Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

  • Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA
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March 27, 2016 By Suzanne

Writing as a Righting Journey-Moving Forward

paper cut show-MFA BostonWhy write.

I’ve written about writing and healing often. Writing workshops are what I now offer to other parents as a way of containing and expressing our experiences living with a child(ren) who has a life threatening or chronic illness. I recently came across an article on this subject on the Foundation for Art and Healing website from last year. I was reminded about Dr. James Pennebaker’s research on this subject and I want to go back and reread his work, Writing to Heal, now. You may find it of interest also.

There are many powerful reasons to write, but HOW we write is as important as the writing itself. Being able to construct a narrative from our emotions, or use metaphoric language as a container for the hard to express feelings, allows us to gain some perspective on what may feel overwhelming. I think it allows us to move from feeling to cognition.

I structure writing exercises so that participants have the time to let down into their feelings and experiences, but also have the opportunity to create a meaningful story or poem that provides a container for feelings. This sort of writing engages the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brains where decision making and discernment reside. This capacity to feel and contain is necessary for making judgements about treatment plans, advocating for our child’s needs and for adherence to the treatment plan. It helps move us from despair or depression about our circumstances to resilience and repair.

There is a caveat. Most of us don’t move through our feelings of grief or loss, anger or depression once and then never feel them again. We come back again and again to these experiences as our children get better and grow or don’t. Hopefully, writing allows us a mechanism for continuing to better understand what we feel and what we need for our own self-care and for our children.

 

 

Filed Under: teaching Tagged With: healing, James Pennebaker, narrative, poetry, writing

February 9, 2016 By Suzanne

Guest Blogger at CAREGIFTED

images-1

I have the honor of being a guest blogger at CAREGIFTED‘s website. CAREGIFTED is an organization that “grants respite to long-term family caregivers, and works to greaten public recognition of their gifts to society, as well as of their historically unprecedented numbers.”

CAREGIFTED was founded by Heather McHugh, a nationally known poet and teacher, and the recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant. Please read more about how this organization came into being at their website. Providing a week’s all paid vacation to long term care providers is simply a radical and unique approach to helping families of profoundly disabled or chronically ill children.

I will be alternating my blog posts every other month with Jeneva Burroughs Stone, also a long term caregiver and writer. She blogs and writes about disability at Busily Seeking 2.0 and is currently writing a memoir.

This month’s blog post (coming out soon) at CAREGIFTED, features an interview I did with Kim Poston Miller, a mother of two children living with Juvenile Arthritis and the author of the book Living with Juvenile Arthritis: A Parent’s Guide. I hope you will take some time to peruse all of these sites for information about parenting kids with long term illness and about respite opportunities for caretakers.

Filed Under: other organizations

December 19, 2015 By Suzanne

Writing as a Righting Journey Workshop-March 2016

A writing workshop for parents who have children living

with chronic health issues

IMG_1208

SAVE THE DATE:

SUNDAY, MARCH 20, 2016

12 noon – 4 pm

Seattle, WA

contact me for more information: su************@****jm.org

Filed Under: events, workshops

November 28, 2015 By Suzanne

Inner/Outer Landscapes

inner-outer landscape

Yesterday afternoon and into evening, I sat writing, next to a window with a view to the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains. I seemed able to sit there for a long period of time, every once in awhile glancing up from my computer to note the trajectory of the sun and the corresponding shadows. I felt the heat from the sun reflecting off the water, and its shimmer. I worked on several poems and was aware of time only as the colors of the sky changed from blue to yellow-green to a deep orange.

It is easy to find a writing rhythm when I retreat to a place removed from the city.  But I often take a walk in the city through a green-space or near a body of water when I come to an impasse in my writing and need new ideas.

Sometimes nature itself informs the words of my poems. I love the spiral patterns in a moon snail shell,moon snail shell

and the harmonic, Fibonacci sequence seen in sunflowers, or the eddies of water and sand.sand eddies

Nature’s effect on the brain and creativity has been the subject of research for a few years. Though many of us have understood intuitively the necessity and rewards of being outdoors, of hiking in the mountains or walking in a park or on a beach, we can now point to brain research that confirms this awareness. We might want this added information as we think about providing nature, or natural environments to people in the hospital. Or, knowing the way nature recharges our brains, lowering cortisol levels and stress, making it easier to learn, we can confirm the need for kids to be outside and around the natural world for some parts of their day. Richard Louv wrote about this 10 years ago in his book, Last Child in the Woods, and it is even more true today; we have a harder time disconnecting from our wired world.

Now, that you are finished reading, go for a walk!

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: essays Tagged With: brain, health, nature, writing

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