The Creative Notebook

“This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me.”
-Colleen Wainwright

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 05/23/06

BY CHRIS SWINGLE
GANNETT NEWS SERVICEHaving lung cancer has prompted a range of emotions for Kathy Vahue during the past seven years.

But it wasn’t until a recent “guided journaling” class for people with cancer that she uncovered some of them. Through writing exercises, she recognized the joy of her strengths. She also realized she felt lingering anger about a health-care provider’s insensitivity years ago.

“I wrote him a letter and told him exactly how I felt,” says Vahue, 66, of Penfield, N.Y. She felt a release once she got it on paper and disposed of it.

The six-week journaling class concluded in mid-April with an outdoor burning of such letters.

“When you see that smoke go up . . . I just realized, let that anger go, let it evaporate with that smoke,” Vahue says. “I don’t have enough room to carry old anger.”

Journaling can be a powerful way to explore and cope with feelings. Research finds that journaling can reduce anxiety, blood pressure and depressive symptoms, while boosting the immune system and helping people think more clearly, says Janice Putrino, a social worker at a Rochester, N.Y., Gilda’s Club, and who is trained in teaching journaling.

Gilda’s Club is a worldwide organization of people living with cancer.

Facing a blank page alone can produce anxiety rather than healing. Putrino and Linda Sliwoski, a nurse manager also trained in journaling, are each offering structured classes for people with cancer. Probing questions and activities help people start writing.

“The goal of journal writing is to become more balanced,” Putrino says. “When they begin to write, they’re able to put their finger on what’s really going on.”

Putrino had journaled herself but never stuck with it until she took the training course. The writing exercises helped her clarify her thoughts and communicate better verbally. She also experienced healing and peace about experiences from her past.

“I felt myself growing as a person,” she says.

Putrino already had facilitated therapeutic discussion groups for people living with cancer. Writing helps people go deeper, she says.

Putrino explains journaling’s research-based benefits at presentations to health care providers. She’s also starting a journaling group for medical professionals to help them deal with the stress of working with patients with life-threatening diseases.

“It’s a catharsis,” says Sliwoski, who has been journaling for 16 years.

Participants in both Sliwoski’s and Putrino’s classes are given a free self-guided journal, “My Healing Companion,” (Comeback Press, $21.95), which has blank pages interspersed with chapters on cancer-related experiences and feelings.

Author Beverly K. Kirkhart of California has been a breast cancer survivor since 1993. Kirkhart’s book addresses anger, “Why me?” and fear. It explores reaching out for support, finding courage and hope, communicating with doctors, getting hugs, dealing with the blues and feeling beautiful.

Visit our Web site, www.app.com, and click on this story in Jersey Life for a link to Life After Cancer Journal.