The Royal Literary Fund pays professional published writers to work in universities, schools, workplaces and organisations using their skills to support all aspects of writing.
The call came….
“It’s called Doctors in Distress but it’s not just for doctors but any medical personnel”. Okay. Anything else I should know? Like, how distressed are they? I make stuff up for a living – I’m not a therapist.
Turns out I and writer Bernie McGill are being invited to help create a series of four expressive writing workshops to foster well-being. Expressive writing is about self-expression. It helps a person to think about their life and put their thoughts and feelings into words. It is freestyle, personal and emotional writing that is not constrained by concerns about the ‘end result’, or writing conventions such as structure, spelling or grammar. Expressive writing fosters personal awareness, resilience and wellbeing. It can include writing in the form of prose or poetry as well as writing a diary, journal or stream of consciousness writing.
Bernie and I meet on Zoom to discuss the content required. We’re in the middle of the pandemic and are a little giddy to be working with a fellow writer. We decide on the format: ice breaker, warm up, poem, exercise, poem, exercise, possible homework. Any health professional reading this will not be surprised to hear that homework NEVER happened. Stupid idea anyway!
Bernie has an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry for inspiration and we settle on Dean Atta’s “I come from” as our opening number. It’s a list poem and each line begins: “I come from”. My offering at this stage seems to be the ice breakers and warm-ups – this comes from rehearsals, my favourite place to be, released from my attic into the company of fellow professionals and given permission to play and experiment.
Ok, so we’re all warmed up but now, how serious should our choice of poems be? We don’t want to upset people who are already under huge duress. We decide that if there is emotional baggage being carried, it will come out whatever the material, comedic or not. So let’s stay light. These people are the heroes. They deserve a good time in their 90 minute session. Above all they don’t need any more stress. The responsibility seems enormous and I feel hideously unqualified.
We write and rewrite, challenge and offer. We laugh a lot. By the time week one arrives we’re confident the material is the best we can offer. Whether it works or not is up for grabs. We will be given our participants and supported throughout the sessions by Doctors in Distress’s Susannah Basile, she of the calm voice and wide smile. She will offer help if anyone needs it. Bernie – the canary down this particular mine – does her first session and reports back that it went really well, especially “I Come From”.
The following morning, I meet my online group of around 15 NHS workers. They are men and women of all ages but I don’t know what they do, nor how senior they are, and mostly neither do they as they come from all over the country. We know nothing about each other except that they’ve chosen to be here and I have to hold them through the next 90 minutes so they feel safe enough to explore the images, memories and feelings we all carry around as part of our experience of being alive.
We start with rules of engagement, confidentiality, care and respect for each other and then my reassurance that they can share or not share but here there is no failing, just exploring. We do the warm-up and I join in. I do not know at this point that one of my strengths is not minding making an idiot of myself. I do and feel the tension release just a little.
I bring up the first poem on the screen and read it out. They could read it for themselves of course but some may be dyslexic and find it hard, plus it’s nice to be read to and I get to justify those years at drama school. We talk about what they felt about the poem, then I give them some prompts to write their own list poem. The disclaimers come thick and fast: I haven’t written anything since school, I’m not creative, I’m not a writer.
Just experiment, see what happens. It will be okay.
And so they begin and the stories that emerge are extraordinary. As they share their work, I watch the faces of these 15 strangers and there’s laughter, tears, empathy and often utter incredulity that they could have come up with something so potent.
These are high achieving individuals. Professionally they can’t afford to fail. They are all part of and often lead teams. They have huge responsibilities. But not here, not for this hour and a half. Here they share, play, discover and it seems above all, delight in the words and images they all bring to the group. I ask them to feel free to respond in CHAT. The resulting messages of kindness and support they offer the group are overwhelming. I feel privileged to be in their company. Afterwards Bernie and I meet, discuss what worked well and tweak subsequent sessions. At the end of the four weeks the group don’t want to leave each other so arrange to keep on meeting regularly online. I don’t want to leave either. These remarkable people have moved me deeply. This is the best gig I’ve ever had.
Lisa Evans, Writer & Facilitator
November 2022