Music For The Soul

About the author:
As a means of sharing resources and information within the healing community, Music for the Soul features a monthly guest article from a Christian therapist, pastor, or recovey professional.

This month's guest article is written by Joy Sawyer, a licensed therapist and award winning writer and poet. She author of the books Dancing to the Heartbeat of Redemption, The Art of the Soul, and Holding Heaven and Earth in One Hand

She and her husband Scott, author of a book entiled Earthly Fathers, live in the Denver, Colorado area.

The sky in Kansas is a sleek sheet of blue ocean, whitecaps foaming through the air like breakers. As a child, it was my playground. I often imagined riding it, like a sun-glazed beach babe on a surfboard, swooping up toward the sun. Or my brother Scott and I would tear through wheat fields holding hands—then hit the dirt on our stomachs for what we called “tornado drill.”

To us, the thrill of the swirling cyclone was just an urgent radio bulletin away. I’d roll over on my back, savor the sight of bright, cornflower blue dissolving suddenly into a sea of golden wheat. Turbulent funnels could rip through the van Gogh canvas at any moment. Our adventure was the land of Oz.

When sunset came, the sky was transformed into a creamy dessert. I spent many evenings outside, watching the orange sliver disappear into pastel, whipped cream clouds. Just a few years ago, in an old trunk, I found a yellowed piece of Big Chief tablet paper--one of my first poems. I was eight.

sunlight drifting through my windows
dusting off the darkened sheets
the sky a coat of many colors
pink and purple accordian pleats

At the end of the poem, I’d carefully printed, “Hurrah for the sun!”—plainspeak. Reign it in. It was something I often did, and even then, I knew I shouldn’t. The poem was euphoric, and I felt ashamed of my joy.

Surely the adult world, my world, would think a child crazy if she danced deliriously at the sight of a darkening sky. My volcano heart, erupting with fiery delight, burned safely on paper, though I felt compelled to add something “normal” at the end. To me, the extra words were reassurance, the black-and-white proof that I belonged, that I wasn’t different.

After all, poetry can only go so far in one’s everyday life. Or can it?

For as long as I can remember, poetry has been a healing force in my life. At different stages, poetry has served as my friend, comforter, listener, encourager, vehicle of hope, dispenser of wisdom, center of worship. But, just a few years ago, I discovered something beyond my own experience, something that positively thrilled my soul: poetry is also a source of physical healing.

In 1999, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released a study that asthma and arthritis sufferers showed a nearly fifty percent reduction in symptoms if they wrote about stressful incidents in their lives. This study, as well as others emerging on a regular basis, confirm what many poets and writers have discovered throughout the centuries: writing is a healing act.

As a poet who is also a practicing psychotherapist, I’ve seen poetry—both reading and writing—touch places in people’s souls that might have otherwise been unreachable. Unbearable. Poetry brings light, direction, guidance, illumination, reflection. I find that those who read and write poetry as part of their therapy gain a greater sense of identity and purpose, as well as experience deeper and more long-lasting emotional and spiritual growth.

Because of the power of poetry in my own life, as well as what I’ve experienced in the counseling room, I’m a member of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (www.poetrytherapy.org), an international organization which exists to promote the use of language arts in healing and growth.

Daily, NAPT members reach out with compassion and writing resources to those in need—both in this country and around the world. In the wake of last September’s attacks, the NAPT produced Giving Sorrow Words, an anthology of poems and writing exercises designed to help people work through the complex feelings they might be facing. Poems were contributed--at no charge--by Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as by caring poetry therapists across the country. Giving Sorrow Words continues to be distributed for free, and is available for the cost of postage through the NAPT.

In a New York Times article last October, the writer Dinitia Smith highlights that, in the weeks following the terrorist attacks, “people [consoled] themselves—and one another—with poetry in an almost unprecedented way.” She spoke with the Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, who made what might seem a startling observation.
He says that “in times of crisis it’s interesting that people don’t turn to the novel or say ‘We should all go out to a movie,’ or, ‘Ballet would help us.’ It’s always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear.”

As Billy Collins says, in times of turmoil we instinctively turn to poetry, and to her sister music as well, because they are languages that give us a voice—and we desperately feel our need to both speak and to listen to others’ experiences.
What good news. Truly, poetry is not just a linguistic luxury--a novelty reserved for the gifted few. Poetry can incarnate the dust, sweat and blood of our human existence. Poetry can transform our everyday lives.

So speak your heart. Speak your poetry.

For more information on the National Association for Poetry Therapy, visit the website at www.poetrytherapy.org

Joy Sawyer can be contacted at joysawyercpt@aol.com

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