Blog Response: Rocco

No one likes to cry. We tend to hold it in until a more convenient time or until it builds up and explodes. Or we replace it with humor, alcohol, or drugs. But when we do cry, it feels good. Crying is cathartic, it’s the release of heavy duty emotion. And yet, when certain people do it (i.e. men) it doesn’t come across that way. At least to some people. 

This might be because I’m a woman, but I think it’s sexy when a man cries. It shows their vulnerability. They’re not a wall of steel, their a fleshy, soft human being. And it’s unfortunate that gender norms have brainwashed us to think that men should be the almighty powerhouse with no time for sentiments and emotion. 

I think it’s going to be interesting to delve into this idea of men writing to heal. Take any poem written by a man and you can see how much emotional baggage they carry, and how beautifully they can convey that. There’s a song by Kendrick Lamar (the name escapes me) where he cries while rapping. It’s pretty powerful and I never thought he was a sissy for doing so. 

I’m friends with a lot of guys and I’ve seen a few of them cry, but not all. They never par take in drama, or gossip with their friends, or even tell their friends about this cute girl their seeing. In the end, men and women and two completely different creatures and we handle our emotions differently. 

Blog Response: Ivy

Death is such a weird thing. Everyone does it, it’s the natural cycle of life. And yet, when it happens we’re often an emotional wreak. Why are we sad? They’re only doing what their suppose to do. No one is immortal. Maybe we’re selfish and don’t want to let go. Maybe it’s because we don’t know what happens after death. 

The emotional threshold to death depends on how and when the person died. For example, Moran’s sister disappeared for quite sometime, leaving her family constantly wondering if she was dead or alive. The suspense soon turned to heartbreak when they found her remains. In my experience, death was even stranger when my Pop Pop died of Alzheimer’s. It’s like he gradually disappear, making his death a lot more bearable. 

The way we take in and process death is cultural, spiritual, and psychological. It’s a huge event almost every has experience or eventually will. Talking to family and friends, going for a walk, flipping though photo albums, and writing are all great ways to come to terms with death.

Moran’s studies show just how powerful writing can be academically and therapeutically. I wonder if someone did a study on writing majors versus business or science majors to see if writing majors were less stressed, overwhelmed, and confused in their identity with emotion (or bland academic papers for that matter). It’s a completely different type of writing, it’s almost like an art. It’s a fun way of expressing yourself life with art or music. Just listen to the lyrics of a song or observe the hues of blue in a painting, their both trying to achieve a state of acceptance with whatever event or trauma just happened. 

Blog Response: Kayleigh

This was absolutely fascinating. I remember learning about all of this in high school and this was a great refresher. 

Now for melding these concepts with writing and healing. I feel like almost everyone takes similarities or coincidences as a sign for something like true love. Even dreams make you wonder if you that was a sign or some sort of foreshadowing. 

Now this might get a little personal, but I have a story that has to do with the subconscious and dreams and this psychological fun. And since this is writing and healing, why not put it to good use. 

Over Thanksgiving Break I dreamt three nights in a row that the guy I’m dating cheated on me with other girls. I woke up in the morning so confused. Why did I dream that? Is my unconscious telling me to get out now before I actually get hurt? 

Sadly enough, that dream was pretty actuate. He didn’t cheat on me, but he divulged that he didn’t want a relationship because he wanted the freedom to see other girls. BAM, and their you have it. The magic of the unconscious. I did some writing in my journal to get all of my thoughts out about the situation, and funny enough I came to a collective unconscious conclusion that his animal instinct just wants to spread his sperm around in order to continue the human race, while I want a child and someone to protect my family. I also thought that it might have to do with the fact that he had so much in common with me as well as my father (uh oh, some crazy Freudian psychology goin’ on here). 

Anyway, when we write, we might come to a point where we look at the psychological logistics of trauma or what have you. It offers another perspective that might explain why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling. It might not make that much sense, in fact, it might seem absurd, but it does heal you with an explanation. 

Blog Response: Amiee

Tara DaPra’s piece bought me back to the Autobiography class I took last semester. Our professor said from day one, “This class should really be called Memoir, because autobiographies and memories are two completely different things.” Rather than write a chronological overview of our life, she asked us to focus on one significant theme in our life. Just like DaPra write, the draft of my memoire was essentially like a diary. I let it all out, plain and simple. It wasn’t until after I read through my word vomit that I noticed threads.

It was a pretty cool moment when I realized, “Wow! My life is like a novel!” The writing process reminds me of a puzzle—all the pieces jumbled up in a box (metaphorically speaking, the box is your mind, the puzzle pieces your significant life events). Its when you Tbegin to sort the pieces into categories that you see a fraction of the big picture. 

