicine and Health as an Act of Self-Care

Anne Taylor

Chapter 13: Memoir and Reader Perception: The Reader-Author Relationship

Katrin Den Elzen