Post #26 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing and Healing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Explorations in Writing and Healing for Memoir Writers
Sharon Lippincott regularly highlights how life writing, especially memoir, is a well-documented healing process. Her discussions never fail to bring new ideas to us. Today, we invite you to read her important article on Dignity Therapy.
Is someone in your family seriously ill? Then consider Dignity Therapy. It may bring comfort to the person as well as your family.
Everyone healthy? Dignity Therapy, as Sharon Lippincott describes it, can be a useful tool at any time in our lives.
Thanks, Sharon. Another useful post.
–Matilda and Kendra
Dignity Therapy
Dignity therapy has become a hot topic. This palliative care measure for Hospice and other terminally ill patients was recently covered by NPR, WebMD, USA Today, The Lancet, and scores of similar sites and blogs.
Harvey Chochinov, a Canadian psychiatrist, began developing dignity therapy more than a decade ago. As he worked with dying patients, it became clear to him that terminally ill individuals have a powerful need to make sense of their lives and create something to keep their memory alive after they die, and many want to take an active part in shaping that memory by telling their stories as they see them.
During exploratory dialogues, he discovered that many patients reinterpreted events and their lives, perhaps finding deeper meaning, some framed their lives as a warning to others, and some used the opportunity to explain their lives to families, seeking forgiveness and understanding. Nearly all reported deep satisfaction with the process. Ultimately Chochinov developed a standardized series of nine questions that form the structure for dignity therapy. Practitioners discuss the questions with patients during interview sessions lasting around an hour, then transform recordings of the sessions into written documents that are given to the patients to share as they wish.
Results of numerous studies show that while dignity therapy does little or nothing to allay distress, nearly all patients find it helpful, and report that it improves the quality of their life, and enhances their sense of dignity. Although little is said of value for family members, it obviously has some.
Dignity Therapy and Memoir
Those familiar with the process of writing memoir will quickly see parallels. Dignity therapy is essentially assisted mini-memoir. It offers patients the opportunity to recall, assess, reflect, and find meaning in a life overview. Most memoir writing experts agree that the primary importance of memoir writing is the resolution, clarity, healing and dignity gained by the author, and only secondarily in its value for readers. They adjure us to write for ourselves first, before concerning ourselves with readers and reactions. They remind us that writing memoir is an adventure in attitudes, with unexpected personal revelations, discoveries and resolution. Even if the project is never completed, the attempt has value. In the case of dignity therapy, a scribe does the heavy lifting in the writing process, attuned as fully as possible to the message and intent of the patient.
I was fascinated to learn that dignity therapy is a formal process with a body of research supporting it. Over a year ago I met a man who volunteers his services as a sort of life scribe to write life stories for Hospice patients in the Pittsburgh region. He developed his own process that closely parallels Chocinov’s, though he spends considerably more time and effort on each person. He has completed nearly twenty projects now, and has begun working on a memoir of his own about the intensely moving experience of working with these people and the profoundly positive effect it has had on his life and the insights he’s derived.
Based on my friend’s experience, I’m convinced that dignity therapy benefits flow in three directions: the patient derives a deeper sense of meaning and peace, and the scribe experiences a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Benefits for family members are more variable, as they are with memoir.
If you like this week’s article from Sharon Lippincott, you may also want to read:
Writing and Healing: Staying Safe in a Room Full of Elephants
Writing and Healing: Three Tips for Memoir Writers and Journalers
Writing and Healing: Writing with Feeling Feels Good
Want to follow Sharon Lippincott? Here are her two blogs:
Writing for Health
Heart and Craft
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