I’m sure there are a lot memoires that have served as a therapeutic balance in the writer’s life. And there are those, like Lucy Grealy, that envision their work as art. Either way, art and therapy go hand-in-hand. Ultimately, it’s what the writer wants that will determine their work’s fate. Unfortunately, readers read in black and white. They’re not programed to know exactly what the writer intended. We make a lot of assumptions and judgements about the writer meant, but we’ll never really know unless we ask. 

As for the Veterans Project piece, it was interesting to see how many veterans sought out this creative outlet in writing. If they were to ever publish a memoir, it would clearly be for therapeutic reasons rather than literary. That also makes me wonder what the therapeutic difference is between writing and publishing. Does sending your work out into the public have a bigger impact on the writer? Is the healing greater? That might be something interesting to consider in your research. 

Blog Response: Lauren

I remember talking about this in my poetics class. It’s a tricky issue and I never really noticed it until recently. When I think “writer” I think “anything, anyone, anytime.” The limits are endless! I can write as a doctor, a dog, or a demon as long as I do my research. But there’s no amount of research I can do that will ever live up to the actual persona of a doctor, dog, or demon. It’s just not the same. So I now write by the motto, “write what you know.”  

When we read, we usually read something so well-written that we don’t even realize the woman or colored character is seen/voiced through the mind of a white man. We’re invested and convinced, hardly questioning unless it’s analyzing the themes in our English class. 

While I agree with a lot of the suggestions made in the advice column, the one that sticks out most for me is “to work toward good writing regardless of your subject matter…choosing complexity over obvious.” I think Anonymous should take the letter he wrote and turn it into a poem. Incidentally, he’s got himself a great writing and healing project. He sounds like he’s a wounded, hopeless writer from this new generation of activism and equality. 

I read one poem from Jaded Magazine that paired really well with advice letter. It’s called “How Reflections Share One Voice” by Kamry Sharnay, and some lines really stuck out to me like “we unknowingly give that voice the permission to steal our identities” and “We forget who we are when we lose our voice.” The former clearly alludes to the issue at hand—white writers writing from the perspective of women, POC, or LGBT, while the latter also describes the writer that he loses his voice and sense of self by speaking for another. But this could also go vice verse. 

Blog Response: Charlotte

All three sources were interesting and had to do with emotional intelligence (obviously), so I’ll just try to combine it all and sense of it as best as I can. 

I’ll start with the article from Psychology Today—totally mind blown! I wish I knew about this sooner (then again, maybe I knew it all along but was too lazy to take action). But like the author says, we all hide our emotions and a lot of the time it can lead to bad stuff…

I’d say I’m a pretty “codependent” person. Whenever someone asks me how I’m doing I give them a half-assed two-word response and go back to them. I know I shouldn’t do that, but I know they won’t listen to me anyway because they’d rather talk about their day. I like making people feel comfortable and content, so I sacrifice sharing my life and feelings. 

Last year, I learned that such a mentality was actually super harmful, traumatic even, and living with four girls, all my friends, all PMSing, and all concealing their feelings was a recipe for disaster. In the end, confrontation was the culprit. None of us had the guts to tell someone to do the dishes or take out the trash. In my case, two of my closes friends started to ignore me and treat my like scum and I had no idea why. It came to the point that I never wanted to go back to my apartment for fear of seeing either of them. I was too scared to ask them and I guess they were too scared to tell me what I was doing wrong. It’s sad to think that all these tucked away emotions were the reason I lost my friends. 

That’s why I think it’s so important to teach emotional literacy in schools (here’s where the other two articles come in!). Confrontation, is probably the hardest thing in the history of the world. You have your story and they have theirs and you both think your right and the other is the bad guy. It’s a complicated talk and most people don’t have the emotional energy to go through such tug-of-war argument. Fights, separation, and a lingering anger are the result. So why not ease the pain and teach kids how to rationally approach such a sticky situation. It’d save them from a lot of stress and anxiety, because the older you get, the more you’re going to run into people that make you feel uncomfortable. 

Blog Response: Karen

I wonder if such a choice-driven civilization like ours has an effect on stress and anxiety levels? Do other cultures like Amish and Asian mentioned in the TED article necessarily need to write to heal? If they believe in interdependence and social harmony, then their emotional intelligence must be sky high! 

America is all about “me me me”. We all want attention. We all want our voice, opinion, and style to be heard. Social media platforms are a great way to share your personal experience as a human being and let others know how your doing, it’s off the screen where we don’t pay as much attention (and actually judge). 

In the Tolerance article it says “Dialogue requires openness to new ideas and collective learning.” Sounds a little counterintuitive to the choice culture we have here. For example, politics or racial issues seems to be a huge debate starter, but all that arrise in the stupidity of Trump or ignorance of the people who don't agree with the race protests on campus. If we were in the mindset of the Amish, perhaps we’d be more open to hearing to their side with an open mind, ergo creating a less tense and stressed out culture. 

If emotional intelligence is introduced into schools, I think that future generation of US citizens will feel more harmonious. It’s important to empathize with others and put yourself in some else shoes in a non-judgmental and open-minded way. 

