Writing by Heart: A Poetry Path to Healing and Wholeness

(Paperback)

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Description

Meredith Heller, a poet and writing teacher, shares techniques and inspiration for people of all ages to heal, explore, and express through writing. Having found solace in poetry during her own turbulent youth, she offers "Writing by Heart" as a guide to self-discovery and healing through expressive writing. Tailored for women yet inclusive for everyone, regardless of writing experience, the book embraces all forms of writing as tools for self-expression. Heller demystifies poetry's elements, from tense to metaphors, encouraging readers to discover their distinct writer's voice through exercises in prose, lyrics, or poetry.

Reviews

"Pick up your pen and lock your doors -- you'll be excited to write! Meredith Heller gathers and provides vibrantly playful, innovative, effective tools for applied creativity as somatic healing agent. Drawing from her vast interdisciplinary training, experience, and courage, her accessible, fiercely nurturing guidance provides relentless dynamic support and hums through these pages -- caressing, alchemizing, liberating our psyches."
-- April Heaslip, PhD, mythologist, educator, and author of Regenerating the Feminine (forthcoming, 2024)

"Meredith Heller invites us on a wild-hearted adventure to express our full-bodied truths. Weaving together powerful themes and playful practices, Writing by Heart catalyzes our creativity and calls us to befriend ourselves and share our treasures. This important and beautifully written book turns writing into a feast for the senses and the wild imagination."
-- Rebecca Wildbear, author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth

"An early writing prompt encapsulates the splendor, creativity, and power of Meredith Heller's new book: riffing on a Black spiritual, 'Dem Bones, ' Meredith has us envision a 'sacred wound, ' in which the heart bone is connected to the wound bone, the joy bone connected to the truth bone, the truth bone connected to the wisdom bone, etc. Through her masterful exercises and suggestions, Meredith guides us in making our wounds into sources of strength and connection, opportunities for peace, personal insight, and emotional growth. Writing by Heart expands our 'hearts, ' as well as our 'writings, ' through poetic mastery and a sense of belonging."
-- Stephen Rojcewicz, MD, PhD, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and past president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy

"What a glowing gift! Writing by Heart is a luminous lamp lighting your writing way inward and forward. This is a captivating and wonder-filled book, overflowing with wild wisdom for your words to become known to you, and find holy homes in other eyes, ears, hearts, and souls."
-- SARK, artist, author, inspirationalist, PlanetSARK.com

"This book is a soft, sweet hand that will guide you to rest in the place where possibility is born."
-- Dawna Markova, author of Spot of Grace

"Meredith Heller has written another exciting and inclusive soul-speak book. Writing by Heart provides a loving and passionate invitation to connect to our own life experience as if our stories, longings, dreams, and heartfelt, handwritten words matter not to just ourselves but to each other. Her generous sharing of everyday people's poetry allows us to feel connected and inspired to engage with our feeling self and write what we know from heart to hand to communal voice. As a spiritual psychotherapist and life coach, I bring Meredith's books into my practice as a tool to help us uncover our truth through the sacred act of writing."
-- Deborah Meints-Pierson, LMFT, coauthor of Love Tools for Everyday Heroes, author of Shelter in Place, and cohost of the Soul Path Sessions podcast

"The words thank you cannot capture the enormity of the gratitude I feel for this book. Meredith Heller's loving wisdom and encouragement leap from the page. Her students' poems call out like an incantation, a summoning of creative magic: Join us with your voice, your words, your poems. You can do this! When Meredith offers her prompts to 'Write Now!' my heart sings back, Yes, yes, yes!"
-- Heather Clague, MD, coleader of the Feeling Great Book Club

Author Bio

Meredith Heller is a poet, singer-songwriter, avid nature lover, and educator with degrees in writing and education. She leads workshops at schools, women's prisons, the Institute for Poetic Medicine, creativity summits, wellness retreats, and online. She lives with a gentle footprint in Northern California. John Fox is the founder of the Institute for Poetic Medicine and author of Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity with Poem-Making.

MeredithHeller.com