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“I feel very grateful for the chance to say this to people who will really get it. ”  --Nancy Tune, Palo Alto, CA

Writer Advice

Dec 2012 - Mar 2012

You Want Me to Do WHAT?
Journaling for Caregivers

 

 

 

Struggling with chaos, overload, and stress?

Journaling helps.

Why write about it?

Ready to give it a try?

TOPICS:

Here are three sentence starts.

Today I believe…

I want to…

I love hearing…

Finish one sentence and go on. Start with what needs to spill out. Let the writing take you wherever it wants to. Feel free to make leaps. Write as much or as little as you want. Trust yourself and trust the process.

Write what is true for you in the moment. When your truths change, you can write different things using the same sentence start.

Eager to share what you wrote and get feedback?  

E-mail it to Lgood67334@comcast.net. You never can tell what she might love in your writing and how that might change your perceptions.

“Swamped with chores, why should caregivers add on writing? It gives perspective, restores sanity, releases stress, and deepens awareness. Writing saved my soul and brought meaning to my caregiving years. Writer, or no writer, journaling your way through this may help and inspire you.”

         Ann Davidson
        Author of Alzheimer’s: A Love Story

“Writing from the heart seems to be all that is needed.”

Marilyn A.
Educator and career coach

“Any writer, experienced or otherwise, needs a place to start and a little encouragement. B. Lynn Goodwin offers this and more in You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers, a journal keeper’s guide by a woman   who’s been there, done all of it, and emerged with her sanity and sense of humor intact. Goodwin makes it simple and fun to ‘put your judgments about your writing out on the patio, or send them out to play basketball, or buy them a plane ticket to Paris. Let them go.’”

Susan Bono
Owner of Tiny Lights, a Journal of Personal Narrative
www.tiny-lights.com

 

Reviews

Read reviews by Veronica Chater, Nicole Langen and more readers on Amazon. Visit http://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Me-Do-What/dp/1606962973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291758511&sr=1-1

Dotsie Bregel's review of You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers is at http://www.nabbw.com/list_bookreviews.php?bcategory_id=11

Linda Abbit's review of You Want Me to Do What? Journaling for Caregivers is at
http://tenderlovingeldercare.com/book-review-you-want-me-to-do-what-journaling-for-caregivers#comment-1508

Additional reviews are available on Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Me-Do-What/dp/1606962973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261535386&sr=8-1

Explore the pages behind the buttons in the left-hand column. If you have questions about the book, about workshops, or about anything else, please e-mail Lgood67334@comcast.net.

FROM A CAREGIVER’S POINT OF VIEW

http://www.beyondforgettingbook.com/

I recently asked Holly J. Hughes, editor of Beyond Forgetting: Poetry & Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease and two other authors from the book how their writing altered their perceptions as caregivers. Their answers should be an inspiration to writers and those who simply want a new view on caregiving.

Hughes said, “Writing ‘The Bath’ gave me an opportunity to reflect more deeply on what it means to be in the present with whatever is happening, even if it’s not what you’d choose.  In writing the poem, I saw how staying in the present with my mother’s refusal to take a bath gave us both a moment of much-needed tenderness.

This realization marked a shift in my attitude toward being her caregiver; I was able to let go of who I wanted her to be and instead, be with her where she was.   When I could do this, we both benefited: I became a more responsive, more compassionate caregiver and I think she sensed this and appreciated it, too.”

Alice Derry, who received her MFA from Goddard and has written six volumes of poetry, said, “I wrote many pieces in a kind of dialogue with my dad, one we couldn’t have before he had dementia.  I wasn’t his main caretaker, but during the times I did care for him, what he said to me became his part of the dialogues of the poems.  I was able to make something good out of what had happened to him: his dementia.  

“Even though Dad was often ornery and difficult, I had more compassion for him during these years than I had had any time growing up.  Being a person in love with words, I really treasured many of the “new” ways Dad used language during these years.”

