This book is for cancer survivors: those in treatment and those who have completed treatment and are wondering what to do next. Both would benefit from a support group that is grounded in healing themes, mindful meditations, and community. Writing and Healing: A Mindful Guide for Cancer Survivors (with accompanying CD) serves as a guide for support groups in using expressive writing as a therapeutic experience. The sessions in the book help to release stress and encourage positive feelings, offering a way to support treatment and move forward after treatment. The book is also full of stories, drawings, and vignettes, inspiring survivors to explore their own healing path. Within the book is a step-by-step guide enabling others (such as nurses, social workers, psychologists, or ministers) to lead these groups. This includes ways to gather the creative materials and instructions on how to lead the opening, closing and exercises of the twelve sessions. Alternatively, cancer survivors may prefer to gather on their own and take turns leading the group. For those who want to use the book on their own, Writing and Healing also includes a CD of the meditations and suggestions for how to follow the exercises on one’s own. The twelve sessions in this book are full of cleansing and hope, and the sort of writing, sharing, and listening which occurs is a strengthening act. Reviews: “Writing and Healing is a practical, yet beautiful, how-to for psychologists, social workers, therapists, nurses, clergy and survivors themselves, giving all the information anyone could possibly need to help those struggling with cancer express themselves by writing.”
— Cokie Roberts, journalist, author and cancer survivor “Practical, moving, instructive, and precise, Writing and Healing is necessary reading for anyone in treatment for cancer and for the rest of our lives as survivors. Read it and be changed.”
— Hilda Raz, author of Divine Honors and editor of Living on the Margins “Writing and Healing: A Mindful Guide for Cancer Survivors is a treasure for anyone affected by cancer, those with the diagnosis and those who want to help. It’s filled with practical and easy-to-follow guidance, inspiring quotes, and soothing images to set the stage for receptivity, exploration, and personal growth. Pamela Post-Ferrante, a cancer survivor and seasoned writer who has personally and professionally used this unique approach to therapeutic writing, shares her wisdom in a way that is both inviting and uniting.”
— Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor, Emory University, Author of Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully With Serious and Life-Limiting Illness Through Mindfulness, Compassion, and Connectedness “When people are in crisis, they are drawn to the arts. Pamela Post’s Writing and Healing workshop with my Mind Body Cancer Group was very illuminating, inspiring and cathartic. The writing helped them find meaning in their experience.”
— Dr. Ann Webster, director of the cancer group at the Mind Body Clinic at Deaconess Hospital, Boston About the Author: Pamela Post-Ferrante, MEd, MFA, CAGS, is a writer, teacher and workshop leader. She teaches in the Graduate School of Expressive Therapies at Lesley University and currently leads sessions privately and in Boston area hospitals for cancer survivors. She was published in Living on the Margins: Women Writers on Breast Cancer. Her work has been heard on National Public Radio. Gabriele Rico, PhD., lecturer, workshop leader, author and professor of English and Creative Arts at San Jose State University, has led the way in the application of brain research to the creative process and writing. Her doctoral thesis from Stanford in 1976 on creativity and split-brain theory produced “clustering,” a way to generate new and creative ideas and stories. Her publications include Writing the Natural Way, Pain and Possibility, and The Power of Story. |
