HOW I CAME TO BE A PRACTITIONER IN THE HEALING ARTS

Nothing in my background could indicate that now in my seventies I have published four books on creative therapeutic writing, and have a practice anchored in writing for individuals and small groups. I completed this project in December 2020.

I was born in 1948. My post-war childhood was spent living in a sea-side town which has given me a life-long love of the sea. After the Second World War my father joined the family firm manufacturing waterproof outerwear; my mother was a housewife, as women of that era were called.

A cursory look at this website will show that my first book A Fox Crossed My Path is about the episodic depressive illnesses I’ve suffered and how writing helped me come to terms with the experience of serious mental illness. The first illness took me into psychotherapy in my early twenties. My recovery felt so remarkable that I undertook training in one of the first experiential biodynamic psychotherapy courses running in London. 

Gerda Boyesen (1922-2005) was a Norwegian psychotherapist and founder of Biodynamic Psychology. We had amazing opportunities in the seventies of learning and practicing the subtle ways she worked with the body, emotions and mind. Her pioneering massage techniques paid close attention to the peristaltic gurgling of the gut — Gerda believed that emotional stress was processed in the intestines. I’m amazed that my training fifty years ago in biodynamic psychology had its foundation in these ideas as the significance of gut health has become a recognised area for scientific research.

At the time, I enjoyed working with the body energies through massage but I was more interested in how people related. I attended many experiential workshops in the newly formed centres for the emerging human potential movement in London. Encounter groups, Gestalt, Transactional Analysis and Psychodrama all fed into my training during my twenties.

Most of my life I’ve been well but my intermittent illnesses have meant I’ve had a zig-zag career. After each recovery I had to start again. In my thirties, I was working as a secretary (BBC Radio 4) for live current affairs programmes. This led to placements in research and finally as a producer for a year on the Woman’s Hour Team. The training I had at the Beeb gave me a rigorous approach to journalism. 

In my forties, we moved to Sussex and initially my role as mother took over. I helped in the classroom at the village primary school. My interest in mind-maps meant I was soon giving study sessions to the secondary age school pupils of teachers and parents. This practice spread and I began to take on more mature students. 

Writing has always been part of my life and at fifty I took an MA in Creative Writing (Sussex University, 2002). I offered Creative Writing Workshops in the Cabin on the Hill — the spacious log studio at the top of my garden. I belonged to a network of other writers for support and soon joined Lapidus, then described as for the Literary Arts in Personal Development. In 2004 I began supervision with Dr Gillie Bolton and with her guidance my exploratory and imaginative writing took off.  I contributed short pieces for publication in the field of therapeutic writing.  

Over the last twenty years my practice has evolved and led to my particular approach to therapeutic and creative expression through writing.

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Café of Hidden Experiences: 18 November 2021

This was an event hosted by the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University. It was a fantastic zoom presentation by academics and guests involved in creative endeavours to describe what is often invisible. And part of a much wider festival across the UK during November on Being Human.

I read extracts from my first book, A Fox Crossed My Path and spoke about the impact of expressive and imaginative writing on my own life. During my life-time I have witnessed the amazing lifting of the taboo around mental illness so that it is now possible to acknowledge and speak in public about such very personal and previously hidden issues.

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Panel Discussion: Critical Voices. Tunbridge Wells, June 2016.

 

SCHOOL OF LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES

THE UNIVERSITY OF SURREY IN GUILDFORD

2019 & 2020, 2022

In November 2019 I ran a guest workshop for undergraduates and in the early summer hosted a Writing for Wellbeing Table for attendees of the festival. In 2020 I offered a presentation and exploratory workshop: addressing how this approach to writing can help meet, explore and resolve a wide range of personal issues or problems. And explained how Writing for Wellbeing deepens the process of writing, whether creative or academic. In 2022 I ran a session On Creative Writing: Strategies and Transformative Effects for a Life Writing Study Day with the theme of Embodied Health.

NEW WRITERS FESTIVAL 14 March 2020. Just in time before Lockdown. G Live, Guildford, Surrey.