Living with disability or chronic illness can be an overwhelming stressor that impacts every member of the family.  Therapeutic support can help in maintaining a healthy family and marriage in the face of overwhelming challenges. These creative therapy sessions help families or individual family members to better understand and communicate the complexity of their experience. Through the process families gain unanticipated insights that lighten the burden and strengthen the family.

• Cost: $60.00 per individual session (for individual family members or for families)
  
  
• Location: 2131 Fairview Ave. N., Roseville (in the former school attached to Corpus Christi)

We all have stories to tell especially when we encounter challenge.  Creative/poetry therapy is a tool. It can be the sword we use to address fear or the fishing net we cast in hopes of sustaining our needs.

Unfortunately, many people think of unpleasant homework when you mention poetry.  Using poetry for healing is not like that.  We don’t try to torture a confession out of a poem...we simply use the poem as a guide on our journey that helps us to discover the things we would otherwise miss.                       

excerpt from Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry”

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it. 

Poetry & Arts in the Hospitals

Poetry therapy gives us permission to tell our story and to say the things that cannot be spoken.  For instance, Adam was a seventeen year old whose leukemia had just returned.  We used poetry in a playful manner to address concerns that are hard to discuss.  It’s not uncommon for people to feel like they need to be tough all the time.  We read the poem by But Not Today by Brenda Neal and talked about the days when you feel tough and the days when you don’t.  Adam wrote the following poem about his experience.

I sometimes feel I can take on anything
I sometimes feel I’m unstoppable.
I sometimes feel immortal.
But today is not the same.
I feel I could break like glass.
I feel I have to fight just to make it.
I feel mortal and all the feelings that come with it.

When youth are able to express how they feel about what is happening to them, they help themselves heal. They also make it possible for their parents and others to help them through the process. 

What do we do during a poetry session?

What we do during a meeting depends on who is present at the time of the meeting (the child or young adult, his or her parent, a parent and child, etc.) and the mood of the day.  For instance, one girl age 11 loved to draw and everything “princess”.  So one time the girl wanted to write a princess story.  So she dictated and I wrote.  The story turned out to be a  metaphor of her long hospital experience.  The characters when family and hospital people she worked with.  The mean step sisters were the nurses who made her take medicine and the fairy godmother was the family life specialist who brought her the fun things to do.  After writing her story we illustrated it.  It turned out to be a very important documentation of her lie experience, a charming illustration of a young “princess”. 

Following is the story of one families' experience:

A Parent's Thoughts on Poetry Therapy:  Our Journey

I want to let you know about the role of the Family Institute in our journey through cancer but first it might help for you to understand the circumstances that brought us together.

In 1999, when our son was 11 years old and experiencing bone pain, spiking fevers and night sweats, our local physicians sent us to the University for answers they could not provide.  After undergoing further testing, Adam was diagnosed with ALL, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.  We immediately began a 3-1/2 year protocol of chemotherapy to conquer this disease.  On May 6, 2002, Adam finished his treatments in a remissive state.  We were thrilled to finally be at this stage in our lives.  After all the prayers of support from family and friends and the team support of our University family (which is what they had become to us) we were heading home to begin our life.  I say ‘begin,’ because we will never ‘return’ to who we were before this disease took hold of us.  We were truly starting another phase of life as successful survivors.  Just short of 2 years of this success, the rug was pulled out from under us.  In March 2004, the night sweats had returned and the tests confirmed what we hoped against.  Adam’s cancer was back.

Once again we have a plan mapped out for treatment.  3 36-day cycles of intense chemotherapy followed with a stem cell transplant.  Our family has once again rallied around us as I head south with Adam and dad stays north with his job and our younger son.  During this time our privacy is lost, our fears are too real to bear and we agonize watching our son battle his way through treatments and isolation again.  All of this is happening his 17th year of life.  How can a young man of 17 handle this set back?  How do we support him?

This is where the Family Institute comes into play.  Diane is an amazing woman with amazing gifts.  She steps into our hospital room and through conversation and creativity brings insight into our chaos.  Diane’s visits allow me to view my son’s creativity, sense of humor, fear and his sensitivity.  All of which I treasure.

I am not able to calculate the value of receiving laughter when my spirit so desperately needs it.  I struggle measuring the glimpse I am allowed into realize in the son my man is becoming.  How can I total up the wisdom granted me when my son reads from his poetry that he feels like “glass” and he’s facing his mortality?  These words allow me to know what he feels and then as a parent I can actually help him.  This is immeasurable order in chaos!

Prayers are said everyday that others not be faced with these life changing illnesses and yet there are new patients on the hospital floor each week.  We are trying to make sense out of our circumstances and we cannot manage this on our own.  I am forever grateful to Diane and her organization for bringing some order, peace and insight into our lives as we navigate these uncharted journeys.

 ~ Andrea Bedard, 7/21/2004