Jan Harrington, whose poems, short stories, and nonfiction have appeared in European and American literary journals, said, “The creative act of crafting the poem required me to reflect on that summer night with my father at a later time, and to notice things impossible to see when I was caught in the experience itself. I saw that both of us were doing the best we could in a situation neither of us would have chosen. This realization allowed me to have more compassion for myself as a caregiver.”

I love these three voices and the different experiences. I wish I’d read all three while I was caregiving. Wherever you are in your caregiving journey, I hope they help you to see the experience in a new way. If you’d like to share how writing has altered your perceptions, I’d love to read it and perhaps run it here.

Three Memoirs by Floyd Skloot

The Wink of the Zenith
(2008-ISBN 0803211198)

A World of Light
(2005–ISBN 0803238479)

In the Shadow of Memory
(2003–ISBN 0803293224)

http://www.floydskloot.com/

Reviewed by Anne Sigmon

If your life has ever been touched by brain damage or memory loss–your own (as mine has, from a stroke), a parent or friend’s, perhaps from Alzheimer’s or dementia (as mine has with two close family friends)–then Floyd Skloot is a writer you want to know.

Eight months after my stroke, when I was just beginning to read seriously again, a friend brought a copy of Skloot’s essay “Gray Area, Thinking with a Damaged Brain,” which later began the lead chapter of In the Shadow of Memory.

“I went to sleep here and woke up there,” Skloot wrote. “The place looked the same but nothing in it worked the way it used to … thoughts teeter and topple into fissures of cognition … I lose my way … Thought itself has been a gray area, a matter of lost edges and blurred distinctions … This is not the way I used to be.”

He’s been there. He understands, was all I could think. I grabbed onto his work like a lifeline. I’ve been holding on ever since.

In A World of Light, just as he begins to rebuild his own life, Skloot faces his mother’s slide into dementia. As he assumes responsibility for her care, he confronts the intractable difficulties of their past relationship, along with his fear for his own future.

“The thing that seems to agitate her the most is me. My presence seems to suggest a past and future she cannot grasp, cannot bring into focus.” Then he writes: “I can see in my mother’s ravaged mind one possible future for my own. I can only hope … the virus responsible for my brain damage has not hastened me along her path toward senility.”

In The Wink of the Zenith, Skloot reflects further on his own illness and his mother’s, and how they shaped his life as a writer:

“This time with my mother has been a perfect reflection of what memory itself feels like when it’s compromised. Images rise …often of their own accord, often without connection … There is a feeling of emotional vertigo, an almost hallucinatory sense of being unstable within the rush of consciousness, out of harmony with your own self. Out of time, too, as the threads binding past and present have frayed.”

In 2010, Poets & Writers Magazine named Skloot one of fifty of the most inspiring authors in the world, saying: “Despite virus-induced brain damage, he writes with surprising tenderness and candor about recreating a life for himself and, in the process, makes us think about our own.”

For anyone whose life has been touched my memory loss, Floyd Skloot’s books are a balm to the soul, a hand reaching out from the night to help you hold on till morning. I’m not alone, you can’t help but feel. For anyone else, Skloot’s books are an elegiac reflection on life, memory and those we hold dear.

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Anne Sigmon is a Bay Area freelance writer and blogger who writes about stroke and autoimmune disease (AnneSigmon.com) as well as adventure travel for people with health concerns (JunglePants.com). She is currently finishing a memoir about surviving stroke and resuming travel to remote corners from Burma to Uzbekistan.

 

Stuck? Need new insights on your manuscript? Take The Next Step Towards Publication, taught by Writer Advice’s Managing Editor, B. Lynn Goodwin, begins January 9th. You can meet her in person at the Story Circle Network Conference in Austin, TX in mid-April.

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Journaling: Gateway to Self Discovery is available by special arrangement. Contact
Lgood67334@comcast.net 
for information.