Natalie Goldberg

Just picked up Writing Down the Bones again- and the little tidbits I read started me thinking. First of all what I took away from my re reading was that I have the write to write badly. This helps me let go of the censor and the expectations of my work. The second thing which I have been mulling over is that both she and Julia Cameron say that writing is therepeutic but not therapy. I can see where they are coming from- yet narrative therapy is about people recognising their own narrattives and rewriting them to a degree. Being able to transform yourself from victim to survivor in your own story is a most powerful therapy. Natalie goes on to say that writing transforms bitter experiences into something sweeter to be savoured (I'm paraphrasing badly again). That art can transform life experiences. I think that life is chaotic and random, we humans create story and narrattive to make sense of it all. What I like about what Natalie says is that we can take our writing into our wider lives- a bit like taking mindfulness into your wider life.