Blog Response: Kirsten

First off, I think this is a GREAT idea for your research paper. It’s interesting and I totally relate to it. I may not have taken any emotional literacy class in grade school, but I was raised by a therapist, so I can attest to S.E.L’s groundbreaking outcomes. To this day, my mom still gives me an emotional lesson, whether it’s about boyfriends, alcohol, or handling drama. Like the 2011 study mentioned in the article, I’ve noticed that I’m not as anxious or depressed as other students. So S.E.L doesn’t just have to be an educational curriculum, it could also serve as a practice for parents.

There’s something about making sense of your feelings and other’s that brings you to your “center.” I might be looking at it a more spiritual sense here, but it’s almost like a “namaste” moment (which literally translates to “I bow to you”). We’re all human in the end and if there’s just one thing that unites us all, it’s our endless battle with emotion. We all have emotional anchors so why not acknowledging how other’s feel in conjunction with your own emotion. That’s why introducing such a practice at such a young age would have a huge impact on the well being of further generations. 

It looks like Pixar is already on board with S.E.L. after making Inside Out. I haven’t seen it, but I know it’s about the personification of emotions in a little girl’s head. In the article, a psychologist said that even with a top-notch academic program, children wouldn’t make any advance until they’ve gotten to the core of their social and emotional issues. I’m sure a lot of students who are the bad apples of the bunch are just struggling with issues at home. It’s likely that channeling those problems in the classroom would ripped those apples. 

I recently read an article similar to this one, but it’s about introducing mindfulness meditation to the classroom. Studies showed similar effect to S.E.L. One psychologist in the article mentioned that emotional literacy also gives children “the ability to stop and calm down” just like you would do in a meditation practice. 

Tying this in with writing and healing makes me wonder if emotional literacy would ever become just as common place at history or science. If it does, I’m 100% certain that writing exercises would be mandatory.

Blog Response: Allie

Kirsten’s research creates a perfect segue into yours. I remember watching this news story about a 6 year old girl who identifies herself as male. I thought it was pretty interesting considering how young she is. Most individuals make this realization when their much older. But I always wondered what made her—I mean him, comfortable and emotionally ready enough to declare such a life changing thing? Perhaps her parents or school stressed emotional literacy! Whatever the case may be, I recommended looking up the story. 

The article suggests that in order to “move beyond the binary” is to change perspective. While it doesn’t really focus on emotional literacy, it gives a lot of great background and examples of how sex and gender, in any circumstance, can affect an individual. In this case, we’ll be focusing on young boys at an emotional level. 

The Buzzed article made me think of my good guy friend. He’s what we call metrosexual meaning, “a young, urban, heterosexual male with an interest in fashion, and a refined sense of taste.” But a lot of people these days define the term as, “a guy who’s straight but comes off as gay.” Whenever someone asks if he’s gay, he gets really offended and upset, sometimes even confused. His masculinity is questioned and incidentally leaves him with a wounded ego. He’s a pretty sensitive dude because of it. 

So looking at his past and how he was raised may have to do with his feminine character. I’m making this whole theory up, but it’s a good why of fleshing out your topic for the research paper. He grew up in New York City and his father is a wealthy business man. So, his privileged upbringing ingrained the gender norm that men typically dress well and have impeccable taste. 

I’m not sure where writing and healing comes into this, but I can see when emotional literacy is introduced in the classroom, discussing how boys feel versus how girls feel can bring up the question of why “big boys don’t cry.” Then again, it depends on the age, because boy cry regardless when they’re little. I don’t know how much of an impact emotional literacy would have in changing sex/gender views. But it’s possible that it could change how people feel about their identity. 

Micro-essay: Competition

Jordan invited me to his place for a Campus Center party he was throwing. We already hooked up a couple of times and already declared that we really like each other, so we were borderline dating, but not quite there yet. I took it as a test—a test to show him that I could go to a party with him and not cling on to his arm the whole night. The last thing I wanted was to be needy or attached. 

So I drank, smoked, danced—the whole nine yards. From time to time I’d walk up to Jordan and talk to him and his Campus Center friends, showing that I can be a social butterfly without making things awkward. 

At one point, there was a flip cup game going on and one of my friends forced me to play. Funny enough, Jordan was across the table from me, meaning we were against each other. So we had a bit a flirty competition. 

But then came the REAL competition. After the game, I went out on the front porch and had a casual convo with Jordan and his friends again. Suddenly a girl stumbled out and wrapped her arms around Jordan’s neck and whispered in his ear. I stared at him, waiting for Jordan to remove her arms…he didn’t. I played it cool, knowing that he wouldn’t do anything because he was technically with me.

I never had the urge to claw her eyes out or rip the hair from her scalp. I knew she was drunk and I knew she didn’t know that Jordan and I were a “thing.” If anything, it was amusing to watch her make all these moves with no reaction. But I eventually got fed up and I went back inside, continuing with the festivities. 

