the four healing salves

If you have a story to tell, but the idea of writing it down stops you in your tracks, take heart. There are other ways of sharing your narrative. We're not all wired to write book after book about our lives like, say, Mary Karr who authored, "The Liar's Club," and "Lit," and then topped them off with a book about how to write memoir ("The Art of Memoir").

 

"A dysfunctional family is any

family with more than one person in it."

~Mary Karr~

 

Your story might not lend itself to cold, hard words. If so, you might want to try what Kathryn Craft did. She took an experience that was too painful for her to put into her own words (her husband's suicide) and instead, gave them over to characters in a novel that captured her thoughts ("The Far End of Happy").

 

"There is such beauty in the fight to live.

We must all find the courage to go on."

~Kathryn Craft~



You might prefer to put your thoughts down in poetry, like Nick Flynn does in "Some Ether":

 

"Lately I study rain,

each drop shaped like a comet,

ten million of them, as if a galaxy

had exploded above us."

~Nick Flynn~



Or, maybe song works better for you, like Tom Rush in "Child's Song":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dx6Zdx2AJ4



Or, dance.

~from Beverly Merz-

Executive Editor at Harvard Women's Health Watch~ 
 

You can put your thoughts down on canvas, or weave them into a quilt, or sculpt them in clay. You can whittle them out of wood or chisel them into stone in total silence.

 
The point is that no matter how you choose to do it, sharing your story will help you heal, and it will help someone else.

 

"Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence

are the four healing salves."

~Gabrielle Roth~

jan