Spring celebrations and all sorts of festivals crowd community calendars during April. At Wellness & Writing Connections, we are asking our community of readers to celebrate National Poetry Month with a poem-a-day in our Wellness & Writing Connections blog. Please join our celebration and visit us frequently this month.

Today's newsletter begins with a review of Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver's Voice by Frances Kakugawa. Written from the author's own experience as a caregiver and workshop leader, this work offers guidance for caregivers through poetry and anecdote. Exceptionally well-written, this work is one you will treasure if you are a caregiver. If you are not a caregiver but know someone who is, please consider recommending this work.

Following our review of Breaking the Silence, is a section devoted to resources about poetry, writing poetry, and poetry therapy, including excellent links for you to bookmark and some books that you will want to add to your shelf.

Satia concludes our April newsletter with a reminder about the importance we attach to poetry and poetry writing is a personal conviction and belief in the power of words to transform our lives, to which I can only add: Amen.

Write and be well!

Best Wishes,
John

Book Review: Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver's Voice by Frances Kakugawa is the author's personal story of Alzheimer's beautifully accompanied by the poetry that has come through the workshops she leads to help other caretakers. Unfortunately, this book is likely to be overlooked by those people who are not themselves facing Alzheimer's. This is unfortunate because it doesn't take the reader long to recognize that no two experiences with Alzheimer's is the same and there is benefit to be reaped from writing our stories, whether within the experience of one particular disease or another.

The caregiving story is unique in the specifics but there are universal experiences that the caregiver faces-whether the disease is Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or any of a seemingly endless list of possibilities. As Kakugawa says, "Caregivers find their lives gradually being put on hold as their energy and hours become totally consumed by their mission" (51). It is within the community of Kakugawa's poetry workshops, designed to support the caregivers express the many fears, frustrations, and complicated, often conflicting, emotions that come with helping a loved one who cannot help him or herself.

The power of poetry, the many ways it invites the reader to express truths both beautiful and ugly, honoring, if not celebrating, every moment. The book begins with Kakugawa's own haiku about her mother's death forming poems, from haiku to free verse, that do not turn away from grief. It is this, that she herself knows what it means to take care of a parent and watch the inexorable inevitability of death, that allows the reader to appreciate all the more the voices that follow.

By the time we read about Nora, the groundwork of ambiguous emotions has been laid and her letter written to her mother feels somehow connected to every adult's feelings when faced with losing a parent: Forgive me, mother, for being such an ungrateful daughter (17). Within the context, of course, the reader knows that Nora sacrifices much to take care of her mother, honestly sharing her frustrations while also expressing jealousy towards another caretaker whose mother is less resistant.

So when Jason Kimura's poem is shared, the sense of community continues to grow.

"I am at the edge of getting past / my mother's long illness" (75), he writes as he struggles to understand himself through his understanding his mother after his mother's death. Kakugawa herself asks, "Past, present, and future: At one point in our lives, they all converge and we can't deny or ignore any of these stages, can we?" (47). Indeed, we cannot ignore these things and the isolation that caretakers experience pours itself onto the page.

Linda McCall, another voice in this collection, writes, "I'm in the middle / Caught between an increasingly forgetful mother / And a rebellious daughter" (84) and the statistics about which we all have read, showing how Baby Boomers are increasingly taking care of the next generation as they also face the daunting task of taking care of their aging parents. And as Kakugawa points out, "Caregivers find their lives gradually being put on hold as their energy and hours become totally consumed by their mission. Often, the self put-on-hold is no longer present after caregiving, and a new, re-invented self demands to reenter the circle of life once again" (51).

Through her workshops she has invited her participants to find their voices, to, as the title implies, break the silence. The final part of the book includes an outline of how she leads her workshops and includes a brief glossary of poetic terms. Of course, there are those who will protest, to which she bluntly says, "You say to yourself, 'But I've never written anything except emails and grocery lists. Can I write poems?' And I say, 'Yes, you can.'"(146).

Kakugawa invites her workshop participants, and through this book her readers, to write poetry because she knows the power of poetry to heal. By the time Red Slider's poems and notebooks are shared, the reader has faced so many of the ugly truths that surround death and dying. And when he writes, "In these words I find motion, but around them / how quickly, 'I am dying, I am dying,' she says" the reader knows that there is something essential in the act of writing itself, something that helps empower the caregiver even when facing the powerlessness of encroaching loss (104).

"Some things, like Alzheimer's disease and dying, can't be fixed, nor can we control them. But we can try to make some sense of them without any answers if we listen to the silence" (10). These words that come so early in the text, are proven time and again throughout the book and, although it is written through the context of Alzheimer's, this book proves itself to be universal. Anyone who is experiencing or has experienced caregiving for a loved one, whatever the condition may be, will recognize something of their own experience here in this book. And in recognizing the self in the words of someone else, the isolation and confusion that inevitably comes with caretaking, the complicated feelings of grief that follow loss, the reader becomes less alone in their unique experience because, whatever the particulars, emotions are universal. Which makes Kakugawa's book a resource to which one is bound to return again and again.