And before I knew it, everyone was gone and it was just me and Jordan.

                                              ***

A couple weeks later Jordan invited me to eat dinner with him at Campus Center. While I nibbled on my grilled cheese sandwich, and he devoured a plate of brussels sprouts, I saw her. We made eye contact and she gave me a glare I’ve never received before. This chick was bad news.

                                              ***

The following weeks we’d cross paths on our way to class and she continued to give me the stank face. 

                                              ***

Just a few days ago, my friend Lilly texted me saying, “I have to talk to you about Jordan…” I was confused since Lilly had never met Jordan, only heard about him through girl talk. 

“What about him?” I responded.

“He works with a girl I know, and she was talking to me about you and Jordan. She said stuff about him…”

“Bad stuff?” I asked. At this point, Jordan and I have already discussed our relationship status, agreeing that we’ll declare boyfriend and girlfriend-dome when we’re both ready. We’re still getting to know each other and don’t want to dive into something too serious too soon. 

“Yes and no,” she texted. “First, she said she’s gonna bang him…Second, he’s talked about you to her saying that he doesn’t want a relationship and that he thinks you’re too attached to him.” Here is where my face went red. Why was this girl (who doesn’t even know me) saying things completely untrue? Did she have some diabolical plan in mind? Is she going to seduce Jordan? Tell lies about me to him? 

I thought I had already left the drama of junior, sophomore, and freshmen year, but I guess not. 

“She could be lying,” Lily said. “But they work together and you’re my friend and I don’t want this jerk breaking your heart.” I appreciated Lilly looking out for me, but she’s never seen Jordan and I in limelight. He rubs my butt in public for goodness sake, how in “like” with me could he be? I rationalized the situation, telling myself that everything this girl is saying thwarts Jordan’s actions. I wasn’t attached, I’d always have him initiate texts conversations. In fact, he was the one that brought up our relationship status asking, “Am I your boyfriend?” 

It just didn’t make sense. This chick was lying. This chick was threatened and was out to get me. 

“They haven’t don't anything, but she says she wants to,” Lily continued. 

“I’m pretty sure she’s just jealous.” I said. I knew this was all a blip, but for the next few days I couldn’t get this girl out of my mind. I was too scared to confront Jordan about it. I didn’t want to come off as the jealous, dramatic type because I’m not.

I kept asking myself, why? Just why? Why does this girl want to compete for sex with Jordan? Why is she even trying? She probably knows that Jordan and I are very much in a relationship. Maybe it’s just that she has a competitive nature.

I don’t. I have no desire to play tug of war with her. He’s mine, I’m his, it’s evident.

I’ll admit, she’s a beautiful girl. She could get any guy she wants, but she choses to go for the guy who’s already dating someone. What sucks about the whole situation is that I’m involved in this competition without wanting to be in it. It’s like I have no choice. 

And the more I analyze the situation, the more I want to do something about it. 

Maybe I’ll go to the sex shop and buy some rope and handcuffs. If this girl wants to play rough, then so be it. Jordan is mine and I’ll put him on a leash if I have to…

From Trauma to Writing: A Theoretical Model for Practical Use

Why do some writing professors advocate personal essay as a course and others don’t? Why do students choose to write about traumatic events? What’s the evidence that proves personal essay is healing and therapeutic? 

These questions and more are discussed in MacCurdy’s piece, From Trauma to Writing. She begins by looking into the brain and what happens when we experience a traumatic event. Everything that happens during that traumatic moment skims the surface of our conscious, verbal state and goes strait to our sensory center. This explains why such events are so vivid in out minds. That’s why students often write about it—because it’s easily accessible. You can be as vivid and descriptive in your writing at possible. Writing it all out thus helps with healing, making the internal external. Linking memory to images, images to word, and words to emotion. 

I remember I had an assignment in my personal essay class where we had to write about some sort of life-changing/traumatic event. I wrote about how I almost drowned as a kid. I was only six, but I can picture it like it was literally yesterday. 

MacCurdy gives tons of evidence why we remember these terrible experiences, using research studies as well as her own personal observation with student’s writing and reactions to personal essay assignments. A lot of her students found it difficult to retrieve such details. Some make there experience a cliché by labeling their experience rather than getting to the root of the story. It’s even been mention how writer’s often resist such deep, specific description because they feel uncomfortable re-living the trauma. It’s true when they say, the devil’s in the detail. But once you successfully verbalize the imagery, student’s can delve deeper and “form order from chaos.”

Personal essay, unifies the pain and isolation caused by trauma, thus bringing student’s together, but also stressing their individuality. I think college isn’t just an institution aimed to land students a job, it’s also an environment where students learn to detach themselves from the comforts of home and learn what it means to be an individual, independent human being and surviving in the world. Personal essay fuels a basic human understanding that we all have pain—life isn’t all unicorns and rainbows. 

