Writing to Heal:
Building Skills, Creating Community, Inspiring Hope
Rooted Resilience support groups and workshops help you build the skills and confidence to live with love, calm, and clarity.
Details
Starts October 8th, and runs six consecutive Tuesday evenings ONLINE
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
$265
Refer a friend? Receive $25 credit toward your next Rooted Resilience class!
“The sense of community was real, thanks in large part to the warmth and encouragement from Laurie; the gentle, supportive feedback that she modeled for us; and the genuine hunger for connection and desire to finally be heard and understood, which we all brought to each session.”
Questions? Feel free to write us.
About Writing to Heal
Expressive writing can help us process adversity and trauma. This 6-week course is specially designed for individuals who’ve coped with unexpected challenges or transitions. Participants will gain both an understanding of the theory and practice of expressive writing and, importantly, a sense of community and connection through shared experiences.
Grounded in the research surrounding trauma writing and improved health outcomes, writing and resilience, and narrative agency, each 1.5-hour session will include short content-based discussions as well as opportunities to write and receive feedback in a safe, supportive environment.
Expressive writing can serve as a lifelong tool for managing high-stress circumstances, and participants will also have access to supplemental readings, resources, and writing prompts to extend their practice beyond the class.
No prior writing experience is necessary!
About Laurie Edwards
Laurie is an accomplished author and writing instructor who believes that storytelling can empower. She teaches in Northeastern University’s Writing Program, where she developed her beloved Writing to Heal course. She has also led Writing to Heal workshops for high school students; facilitated Writing to Heal workshops at conferences and for professional development; and built open-access trauma writing courses.
Laurie is a nonfiction writer and the author of two books on chronic illness: Life Disrupted (Walker, 2008), a Library Journal Best Consumer Health Book, and In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America (Walker, 2013), a Booklist Editor’s Choice for 2013. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR, and many other outlets, and she has appeared on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and The Today Show with Maria Shriver to discuss gender and pain.
Get to Know Laurie! Q & A
Katie Stockman: Your class explores expressive writing as a healing art. When did you first begin to explore this for yourself?
Laurie Edwards: Growing up as a chronically ill kid who loved to write, I think I was engaging in expressive writing decades before I knew what that even meant. Writing was a way to have a voice and still have agency, despite unpredictable physical symptoms.
Professionally, I began writing about the experience of living with chronic illness in my early 20s, when I was in graduate school for my Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction, and I slowly became more comfortable writing about these more vulnerable personal experiences in public. In 2016, I taught my first Writing to Heal class and have loved teaching it many times since.
KS: Who is Writing to Heal for?
LE: Writing to Heal is for anyone looking to work through physical or emotional adversity, however big or small, at any levels of writing experience. Expressive writing is a lifelong tool we can use to process difficult events or transitions. It’s also a great class for those who want to kickstart a regular writing practice, or have goals to publish their personal essay/narrative writing. More than anything, Writing to Heal is a space to find connection and community.
KS: What are the most rewarding parts of teaching Writing to Heal?
LE: The supportive community that participants end up building together, the enormous care they show towards each other, and the support they give to each other’s writing projects are the most rewarding parts by far.
KS: In the spirit of mindfulness and gratitude, would you be willing to share an end of season rose, bud and thorn?
LE: September transitions are always a bit bittersweet! Rose: a brand-new class I am teaching at Northeastern this fall–it’s been in the works for months (and months). Bud: acclimating to a new and more complicated family schedule–it’s an exciting time, and one that requires a lot of communication and flexibility. Thorn: time management for long-term projects–I had a specific writing project I intended to complete this summer, and I absolutely did not get there.
Writing to Heal Feedback
“Something profoundly shifted inside of me. Suddenly, my creativity- the strongest coping skills through my years of profound loss, abandonment, fear, fight, flight and trauma- came back to me.
This class unlocked my inner strength and confidence to share again… to allow others to hear my pain sublimate into something relatable and hopefully transformative; in the same way I grew, learned, became inspired, felt held and supported, felt understood and like maybe I had finally peeked into the power of a sisterhood, as I listened to my peers’ stories and the ways they have also been strong, courageous, super women who just needed a moment, a breath, and a page to get their most profound inner thoughts and perilous journeys out like a 2 ton weight of unpredictable, painful, hectic and often chaotic muddling through our in womanhood. - A.K.
“Laurie is a phenomenal writing instructor and an exceptionally kind, nurturing facilitator. I had taken a few writing workshops when I was in college, twenty years ago, and it was pretty extraordinary for me to have the opportunity to get to learn from her and my fellow classmates, while resuming a practice that was so meaningful to me in what feels like a past life ago. :)
I appreciate so much her sensitivity to both the healing potential of the written word and the grace with which she was willing to meet us wherever we were in a particular session and to quickly adapt her plans for the day, in response to our evolving needs and emerging interests. It was clear that she was drawing on pretty significant experience, as both a practitioner and instructor. I was especially grateful for the time and thoughtfulness she put into preparation prior to sessions to guide us on relevant resources building off of our discussions.” - R.L.