Chapter 1 - Introduction

In the introduction of Writing and Healing we get a glimpse into the origin of this field from the perspective of writing educators. The chapter eases us into the subject by explaining that higher education writing classes often lead to students writing about traumatic events whether they want to or not. The first term that is presented as important is definitely trauma and the variety of definitions it brings. The authors make it clear that trauma can be interpreted differently depending on a person's background, but that nonetheless we seem to have a need to communicate our traumatic experiences to others. They also give us a quick explanation of how trauma fits into our mental timeline. We learn that traumatic experience are often more painful and crippling because we do not have the tools to put trauma into a normal timeline of events. Instead, traumatic events stay isolated in our memory, on their own level of experience and often lends itself to painful reliving. From this we start to understand why writing tends to help people in dealing with trauma, pain, and loss. By re-creating the story and organizing it in a normal timeline we help ourselves understand our experience and learn how to pack it away mentally in a way that's less painful. I think I started to get really interested when the chapter moved on from these definitions and started to address the difficulty of teaching writing like this that is so deeply connected to personal trauma. I remember in one of my first college acting classes we had a very serious discussion about how art is not always therapy, and that sometimes communities that are focused on craft and not therapy are actually worse places to explore trauma and attempt to heal. I think this is exactly what the authors are addressing, the exact responsibility of writing instructors when dealing with students who need to heal. In some ways, encouraging this type of writing could be dangerous to a student's mental health, but discouraging it is certainly not the answer. I think as writers and writing teachers we are presented with a unique opportunity to reflect in the presence of other humans, but we have to question the ability of our peers and mentors to safely guide us through healing. I'm really interested in the ethics of this field, and I think that will be something I'll get invested in as we delve into research. I think I'd like to have our class look at the section that discusses the balance between writing about yourself and writing about things around you. I know a lot of young writers and writing students that struggle with this balance, and I can certainly relate in my own experiences of writing for class and pleasure. I think we could all enter the conversation of writing and healing by drawing from our own experiences and what we felt has worked in the past and what might not have been helpful. This balance of content and introspection would be a great jumping off point.