Writing as a Way of Healing How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives

by DESALVO, LOUISE

• ISBN13: 9780807072431
• ISBN10: 0807072435
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-17
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

In this inspiring book, based on her twenty years of research, highly acclaimed author and teacher Louise DeSalvo reveals the healing power of writing. DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won't help you; in fact, there's abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging. DeSalvo's program is based on the best available and most recent scientific studies about the efficacy of using writing as a restorative tool. With insight and wit, she illuminates how writers, from Virginia Woolf to Henry Miller to Audre Lorde to Isabel Allende, have been transformed by the writing process. Writing as a Way of Healing includes valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inspire both experienced and beginning writers."An exquisite gift of grace. It will help you write yourself out of the wilderness of pain and denial into Wholeness." -Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance

Author Biography

Louise DeSalvo, author of Vertigo: A Memoir and Virginia Woolf: Sexual Abuse in Her Life and Work, is professor of English at Hunter College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
PART ONE Writing as a Way of Healing
Why Write?	3	(14)
How Writing Can Help Us Heal	17	(12)
Writing as a Therapeutic Process	29	(18)
Writing Pain, Writing Loss	47	(22)
PART TWO The Process/The Program
The Healing Power of the Writing Process	69	(24)
Caring for Ourselves as We Write	93	(15)
Stages of the Process, Stages of Growth I	108	(24)
Stages of the Process, Stages of Growth II	132	(21)
PART THREE From Woundedness to Wholeness Through Writing
Writing the Wounded Psyche	153	(25)
Writing the Wounded Body	178	(28)
Epilogue From Silence to Testimony	206	(11)
Sources And Further Reading	217