The Center for Creative Healing » Other Stories

The Music of Therapy

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:34:27 +0000

I’d like to think I’m a better therapist than I am a bassist. [Read More …]

The Heroes’ Journey: A Therapeutic Writing and Storytelling Group for People Facing Life-Changing Illness and Disability

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:34:54 +0000

I had been chronically ill for over twenty years, and a therapist for seven, when I came up with a brilliant plan. I would form a therapeutic writing and storytelling group for people struggling with life-changing illness and disability, and frame it around the idea of the hero’s journey. After all, wouldn’t it be better if people could come to think of themselves instead as heroes on a transformative journey rather than feeling like victims betrayed by their bodies?

The only problem was—I didn’t know a thing about the hero’s journey. But I was pretty sure that I was on one, and that anyone facing a life-changing illness or disability might be challenged to reframe their experience through that lens. So I started cramming.

You might say this was my Call to Adventure. [Read More …]

Listening

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:53:29 +0000

One of the worst things about facing a life-changing illness or disability is the isolation. Mother Theresa says that the biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, “but rather the feeling of not belonging. In our society this disease has reached epidemic proportions.”* When you’re sick or disabled, you often feel like an outcast: alone.[Read More …]