One of my Zoom yoga buddies, Henriette Anne Klauser, is an author and speaker who has published a number of books and has been featured in The London Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Glamour, and other publications. She has appeared on the Oprah show and at the Congregational Church on Mercer Island. Although Henriette belongs to her local Roman Catholic parish, she has sung in the choir for over 25 years and has been actively involved with the congregation's social life. (She is famous around the church for her hats and her lively personality.)
Plymouth Library has two books by Henriette: With Pen in Hand: The Healing Power of Writing (615.8515 KLA) and The American Book of Dying: Lessons in Healing Spiritual Pain (155.9 GRO) which she co-authored with Richard F. Groves. Henriette's specialty is writing about journaling as a means of getting clarity.
About twenty years ago, Henriette led a women's retreat for the church. Over the course of the weekend she introduced many writing exercises. The one that I found to be particularly useful could be done by one or two people or in a small group. Here's how it worked:
Everyone comes up with a few topics, words, or quotations and writes them on separate slips of paper. One is picked, and everyone writes on that topic for five minutes. People share what they have written, and then another slip of paper is chosen. Everyone writes for ten minutes. The third time, twenty minutes. Sometimes, people have trouble thinking of something to write for five minutes so imagine having to write for twenty minutes! That's when the exercise becomes particularly revealing. At the women's retreat, I realized that whatever the topic was, my writings were all telling me the same thing. They were giving me an answer to a question that I didn't even know I was asking. The weekend was literally life-changing.
Here are some tips for trying Henriette's writing exercise:
Write non-stop for the allotted amount of time.
Do not worry about constructing a perfect sentence.
Do not worry about spelling or grammar - just write.
Allow your mind to take you wherever it wants to go.
Write in a small group or alone.
Once, I was with a woman I didn't know very well. We were in a waiting room for a few hours without anything to read or occupy our time. I suggested this writing exercise which turned out to be fascinating for us - as well as a good way to get to know each other. One of our topics was "shoes". I wrote about comfort/discomfort, fashion/obsession (Imelda Marcos' infamous collection of shoes), conspicuous consumption, etc. My new friend, by contrast, wrote about shoelessness, how her father and his siblings had to share a pair of shoes. Whoever had the shoes on a certain day would be the one to go to school.
Whether you are dealing with grief, discerning what your next steps should be in your life, or just wanting to pass some time, I would recommend trying Henriette's writing exercise. Let me know how it works for you. And to learn more, do check out her books.