A lot of healing comes from sensory detail. But what if, for some reason, you just can’t remember some key details. Do you guess to the best of your ability and lie? Do you think healing is still possible in this case? Or does it mean that the absence of a particular scene or image mean something more? Like the example of the student who loved her grandmother but couldn’t remember much detail and realized she never really had a relationship with her. 

Emotional Response Micro-Personal Essay

My dad had this toy dog with wheels instead of feet. A string was attached to its neck

so it would follow wherever you go. I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was boring,

so I took my stamp kit and pressed a blue flower all over it. Later that day, I spotted

my little sister Chloé (who was 4 at the time) playing with the dog. My dad was in the

living working from home. I looked at it as an opportunity to get my little sis in

trouble. 

So I yelled, “Papa, looked what Chloé did to your dog!” 

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was a terribly mean older sister. I took advantage

of my authority and often controlled my sister’s every move, thought, and feeling.

Sometimes we’d get along and have fun, but most of the time I’d come up with some

sort of diabolical plan to make her cry or get her in trouble. It’s like I fed off of her

misery. It was satisfying for me to see someone else (specifically my sister) suffer the

consequences for something I did. 80% of the time of got off scot-free. I felt invisible,

unstoppable. I wouldn’t be surprised if I laughed like a menacing evil villain. 

At the same time, I knew about my dad’s anger issues. I knew that he’d over react,

possibly throw something and curse in French. I smiled at the thought of how much

trouble Chloé was about to get into (and she didn’t even know). 

“Oh no! Chloé!” my dad wailed. 

“Yeah, Chloé. You shouldn’t do that,” I said, adding salt to the wound. I really wanted

to see my dad get angry. Now that I think about it, I guess I just wanted to come off

as the “better” child, get more admiration from my parents and get the better toys,

candy, etc. I often looked at our relationship as a competition. Though I don’t

remember seeing my parents give more attention to my little sister. Maybe I just took

the stereotypical mean older sibling example from TV shows like “Rugrats”. Ironically,

my favorite character was Angelica. 

Human's of New York and Healing

"Sometimes it feels like I'm not part of anything. There are so many people
here, you'd think that I's be able to make friends with on of them. But it
always seems like everyone has go their own thing going on, to their own
group of friends that they hang out with. Most weekends I just take a long
walk, or go to a restaurant by myself. I've dine some neat things alone, and
I'm glad that I did those things, but I'm really getting to the point where
I'd also like to experience things with other people. Everyone tells me:
'You should do this,' or 'You should do that.' But nobody says
'Let's do this,' or 'Let's do that.'"

I’d like to take a page (perhaps a whole research paper) to talk about the trending blog, Humans of New York (HNY) and it’s effects on healing. According to it’s creator, HNY is “an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants”. The blog has 10 million social media followers, owing much of it’s success to humans just like you and me. People are fascinated by a stranger’s life. In my future paper, I would look at comments on portraits left by social media users to show HNY’s healing influence on the public as well as the subjects themselves. 

Photographer Brandon Hony aimlessly walks about the city streets and takes pictures of random passerby. He posts the photos via social media each with a quoted caption that delves deep into that person’s life. The photos range from 2-year-olds wearing tutus to elderly couples holding hands. Not all photos and their attached captions reveal a subject’s personal conflict or life trauma, but the ones that do remind me of everything that we’ve discussed in class (and possibly more).

There’s a feeling of ambiguous intensity when looking at a person, but that feeling turns in to empathy and wonder after reading their story. You feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. It’s that kind of basic human vulnerability that we all find familiar, but it’s somehow surprising when we notice it in others. It’s an open question as to why we have such public confidence, and such private doubts, anxieties, and dreams. 

"My mom left me with my grandparents so she could prepare
a way for us in America. But my grandparents passed away, so
I came to America before my mother was ready. There were eight
of us in one apartment. In my mind at the time, I thought that if I
began to mis behave, I'd be sent back home. So one day I got in a
fight at school, and when the teacher tried to restrain me, I hit her
with a chair. I was only nine years old, but from that moment on,
I became a system baby. My mom gave me up and I went to a
foster home, then a boy's home, then jail, then prison. When you
go to prison, they make you strop naked, spread your ass cheeks,
and cough. I refused to do it. So they beat me and threw me alone
into the box. And I remember sitting in there alone, reflecting on
my life, and where it had ended up. I started thinking about the
other members of my family. My sister was a registered nurse.
My grandmother owned two houses. I realized that success was in
my DNA. For the first time, I developed a thought that prison was
not a place that I belong." 

