Writing

this page was updated on 17 April 2014 —

 I am now a “Journal to the Self” Certified Journal Facilitator (CJF) with the Therapeutic Writing Institute (TWI). The Journal to the Self Workshop was created in 1985 by Kathleen Adams, Director of the Center for Journal Therapy, Inc., and an internationally known pioneer and expert in the power of writing to heal.

 

In July/August 2006, I went to the Pacific School of Religion (PSR for short) in Berkeley, San Francisco to take a course, “Writing as Healing”, with a lady called Sharon Bray. PSR, by the way, is part of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) which in turn is part of the bigger University of California (UC), Berkeley.

It was a blessed time and there I learned how to facilitate writing workshops modeled under the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method of writing.

AWA was founded by Pat Schneider. Out of her writing group for low-income women in Chicopee, MA, USA grew a non-profit AWA outreach program as well as a training program to teach people how to use the method with both typical and traditionally silenced populations.

Upon my return to Singapore, my friend and I ran a couple of six-weeks writing workshop at the Centre for Ignatian Spirituality and Counselling (CISC), Kingsmead Hall, Victoria Park Road (behind the Catholic Church of St. Ignatius in Kings Road). These were well received.

In October 2007 we ran a one-day writing workshop for novices and seminarians. The feedback was encouraging and confirming.

Writing indeed could be therapeutic and is healing insofar as the writer is willing to confront the experiences of his/her life.

I have embraced “Writing as spiritual practice” as my calling to help others get in touch with their deep-seated feelings, and hopefully, in the writing exercises provide an avenue where healing takes place, or at least where healing can begin. Thus the six-weeks writing workshop will continue. Do look out for notices and advertisements in your church or from CISC’s Programmes flyer.

Attendees at the writing workshops are not expected to write in perfect Queen’s English. A participant only needs to write the way he/she can. One important premise that AWA advocates is: A writer is someone who writes. So this applies to almost anyone who takes a pen, even if it is to scribble.

Some of the participants in our workshops said that they have become motivated to continue writing. Others said the workshops gave them a time and safe space to write, without the hassles of family and work commitment. Still others discovered that they still have life issues that they need to confront.

My friend and I are thrilled that the Holy Spirit is at work at our writing workshops. What participants write, or will write, or can write, is beyond our control and imagination. We can only enlist God’s help to jolt their memory bank and that by the Grace of God and His Wisdom, the participants find connections in their life events as they write.

[Copyright © 2007 Diana Tan | All Rights Reserved.]