Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

—Anne Sexton

Exploring Your Self (1 of 2)

Ready to get started on the therapeutic writing prompts? A few reminders!

You are NOT writing a Story - yet

Responding to therapeutic writing prompts is not storytelling. In order to get to our end goal of an organized story, I am going to ask you to start with just the opposite - writing chaos. You will create a mountain of disorganized material from which we will ultimately find your story. I am asking you to trust me through this process of creating this messy pile. Please don’t try to be too logical or concrete in the first few weeks. I am asking you to put your editor and critic on hold as we wake up forgotten parts of yourself.

Tangents and Imagination

Allow yourself to go off on (seemingly) irrelevant tangents. You may start writing about something that has nothing to do with the prompt. You may start writing things that didn’t happen. Go with it! Imagined parts of your story are often very important clues for us. (They are often providing information in symbolic rather than literal form; this may not happen at all, but don’t shut it down if it does.) 

The big rule is to be kind to yourself and pay attention to whatever comes up, without judgement. If you notice you are feeling very judgmental of yourself, please just pay attention to that coming up for you.

Repeating Stories

Over the next few weeks, you may notice that a story repeats with different prompts. You may think you “should” be coming up with new stuff in each exercise, but in this class any repeating material indicates we are on to something we need to pay attention to. Let whatever comes up, come out in your writing.

Practical Matters - How to Write

When you are writing in response to a therapeutic writing prompt, I’d like for you to write nonstop for at least one minute. Don’t pick up your pen/pencil, even if you are writing nonsensical junk. Keep writing. Keep it brief. Unless you feel that something has come up that you need to keep writing about, I’d like for you to write for at least one minute, but no more than 15-20 minutes. We are writing every day, so writing too much may leave you too worn out to take on the next day’s exercise. You are always free to respond to a previous days prompt on a subsequent day if something feels unfinished. Always follow your gut feeling on what you want to respond to.

Writing about Yourself; Thinking about Others…

The next two days prompts will be all about you. Scary? Exciting? A mix of both? As you get started, I am going to ask you a favor. For now, please put aside your (universally experienced) fears about things you cannot tell or that other family members simply cannot read. Dealing with this real issue is a task for a later date. Ultimately, you may decide to publish under a pseudonym; you may decide to fictionalize your story and change all the names. You may decide to go for it, come what may. Whatever you decide to do then is different from your task now. Your task now is to explore and know your whole story. How you share that story will likely be very different from what you are doing here.

Therapeutic Writing Prompts:

Read through the questions below. Select the one that resonates with you most. Close your eyes for a moment and reflect on the question and your experience. Allow your feelings to come up. Open your eyes. Write at least one page or for at least one minute. You may choose more than one prompt, but please don’t write for more than 15-20 minutes. 

• If you knew me before, you would have said.... (use the word ‘before’ in any sense that works for you)
• Write 5-10 words that describe how you were in the past. (I used to be....). Write 5-10 words to describe yourself now (things that have changed). Reflect on those words. Write.
• List every nickname you’ve ever had. Write about your feelings about those names. Who called you that? How did you feel?
• If gender is truly a spectrum (or performance), I fall about...
• My race/ethnicity was something I was always aware of because...
• I consider myself a survivor because...
• One thing people still need to know about me is....
• The one thing I always thought I’d do, but haven’t done yet is...
• The thing I care about most is...

StoryList

Pay attention to anything that came up in today's writing that you may wish to write about. Pay attention to any stories that indicate growth or change. Write these in your StoryList notebook. 

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul. —Isabel Allende