When you think about it, it’s kind of sad that you’ll never really know what other’s are experiencing. Even though we all have eyes that can make out a face and body, the true image of who we are is often softened and distorted. The portraits of HNY shows a kind of psychological exoskeleton in all people. These faces hold anxiety, trying to protect themselves from the pain of the past. These faces have had years of cracks and hollows but grow back again and again, until they develop a more sophisticated, often mysterious emotional structure. Some portraits are passive, default expressions—like their strong emotion is buried under the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

HNY gives you this moment of awareness that people have a private and mysterious other life they’ll never know about. It gives you just a peak of that complex and vivd story, reminding you of the smallness of our perspective, making it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion about people, their pasts, and their resulting life. If I were walking on the streets of New York and passed one of these faces, I wouldn’t ponder their past. These portraits and quotes resonant a certain connection, while still getting a morsels of their human experience. 

In my research, I would take a closer look at each portrait to define a connection with healing. In essence, it would resemble The Clothesline Project essay, finding several groups of portraits and separating them into categories of healing according to voice and even expression. 

"I had a rough time in high school. I was in a very deep depression.
I've always been on the heavy side, so I got bullied a lot because
of my size. I didn't have any friends. There wasn't a male figure in my
life to talk to. Some people cared about me, but I blocked them out of
my life. Someone told the school guidance counselor that they'd heard
me talking about suicide, so I got sent to the psych hospital for nine
days. I was the oldest one there. I met kids who were a lot younger than
me, and who'd been through a lot worse things. One of the girls had
been raped. The younger kids would come to me for advice, and for
the first time I felt like a leader. I left the hospital with a different
mindsent. I realized that I wasn't on earth to be helped,
but to help others." 

Writing about Suicide

My 5th grade teacher committed suicide. I never really thought much about it, but after reading this essay, I can see how a class like “Literary Suicide” would appeal to students. Just like this class! There are students who have had experience with traumatic life events, and others not so much. But even those who didn’t, still manage to make a connection. We’re human after all, it’s what we do. As Jon wrote in his diary, “While I recognize the risk of comparing our experiences to the terrible struggle of someone considering suicide, I can’t avoid thinking how similar our worlds are.” (295) 

Jon didn’t know anyone who committed suicide, nor has he ever had suicidal thoughts, but he still managed to come out of the class with a cured mind. Jon is a good example of someone who doesn’t necessarily need to heal through writing, but relates to it in a way that changes him (my experience in this class). Then there are those like the female student mentioned on page 307—she revealed her experience with sexual abuse in the diaries, and left the class seeking therapy. This class is solid proof of just how effective writing and healing can be! 

What’s more, it shows how willing people can be when sharing their personal accounts on traumatic subjects. Almost every student gave Berman permission to have their diary read allowed. I think it helped that Berman kept the reader anonymous. Hmm…makes me wonder then why someone people would want to stay anonymous while others have their names attached to their writing. I guess there’s a feeling safety and mystery when a writer is incognito. When I personally read or hear writing with no author identified, I feel more connect for some odd reason. Maybe it’s because names are arbitrary when it comes to the actual healing process. 

Jon uses the word “distance intimacy” to describe the sensation of having one’s work read anonymously. I think we should do something similar in class. Have us all write a personal response to some topic and have it read allowed in class anonymously. I feel like it would make the class more connected. 

What really struck me in the reading was Jon’s 6th diary entry where the most memorable diary entry read in class was his own. It’s neat to have your words read by someone else and have people listen to your words. In an analysis of that diary entry Jon says, “I sometimes felt as if I were them.” Just shows that we’re all staring in the same movie. We might think we’re all unique and individual, but we’re actually very much the same. 

Voices from the Line: The Clothesline Project as Healing Text

When my PopPop passed away, everyone in the family got to sort through all his clothes and pick something they wanted. I have a green sweater and one of his basic white tee-shirts. Whenever I put either on, I feel like he’s hugging me. His scent still lingers in the threads. 

In a sense, clothes are like ghosts of the self. The Clothesline Project not only addresses domestic violence and assault, but it also captures the body, shape, and spirit of the woman that once was, will be, and aspires to be. At first I thought it would make more sense if the text written on the shirts were published in a book. The writing was deep and poetic To be honest, I was shocked that pretty much every shirt had so much substance and depth. It was haunting. 

Julier explains this type of writing and healing as a “multivoiced witness to a shared cultural experience.” (359) It’s a communal, global, even historical, gathering of women. It’s crazy to think that since the dawn of civilization woman have been treated with such torment and disrespect. To this day, women are still abused. Some don’t even have the opportunity to voice their story and heal due to culture barriers. 

Even thought it’s considered a stereotype these days, woman are often portrayed as the domestic dame hanging up the laundry on a clothesline in the backyard. I think that taps into the project. Women are the caretakers of the world. Julia pulls several tee-shirts as examples of how they produced various methods of reading. Some address the perpetrator directly, others bask in their bravery and ultimately change. 

I like how Julier claims that “space is precisely its its power to heal.” (360) I think this might be interesting to discuss in class—this notion of space and what it provides in terms of writing and healing. Does it refer to the event? The blank canvas on the tee-shirt? A particular woman sense of self?