Poetry Therapy Resources

Online Resources
Many of the following websites offer articles, newsletters, and other publications for those interested in poetry therapy.

Institute for Poetic Medicine
IPM is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to healing body, mind and spirit through the creative and therapeutic process of hearing and writing poetry.
National Association for Poetry Therapy
For the past 30 years, NAPT members have forged a community of healers and lovers of words and language.
National Coalition of Creative Arts Therapies Associations
The NCCAT was founded in 1979. It is an alliance of professional associations dedicated to the advancement of the arts as therapeutic modalities.
National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy
Incorporated in 1983, the NFB/PT sets standards of excellence in the training and credentialing of practitioners in the field of biblio/poetry therapy and authorizes qualified individuals to practice as mentor/supervisors.

Books on Poetry Therapy
These books offer some of the research behind the use of poetry in counseling. Many also offer exercises and other poetry resources for those new to poetry and/or poetry therapy.

Poetry and Story Therapy: The Healing Power of Creative Expression by Geri Giebel Chavis
The Healing Fountain: Poetry Therapy by Geri Giebel Chavis and Lila Lizabeth Weisberger
Poetic Medicine: the Healing Art of Poem Making by John Fox
Poetry Therapy: Theory and Practice by Nicholas Mazza
Biblio/Poetry Therapy: The Interative Process, A Handbook by Arleen McCarty Hynes and Mary Hynes-Berry
Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words by Kim Rosen

Inspirational Books
For those of you who have never written poetry and don't know where or how to begin, these books are invitations to begin exploring yourself through poetry.

Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry by Sage Cohen
Finding What You Didn't Lose by John Fox
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit
Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry by Nikki Moustaki
Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan G Wooldridge

A Poem by Yang Guo

Adolescence - Trapped in a Cocoon

Suddenly one day
Everything had changed
The language I used to understand
Turned out to carry different meanings:
"Yes" no longer meant "yes,"
And "sorry" meant
"I know you are sad,
But I can't do nothing about it!"
I didn't know why
I had to swallow the words
  that I truly wanted to say in my mind,
and utter something
  so strange to me.
I didn't understand how
 My careless whispers
 may have hurt someone
 I cared the most.
As more and more lies
  Were revealed in the cruel reality,
The world that used to be so pure,
 so innocent, and so clear
Became vague,
 messy,
  and blurring
   in front of me;
 Thousands of questions
 were nibbling my heart.
I doubted,
 Challenged
 And didn't trust that much
 any more...
I bumped,
   Collapsed
     And got hurt
   In this soft
And seemingly spacious
  Cocoon.

Closing Thoughts from Satia Renée

Dear Readers,

When I was in college, I stumbled upon the book Poetic Medicine and instantly fell in love. I practically devoured the book, barely skipping any of the exercises John Fox recommended. Long after I finished reading the book, I continued composing poems. There have been times when I have struggled to write anything in my journal, too overwhelmed by my immediate experiences to even begin. And yet a poem, something concise and laser sharp in its focus, would be enough to put the moment into words.

As I flip through one of my many poetry notebooks I see it all there. My struggles in a doomed relationship. My anxiety when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. My grief at seeing my daughter struggle with issues of her own. My falling in love with someone who would one day have the bravery to ask me to marry him and to whom I would have the courage to say yes.

It doesn't take long to see that these poems are a variation of my journal. Even when I am not writing about my own experiences, when I am exploring imagined pain or joy, there is something essentially Satia that comes through. Even writing from the perspective of a puppy, and I actually do have a poem I wrote from the perspective of a dog, I am trying to come to some personal understanding of the world. Or at least my corner of the world.

Most of you already know that in the Wellness & Writing Connections blog, we are commemorating National Poetry Month by sharing a new poem each day. Every morning at 8am (est), a new poem by a different poet is posted. This poetry project is our way of building community, not at all unlike this newsletter. And the message, it seems, is a necessary one. David Orr, in a recent New York Times article, suggests that there is no connection between poetry writing and that writing poetry cannot be used to "overcome personal challenges."

I beg to differ. I am guessing you do too.

It's funny to think that this is even debatable, given the research and personal experiences we can all share that disagrees with Orr's contention. But it is a wonderful reminder of why a community like this, one where we come together to share our own thoughts on the connections between wellness and writing, is so very important. If you haven't done so already, drop by the blog and leave some comments for the poets, thanking them for their generous donations of verse. And be sure to tell others about the work we are doing.

And above all else, keep writing. Actions speak louder than words and, while I can appreciate Orr's perspective, his experience is not my own and I intend to continue using poetry and other forms of writing to help me overcome my personal challenges.

Wishing You Wellness,
Satia Renée