Excerpts - TimeFinders Magazine

Excerpts

You Want Me To Do What? Journaling for Caregivers

Written by Lynn Goodwin ( Author information

If you do not record your own story, your tiny bit of the history of the human race is lost. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s vision. Dickinson wrote Dickinson’s.
Who will write yours, if you do not?

--Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford Press
Founder, Amherst Writers & Artists

Writing Saves Lives

Reprinted by permission of Story Circle Network

As a caregiver, you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions, paying bills, and helping with matters that used to be private.

Why write about it?

Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Writing saves lives. Do not underestimate its power.

One of the simplest, most private places to write is in a journal. It allows you to vent, delve into issues, and untangle messes. It lets you analyze or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. Journaling releases mental toxins and deepens awareness. It enables you to strip away the daily debris and let the strong, sane, safe, healthy, hopeful parts of you emerge.

Chapter 1

Spring, and a young woman's fancy turns to Louis' Lunch: broiled square hamburgers on toast, loaded with cheese, tomato, and onions.

I all but skipped the blocks from my psychotherapy office on Orange Street to the downtown New Haven, Connecticut green, where my friend Annabelle Hart practices sand tray therapy in an aging brownstone off Ninth Square. In order to celebrate the crocuses and daffodils and robins and the general hopefulness of the season, we decided to suppress our anticipatory worries about future middle-aged spread and trek to the home of the best burger on the east coast. Possibly the whole United States. My mouth had been set on a slow drool all morning.

Heaping Spoonful Will Make You Believe in the Power of Starting Over

Heaping Spoonful When Claire Hamilton lost her husband to cancer, her self-image shattered overnight. Once a happily married and financially secure mother of two, Claire suddenly finds herself a single parent trying tokeep her small bakery running smoothly. While she manages to continue her daily duties as mom, boss, sister and daughter, Claire's anger and inability to moveon have her emotionally crippled. Luckily for Claire, the people who love her refuse to stop pushing her to learn to really live --- and love --- again. Claire's family is impossible to ignore: Lucy, Claire's man-crazy younger sister and employee, prides herself on being blunt and brash, but amazingly loveable. Claire's father is an ex-high school principal who, though he is a great help with the business and his grandchildren, can still make her feel like ateenager. Claire's mother, a southern belle suffering from Alzheimer's, helps Claire most of all by providing her with a surprising gift from her own past.

"HeapingSpoonful is a simple story overflowing with meaning. Claire is a brave, young woman -- a lot braver than she gives herself credit for -- who faces her fears and follows her heart, even when she is unsure where either will lead her. Shauna Glenn's ability to tell a story in a truly candid voice makes her characters as real as your next-door neighbor. Glenn is a lively, creative storyteller -- and funny!
--Jennifer Nice, San Francisco, California Publisher, Editor and Award-Winning Author

"Full of honest emotion, Heaping Spoonful makes you believe in the power of starting over."
Eileen Cook, author of Unpredictable and What Would Emma Do?