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Summary: Encouragement for the writer in each of us
Review: DeSalvo writes from personal experience, from understanding the prison of secrets/pain/abuse/emotional trauma, and she does so in a simple format that encourages us all to come to grips with our demons. Having written poems while in Vietnam while a Battalion Surgeon for the USMC as means of codifing pain to make it tolerable, I have been in DeSalvo's "trenches". But in reading this warm little book I am returning to that personal prison and this time, with DeSalvo's help I think I might stand a better chance to get it right! Even if you are not interested in writing, this book is so nurturing in its approach to dealing with buried or hidden trauma that it is almost guaranteed to help all sensitive readers read...and live...better.
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Summary: A dark night of the soul cannot survive in the light of day.
Review: I felt the author was telling me not to write unless I thought about it - which kind of defeats the purpose of my own stream of consciousness style. I stopped writing after I started reading the book. Writing to Heal the Soul by Zimmerman is much better.
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Summary: Writing as a Way of Healing
Review: Louise DeSalvo, Ph.D. says, "writing has helped me heal. Writing has changed my life. Writing has saved my life." In her newest book, Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, DeSalvo provides readers with detailed instructions on how they, too, can heal themselves. Unlike most authors, DeSalvo doesn't advise writers to free-associate, or write whatever comes to mind in whatever order it comes, as a way of healing. She recommends, instead, choosing a traumatic event and fully exploring it. She says "to improve health, we must write detailed accounts, linking feelings with events." She cites numerous studies showing that people who wrote about traumatic events, and included the details of their emotions, initially had negative feelings to overcome, but then experienced many long-term positive benefits. Those benefits were both mental and physical, including improvements to the immune system. She says "when we deal with unassimilated events, when we tell our stories and describe our feelings and integrate them into our sense of self, we no longer must actively work at inhibition. This alleviates the stress of holding back our stories and repressing or hiding our emotions, and so our health improves." A researcher into the therapeutic benefits of writing for more than twenty years, DeSalvo has filled her book with examples, including the effect of her mother's severe depression on her life, excerpts from diaries and journals of people like Virginia Woolf and Isabel Allende, and numerous essays from her writing students. "This book is an invitation to engage with your writing process over time in a way that allows you to discover strength, power, wisdom, depth, energy, creativity, soulfulness, and wholesomeness. . ." DeSalvo says. She recognizes that people are busy and asks only that they commit fifteen minutes a day, four days a week, to writing the story of their lives. We can use the "tiny pockets of time throughout our day," like time spent waiting in traffic jams or at supermarket checkouts, if that's all that we have. Writing as a Way of Healing is meant for anyone who has survived childhood. You don't have to be an experienced writer to benefit from DeSalvo's advice and techniques--the only requirement is a desire to heal your emotional wounds and find the joy in life that is rightfully yours.
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Summary: Truly Enlightening
Review: Ms. DeSalvo has succeeded in giving inspiration, advice, and examples in a wonderful mix. Her style and message are powerful encouragement to write our stories, whether we choose to share them or not. I could hardly finish the second chapter before I had to begin writing. For me, at least, it has been the right book at the right moment.
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Summary: An incredible way to heal
Review: Recently I went through a personal awakening. I witnessed long held walls come crashing down in my mind. When the walls fell I re-gained access to entire portions of who I am. Finally I was not afraid to face my past, to tell my truth, and to use it in my creative work. My abilities expanded. Before I reached this point in my healing I was basically unable to write. I am a survivor of incest, so secrets have been a big part of my life. It is very hard to write when you are working so hard to keep secrets, especially when you are also trying to keep them from yourself. But, at the same time I desperately needed and wanted to face my past, to tell my story, and to write. This book addresses all of those needs. As a beginner to writing this book has been extremely helpful. This book gave me the permission I needed to simply tell my story, and not to try and hide it behind fancy writing forms, or fictional stories. That was a big step for me. Of all the work I have done to heal from my abusive past nothing has moved me forward as fast as the advice in this book has. It is incredibly healing to be able to coherently tell the details of your life in a way that speaks the truth, is understood by others, and to watch the pain you went through be transformed into a work of art.
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Summary: A Book I Will Always Hold Dear
Review: Thank you, Louise, for Writing As A Way of Healing. To others this may be just another helpful book on writing, but to me it has been pages of self-discoveries. After the first few chapters I cried to my family, "I am not alone and I am not insane!" Ever since the death of my four-year-old son, Daniel, I questioned my obsession to write. Why did I have such a high need to pen thoughts and poems on paper? Louise shows in this book how many with tragedies wrote in order to survive. As Alice Walker said about writing, "The lives we save are our own." I recommend this therapeutic book to others who have rocky paths to walk and find peace through their muse.
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Summary: A Book I Will Always Hold Dear
Review: Thank you, Louise, for Writing As A Way of Healing. To others this may be just another helpful book on writing, but to me it has been pages of self-discoveries. After the first few chapters I cried to my family, "I am not alone and I am not insane!" Ever since the death of my four-year-old son, Daniel, I questioned my obsession to write. Why did I have such a high need to pen thoughts and poems on paper? Louise shows in this book how many with tragedies wrote in order to survive. As Alice Walker said about writing, "The lives we save are our own." I recommend this therapeutic book to others who have rocky paths to walk and find peace through their muse.
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Summary: Best book on writing and healing I have read!!
Review: This book has it all if you are interested in writing and healing. The research, examples of well-known authors, and exercises for you to try come together to offer background as well as inspiration. The writing is so entertaining you can forget it is a how-to book and just enjoy --except I am compelled me to stop and write. I highly recommend in the classes I teach and to anyone interested in writing, healing and self-exploration.
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Summary: Should we do what Virginia did?
Review: This book presents Virginia Woolf as an example of someone who used writing for healing. But how much did writing really help Woolf? Woolf committed suicide. To me that indicates that any healing methods she used were ineffective. When this book arrived in the mail I was excited and hopeful. Then I opened it and almost immediately saw Virginia Woolf's name. My heart sank. I make it a practice never to take the advice of people who eventually commit suicide. Rather, I study their lives to learn what NOT to do. Get "Opening Up" by Pennebaker. It's based solidly on research, not on the literature of suicides.
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Summary: She understands the power of writing
Review: This is the only book I know of that teaches a disciplined form of writing for the purposes of therapeutic healing. This is very different from writing in a journal, which many books have covered. The author describes a process which she has used herself and taught to many students. The first part of the book goes into the concept of how writing can be healing. She has one simple principle, which is that the writing must include both events and feelings about the events. Either one by itself will not have the same effect. She uses examples from her own writing and authors such as Virginia Woolf and Isabel Allende to show how this combination of events and feelings works. The second part is all about the process and she guides the reader through the steps, with caring and encouragement, just as if you were in one of her classes. The process begins with preparing, planning, and germinating, which are basically about choosing one story to tell, letting ideas come to you, taking notes. The next steps are working, deepening, shaping, ordering, and completing. This is where you dive in and give structure to your story. This stage contains at its center one piece of modest and practical advice, which is to write five complete pages per week. If you do that, and by the time you finish the book you will believe that you can, within just a couple months you'll have completed a 40 page memoir.
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