Online Class with Sharon Bray, Jan. 9 – March 4, 2012
When life hurts, writing can help.
Some of us, during times of upheaval and pain, turn to pen and paper, to the privacy of our journals or notebooks, to express the storms of our lives. Often, we keep those scribblings hidden, tucked away in a dusty corner, fearful of sharing our suffering and turmoil with others. But what if you turned your suffering into stories, poems or essays? Research tells us this is one of the important aspects of writing that is healing. It’s something poets and novelists knew long before psychologists studied the therapeutic benefits of writing.
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.—Isak Dinesan
What is the story you want to tell? In “Writing as a Way of Healing: Ourselves and Others,” we begin with you. Your experience. Your story. We will work together to create a virtual community that has as its ground rules an atmosphere of safety, support and mutual respect, one that allows you to write authentically and deeply from painful life experiences. In this way, we will experience and model the ways in which writing can be healing, for ourselves and for others.
We write to expose the unexposed…the writer’s job is to see what’s behind [the closed door] to see the bleak, unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words.—Anne Lamott
We will explore, through dialogue and written work, why writing is healing. Short lectures and examples from literature focus the weekly discussions, and of writing prompts and exercises will inspire and encourage you to write from the raw material of illness, loss, or trauma. As we share our poems and stories, we bear witness and are witnessed. Feedback is integral to the class. We do not critique, but honor and affirm the uniqueness one another’s written work.
Everyone’s story matters…our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us, is in this story. In telling them, we are telling each other the human story.—Rachel Remen
Join us and discover how writing can be a way of healing, a powerful way of expressing our humanity.
Sharon Bray, Ed.D., is the author of two books on the healing power of writing during cancer and a number of published essays and articles. She leads expressive writing groups at Scripps Green and Stanford Cancer Centers as well as “The Writers’ Workshop” for faculty and students of Stanford Medical School She teaches "Writing as a Healing Ministry” at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley each summer, and she regularly teaches online creative nonfiction classes for UCLA extension Writers’ Program. For more about Sharon, see www.sharonbray.net or www.writingthroughcancer.com.
All proceeds from this class are a benefit for the TLA Network. Costs: TLA Network members: $252 , Non-members: $280.