Text, Tea, and Sympathy: How Sharing Stories About Child Loss Became an Invaluable Part of the Healing Process for a Pack of Bereaved Mothers

Abstract

In this article, I explore how losing a much-wanted first pregnancy at fourteen weeks, at the critical age of thirty-five, inspired me to look at the healing opportunities among communities of women who had lost pregnancies or children by the writing and sharing of stories. At the time of my loss, I was studying for a master’s in literature and found comfort and encouragement in the texts of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath who, even during the darkest, freshest moments of despair, felt the urge to write. One of the my professors during this period was Suzette Henke, the preeminent voice in female trauma narrative, who had coined the phrase “scriptotherapy.” Henke encouraged me to heal how other women had done for centuries—in letters to sisters, diary entries, to do lists—by writing and publishing my work. Sharing pain allowed the tormented to feel part of a collective whole, I realized, and writing allowed women to unload psychological trauma, and reading or listening to it allowed them to form healthy connections. Using my research, I set up a free writing workshop for grieving mothers. Strong, heartbroken, kind women would gather together to cry, share, write and discuss each other’s work for three hours once a month from January until May 2016. The results are a remarkable testimony to the power of healing and recovery through scriptotherapy, their hearts written on to every page and in this article.