Pathography and Enabling Myths: The Process of Healing

Last year, in my autobiography class, we read “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, a pathography about a successful journalist, Jean-Dominique Baudy, with locked-in syndrome. He woke up from his stroke mentally aware of everything going on, but physically paralyzed with the only exception of some movement in his head and eyes. The entire book was written by blinking. 

A lot of what Hawkins discusses in terms of pathography and myth reminds me of this memoire. She likens pathologies to “what it would be like if our ordinary life-in-the-world suddenly collapsed.” (224) Baudy’s situation it the worst I could possibly imagine—being trapped in your own body. No wonder he wrote—I mean blinked—a book. He would go insane if he didn’t flesh out his life and put meaning into it. 

In my experience, writing an autobiography (granted not a pathography), gave me such a boost of satisfaction and happiness. Whenever I discovered a link or analogy between to ideas, a surge of excitement and purpose went right through me. I think that’s the ultimate point Hawkins makes here—that the process of healing though writing is a journey that usually ends in restoration, change, and transcendence through these “mythical formulations.”

                                                              

In “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the author says that locked-in syndrome is like wearing a diving bell—an old-fashioned deep-sea diving apparatus. He also likens his mind to a butterfly. Whenever the diving suit becomes too limited and oppressive, the author flies away in his mind to visit his memories. As Hawkins puts it, he “integrates different aspects of the self” into his narrative. (234) 

This form of mythic formulation is what Hawkins refers to as  “idiosyncratic images” (233). For some, coming to terms with your condition or illness is easier by substituting it in a metaphorical form.

Healing and The Brain

The human brain is a mystery even with all the knowledge we’ve obtained over the years. It’s a powerhouse of information and interpretation, coordinating sensational and intellectual activity 24/7. For just a blob of pink mush, the brain certainly earns it’s crown for most awesome organ ever. 

In Alice G. Brand’s “Healing and the Brain,” the brain is an information center as well as a healing center. But before we get to it’s curative powers, Brand explains the fundamental units of the brain, specifically those that process perception, emotion, and memories. 

The human brain consists of three main parts: (1) The hindbrain, the lower part of the brain, is responsible for unconscious actions and processes. (2) The midbrain, the upper portion of the brain stem, contains cells involved in vision. (3) The forebrain, the largely developed cerebrum, is responsible for thought and speech control. 

As you can tell, it’s the forebrain we can thank for our potential in the human race. It’s where cognition meets action. Brand often brings up the debate of which comes first: thinking or emotion? Do we think then react accordingly and vice versa? As it turns out the brain takes in all that external stimulation and then produces an emotional response. Brand describes this processes as “the affective significance of experience” (204). 

Then Brand introduces us to the hippocampus and the amygdala, the two potions of our brains responsible for cognition, emotion, language and ultimately, healing. The hippocampus is thought to be center of memory, or as Brand puts it, “cognitive mapping” (205) where we assimilate and store maps of meaning. The amygdala is involved with the experience of emotion, “giving attentive significance to events” (207). Brand lists out the physiology process of how we experience memory, nostalgia, and other reactions to sensory specific stimuli. 

But what’s more important is the fact that the amygdala receives and interprets memory before our senses, meaning emotion comes before intellect. Brand says that the amygdala is largely responsible for what memories get stored and to what depth it gets stored. So the stronger the emotion, the longer that memory will stay with you. 

When the memory aspect of our brain crosses paths with the learning aspect, we achieve what is called healing. This “primary consciousness” is essentially what makes us human. We have the brains to know that we think, we’re aware of situations, events, and other external stimuli. What’s crazy is that language is a relatively new brain configuration. It makes me wonder if we never developed language, could we ever heal? How do animals heal? It’s been observed that elephants show grief to a deceased family member. As their ways of healing beyond conscious awareness? 

In the end, Brand pulls an excerpt from Goedicke’s “Singing & (Listening) for the Record, where she explains how writers conjoin their mind and body to make sense of their feelings and understand what their overall being is telling them. In a sense, writers speak for their brain. 

My First Time

He said he’d teach. This guy wanted to get inside my pants so bad that he’d be willing to “teach” me. I may have been new to the whole hook-up culture of college, but I had my suspicions. 

This was it, the offer I wouldn’t be able to refuse given my vulnerable, weak-at-the-knees tizzy. He was really cute, so that didn’t help. A guy as handsome as him must have had A LOT of experience. And I had none. And I was embarrassed, scared, and confused. 

I wanted to spend time with him. Get to know him. And if that meant having sex with him, then it was the perfect situation in which to do it without it being awkward. I’d have a mentor, a guide in the strange, mysterious world of sex. Although of course I was hoping he’d compose a more eloquent proposition. 

My expression of harassed wariness didn’t affect him in the slightest. He wanted to do it right then, right there. No time to rationalize the fact that I might loose my virginity in a smelly dorm room at 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. 

