The Family Of Things: Poetry and Healing

POETRY, IN ITSELF, CAN HEAL. As Saskatchewan poet Tim Lilburn writes, “We are lonely for where we are. Poetry helps us cope.” Verse can be a balm to help us as professionals, as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, as children of parents, and simply to help us in the task of being ourselves. How?

In my work as a therapist, I often encourage people to notice the sensations and emotions that move through them in their daily lives and interactions. So often we are on autopilot. We devise, or fall into, ways to avoid feeling. The delicious escapism of our Smart phone is—according to a US study—humming no less than three feet away from us 24-7, including when we’re in the shower. We have the unlimited escape of Netflicks, emails, facebook updates, sports scores, news, tasks. Plans, schedules, to-do lists, commutes. Poetry is the antithesis of diversion, slowing us—even in the act of reading—down to the rate of our heartbeats.

Part of my reasoning to name this site, “The Art Of Therapy” is to share elements of art that I have found healing. Over the years, my friends, clients and I have been comforted by poetry. For some it has literally kept them alive in some of their darkest times of depression, sudden change and grief. Sometimes, our feelings are unnamable—and a poem finds the language. In times of distress, good poetry can be a palpable and brief walk into the hurricane of grief or abuse, joy or hope—letting some air into the shame of our experience, and expressing emotions and experiences that we may have bricked ourselves up against for years.

In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver writes to invite us into the family of things, giving us a sense of ourselves as human and miraculous, encouraging us to forgive ourselves and simply be.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

In the family of things.

One element I return to in my practice, over and over again, is to encourage people to notice their feelings and sensations. This is something I believe we do need to work at. There are many ways back to feeling—yoga, meditation, a walk through a park, just stopping for two minutes and asking, “What’s going on with me right now?”—and another way is to read a good poem. Just sit. And notice how you feel.