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

by Louise DeSalvo

Book Overview

Acclaimed author Louise DeSalvo draws on her own experience and the lives of others to examine the healing power of the writing process. In this landmark work, DeSalvo uses her twenty years as a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807072435
• ISBN13: 9780807072431
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Validation Personified

My daughter Debbi gave me this book for my birthday. I read Ms. DeSalvo's book when I was in the final stages of confronting the tragic suicide of my father that happened two days before my high school Senior Prom. For nearly fifty years after the day my entrepreneur father put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger his death gnawed at me. By facing what happened to me on that dreary spring day in Boston and trying to make sense of my Pop's state of mind on the day he died I was able to dig down deep into my soul and describe how I felt. I opened up my heart and was able to face a time only years had kept at bay. By writing about my heretofore-suppressed feelings I began to sob over the keyboard and took my first steps to understand why my father died. Desalvo's book validated my earlier conclusion that writing is truly a way of healing.

A motivating book on writing

No book can teach you to write, unless it is a formulaic recipe, cookbook sort of guide. Writing as a Way as Healing is exceptional because it has a particular point of view regarding the value of writing--specifically, exploring dis-ease through the written word. DeSalvo focuses on PROCESS, which is the simple idea that through writing one discovers how to write, and what particular story one is destined to write. This alone is invaluable advice since much writing is pre-packaged and pre-determined so that it is predictable. Both experienced and inexperienced writers can take this advice to heart since it encourages one not to feel as though writer's block is not having anything to write about, but rather not finding what one needs to write about. The book is supplemented by both references and quotes from well-known writers who have written about pain and illness, and includes empirical data about the healing power of writing. This is a good book. Period.

An incredible way to heal

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, but recently I went through a kind of personal awakening. Long held walls came crashing down. 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 well because I was hiding so much. 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. 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. Even if you never publish it, the process is such a deep way of healing and learning to share your story.

An incredible way to heal

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.

Writing as a Way of Healing

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.