Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

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Writing poems or lyrics, even bad ones, good for us?

I have been teaching a workshop called Writing as a “Righting” Journey for parents of children with chronic illness. It is my belief that writing helps us find ways to negotiate the roller coaster of emotions when our children are ill. Somehow, writing mediates our feelings and we may in fact be able to think more clearly after writing about something that is upsetting to us. While I have been convinced of this for myself, and there are legions of others who feel this way, I have become curious if anyone is actually studying this phenomenon scientifically.

So I Googled, writing and the brain and presto, found an article on this subject. Dr. Matthew Lieberman, a neuroscientist at UCLA has been studying this very question.

OK, emotions are seated in the amygdala, that information is fairly well known.  Rational thinking or the ability to modulate one’s feelings seems to lie in the prefrontal cortex (and this takes well into our 20’s to really develop, so we need to give teens a break), yup, that is well studied too.  But the thing that made me sit up and take note was that “scientists suggest that the less vivid and descriptive the piece, the better.” Hence, bad poetry?

Apparently, if you write about something in a “detached” sort of way, rather than really going into detail, the amygdala calms down and the prefrontal cortex lights up. But if you write in more detail, it seems to make one relive the painful or negative experience.

Hmm, now that is not what I expected to hear, but it does make some sense.  I have written my worst poetry in the middle of crisis times. But I have felt better getting it out my body and onto paper.

Yet as a poet, I also know enough to let those words sit for awhile, maybe even a year before I go back to them and revise. So maybe bad poetry and lyrics are being published “right out of the box” as it were.  The heart/brain box that is.  And maybe when we go back to revise our work, whether we were detached or overwrought to begin with, we add more detail and metaphor or hone and strip the narrative, the descriptions or style, so the flood of emotions we felt initially becomes modulated too. The poem takes on a life of its own, it takes a journey that may have a different ending from its origin.

The reader is then able to sense or respond to the piece without being swamped by the load of emotion that prompted the piece in the first place.

And I may now have to encourage my students to be more “dull” in their approaches to writing, so they will feel better. Even if no one reads their work..

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The Effects of Chronic Illness on CHildren

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Writing as a “Righting” Journey

January 2011-June 2011

This is a workshop designed for parents of children with a chronic illness, to explore and share their thoughts, feelings and experiences about their medical and healing journey, through writing.

It will be offered again beginning in fall of 2011.  Stay tuned for more details.

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How To Be Sick

How To Be Sick– by Toni Bernhard

A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for The Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers

This book was brought to my attention by another Juvenile Myositis (JM) mom. When I was in the throws of upset, fear and pain during the first year after my child’s diagnosis with JM I read a book by Pema Chodron called, When Things Fall Apart. She is a Buddhist monk and I found this book calming and helpful. It wasn’t helpful in the same way as How To Be Sick is, though. Chodron’s book is a philosophical work and though I am not a Buddhist I could take some of her words and apply them to my decidedly, non-religious, but spiritural life. I had to make up my own mantras or helping words when I was feeling frightened or worried and it would have been wonderful if I had had a bit more guidance in this realm.

Ms. Bernhard’s book, How To Be Sick, published in 2010, is just such a book. It is philosophically based on her Buddhist practice, which she began prior to her illness, and she has used her experiences with a life-changing chronic illness to fashion a clear and practical approach to inner healing and coping with chronic illness.

Most of the book is geared towards the ill person and self-care. She gives us enough of her personal experience to connect with her and to understand how her Buddhist framework helps her deal with daily, as well as spiritual, needs. And though she is an adult, writing about her challenges as a chronically ill person, I found much in her experiences of suffering and approach to disturbing thoughts and feelings, that was helpful to me as a parent of an ill child.

There are a few sections in the book where she acknowledges that her illness also affects her husband/caregiver and her relationships with her children/grandchildren. It also restricts her access to an active social life. While my experience as a parent is similar, in that having an ill child changes everything in one’s life, there are a great many differences. A parent needs to help her child cope with their feelings, be an advocate for their child, be their first line of defense in the world, and at the same time, cope with ones own feelings of loss, grief, fear, anger and hope. In addition, there is often a partner or husband and other children in the family who need attention, and all those relationships change.

There is not a lot of specific guidance addressed to the caregiver here but many of the focal realms, such as, Facing The Ups and Downs of Chronic Illness with Equanimity, Accepting Pain, Healing the Mind by Living in the Present Moment, all speak to the ruts and paths our journeys as parents of chronically ill children take, and are useful to consider. And in those chapters and throughout this book, I found many instances where I said, “yes, that is how I feel too”, or “I can try saying that phrase when I am feeling dispirited or helpless.”

Sprinkled throughout the book are many quotes by Buddhists, poets and healers of one lineage or another. In the chapter, Using Compassion to Alleviate Your Suffering, I found this quote by Stephen Levine from A Year To Live.

When the heart at last acknowledges how much pain there is in the mind, it turns like a mother toward a frightened child.

As a parent of a child with a chronic illness, I too must parent the child in myself. I must make time to nurture and draw from my inner well. Then I can go back into the world and continue to care for others with more compassion and strength..