This would be it. The be-all, end-all of my chastity. The pinnacle of my womanhood. Once this was over and done with, I could finally say that “yes, I am sexually active” at the gynocologist. Then again, it just didn’t seem right. Sex was suppose to be a passionate, tingling feat between two lovers, not a take it or leave it opportunity. 

I had only known him for three days. Why here? Why now? Why not wait? Didn’t he want to get to know me? The concept of casual sex was a blur to me. I was stuck on this fantasy that my first time would be meaningful, not educational.

I just wanted to get it over with. The sooner it was done with the better. Once round two came round, I’d know what to expect. I stared at the ceiling knowing that if I didn’t watch him do it I wouldn’t feel as awkward. The ceiling was white, smooth, and plain. Like me. Except I was the one about to get nailed. 

Sex can be scary and terribly intimidating, especially when it’s your first time. It tests your reproductive capabilities and pokes fun at your insecurities. You’re peeled like a banana, one garment after another removed until your tender flesh is completely exposed. All your flaws and vulnerabilities are laid out on a platter and served to a hungry beast.

Writing and Healing as the Rhetorical Tradition

Right off the bat I'm gonna say this reading was a doozy. A lot is covered in Johnson's essay. His main focus is to show how several theories of knowledge (e.g. pre-classical, expressionist, and postmodern) all influenced the contemporary notion of the self, truth, and writing for healing.

He begins with the concept of logotherapy--the powerful force of finding meaning in one's self. He then segues to the idea the Platonic idea of "illness as possession by a punishing spirit" (90). As Johnson moves from one theory to another, he often refers back to this notion of our "inner demons."

Other concepts that Johnson brings back to later theories of knowledge are nomos (society) and physis (natural). Here is where the meat of the argument/discussion takes place. It's the concepts of expressivist and social constructivism that tie in with students and their ability to write personally versus academically. The expressivist asks the writer to explore his/her unique self, using everyday language (physis), while social constructivism believes that the writer should focus on outside discourses (nomos) that help shape their reality.

Johnson brings up Carl Rodger's notion of "self-actualization," meaning the discovery of one's true self. Ergo, "since everyone is different and the purpose of writing is to access this unique individually, surely no one can teach about how to write..." (96). It's like the whole nature vs. nurture debate.

Sticking with the idea of writing for healing, will writers benefit more from embracing their unique self and symbols, or understanding outside forces of their environment/world?

I thought it was interesting how Johnson brings in poetry (and often alludes to the chants/song of casting aside those evil spirits). He analyzes them, "Eagle in the Land of Oz" and "Rape," both intrinsically and extrinsically. Perhaps both theories should work together, guiding the reader to his/her sense of self and community.

Language and Literature as "Equipment for Living"

Embrace the rhetorical value of life—that’s what I got out of Tilly Warnock’s piece. She argues that reading, writing, language and all aspects of life coincide once we put meaning to it all. Once we looks at our life experiences in a broader scope, we’ll pick out moments with substance that ultimately lead to a better understanding of ourselves as flexible beings. Warnock writes, “With this critical eye and attitude toward action, we understand that our perceptions and actions are changeable, as our words are revisable.” (pp. 47) 

I can relate to a lot of points Warnock makes in terms of analyzing one's life because I actually did it. I took an autobiography class where I had to review my life and pick a “theme” to write about for 40+ pages. Yikes. It was daunting at first, but once I delved into my topic, my mind was blown. 

Wow, my life is like a movie! 

Just like Warnok puts is, “By identifying and untangling the threads and by retelling the stories, I can create new patterns and in part rewrite my life.” (pp.45) I could have written 10 different memoirs, all of different themes.  

Writing gives you a reason/motivation to find meaning in your life. The “so what?” Why am I alive? What’s significant in my life? What’s worth reading about? In doing so, writing will helps you walk down certain paths in your life that you never realized would have significance. An excerpt on page 53 says, “Remind me to tell the story I cannot make my life tell.” [I love this concept, and would love to do some more exploring on it.]

I like the excerpt from Burke where he refers to writing and life as “making a man the student of himself.” (48) As students, we’re always encouraged to think outside the box, make observations, and think critically, but we really never have the opportunity to think in such a way for our own life. 

While I enjoyed Warnok’s overall argument of the piece, I found it’s structure and flow a tad jarring, especially in part 2. She abruptly shifts from making claims to talking about her childhood. 

I think what she’s trying to do here is prove her point of “equipment for living” by constantly referring to her own life (and in turn, reminding the reader of this point). She often brings up stories of her mother and father and how they’ve shape their own lives while simultaneously shaping her’s (e.g. her mother’s sewing and teaching). 

I’m really intrigued by Warnok’s idea of “revising” one’s life and think it would be a good topic to discuss in class. Isn’t it everyone’s goal to revise their life, whether they’re writing about it or not? And why the word revise and not alternate or adapt? We're constantly trying to change something about ourselves—to be healthier, prettier, stronger etc…