Writing Helps Cope With Loss

<p><a href="mailto:knorris@umich.edu"><em>By Kyle Norris</em></a></p> <p>Michigan has been hit hard by the recession. The state has the second highest unemployment rate in the country. This is the story of one man whose life has changed dramatically. And as he comes to grips with a new reality, the thing helping him the most is his writing. </p> <p>Two big changes recently happened to Russ Hicks. His wife Carol was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. </p> <p>"I tell you right after Carol died I was completely rudderless and almost berserk," he says. "There was a time a week afterwards at work they said 'You gotta go home. You're not doing anybody any good here and you got to go home and we want to drive you home.'  They didn't want me to get in the car and drive."</p> <p>Shortly after that, Hicks got laid off from his job of 22 years at a factory warehouse. </p> <p>"And so here I am, within a year's time I'd lost my wife and my job," he says.  </p> <p>To deal with his grief he got some counseling at a center called Lory's Place in St. Joseph. They offer traditional support groups, and also art programs, such as journaling, scrapbooking, painting, and drama classes. </p> <p>Hicks signed on for a writing class.The teacher would give their class little writing prompts.</p> <p>"Write about a button for 10 minutes," Hicks gives an example. "And I wrote about how my life had been too buttoned down, now becoming unbuttoned, how many more buttons there were to be undone, how exciting and scary it was at the same time"</p> <p>Hicks kept up with the writing and the memories began flooding back, onto the page. He wrote about the time his son Justin turned six. The family threw a party at pizza joint.</p> <p>"He asked if he could bring some friends from school and we said sure."<em> </em></p> <p>More and more kids kept showing up.</p> <p>"I asked Justin how many kids he invited and he said the whole school. Our total bill was $75, quite a lot in 1982. We never did that again," Hicks says. </p> <p>"One of the things I find in this world where so many things are going awry, is we seem to need to tell our stories," says Interlochen Arts Academy writing instructor Anne-Marie Oomen. </p> <p>She says all kinds of people get comfort from writing about their lives. In fact, Oomen says there are these "storytelling patterns," stories about identity or loss of innocence. And these patterns comfort and reassure us.</p> <p>"Even though it may have been your story of losing your child, it's my story of losing my boyfriend," she explains. "Or it's your story of surviving a divorce, it's my story of surviving an illness. And when we hear another person say that, we say 'Oh, I have that one, too.'"</p> <p>Oomen says writing can be an act of compassion, because the writer wants the reader to understand what they've gone through. She also says all great writing is about trying to speak the unspeakable, to say something about you and me and being human that is ultimately inarticulate. </p> <p>Hicks says the more he writes, the more old memories resurface, and that helps because it reminds him of all these good things that have happened to him. And that gives him a sense of stability.</p> <p>"As I'm remembering these things it's not like I'm cast into the sea adrift by myself with no control anymore. It felt like that for a long time," he says. "But these memories are helping me to make connections between my past and my present and it's helping me come to grips more with how things are now."</p> <p>Hicks has taken the writing workshop several times. He's also gone through the training to become a grief counselor, and he's been counseling teenagers who are dealing with big losses in their lives.  Helping them deal with their grief.  </p>