Rewriting Ourselves Through Therapeutic Writing

We can rewrite ourselves….revision [is] a means to confront, intervene in, redirect, and change not just a particular piece of writing, but our sense of ourselves and our roles in the world…Donald Murray


What Welch means by the term “death work” is a writer’s resistance to revision. This resistance seems to be strongest at the moments writers feel the most restless. These moments are where a writer has the tendency to question and stray. Sadly, this is often the text that teachers focus on in the mistaken belief that it needs “revision”. If, instead, writers are taught to search out these moments of dissonance and resist the urge for a “tight focus” or “neat closure” they may challenge the meanings and preconceived notions they have of their life. Sommers wrote that “sensations of dissonance and disturbance are the start of discovering and of learning”. If a writer’s understanding of revision is a dismantling of their beliefs, experiences, and their identification as self, it’s understandable that they would consider revision death work.
Another point that Welch brought up is that it’s not only moments of dissonance that writers need to focus on but that they also need to focus on moments of harmony, where the text fits too neatly and appears most clear and complete. The writer needs to ask, “What’s creating this feeling of gratification and what is being suppressed in the process?” Since I haven’t had much experience writing creatively or teaching creative writing, only academic writing, I would love to try Welch’s methods of “revisioning”.
I found the section on writing as therapy particularly interesting. I teach people who have lived through extremely traumatic events, been tortured, watched their homes burned, their loved ones massacred, their very identities taken away. While I try to generally keep a very upbeat classroom, there are a few writing exercises I’ve had my students do that stand out as therapeutic. Unfortunately, I remember them as painful and I almost dread repeating the process with each new group of students. Is it all worthwhile to them? Does it help them redirect their sense of self? The exercise is based on this question: If you were leaving your current life forever and had only 20 minutes to pack a suitcase, what would you pack? Since this is not a hypothetical situation for many of my students, they write about what they actually did pack when they came to America. I’ve noticed they are initially very general in what they write about. For example; I brought books, clothes, jewelry, photos. When I ask: What kind of books and why did you choose those? Which photos and why did you bring the jewelry? I get very poignant answers. I brought pictures of my mother because I know I’ll never see her again. I brought biology and science books so I can tutor my children from a book in my own language so they don’t get behind in school. I brought the jewelry so I’ll have something to sell if I need money. The exercise is very painful for them and some of them visibly become depressed while they’re writing. I dread it but when they are finished and their stories are up on the bulletin board, they read theirs and their classmate’s over and over and seem almost triumphant that they are now on the other side of that life and have crossed over victoriously. I’ve seen firsthand that therapeutic writing can be dangerous and messy and can lead to unforeseen consequences but what if these consequences prove to lessen what Bakhtin calls “a tendency toward hushing up the discursive carnival of laughter, anger, tears, and joy that might disrupt our official, moving-into-academic-high-culture narratives”?

I'm starting to get antsy about my final project. I've defintely chosen to do the service learning option so I'm eager to get started. Meeting in the small groups last week was helpful. We talked about what our focus would be and that caused me to generate some ideas. Sarah had mentioned in her presentation that TRJE was looking for someone to write their history. I wonder if that is still a possibility? Also, I think it could be interesting to work with some of the young people about writing their personal histories. There's that therapeutic writing thing again. Maybe I could try out some of Welch's techniques?