Writing As Healing Podcast: Reframing Memories
Featuring songwriter, teacher, and author Barry Lane
I met Barry Lane at a Kentucky Writing Project conference held at Morehead State University in the late 90s. His book After the End had revolutionized my teaching of writing when I encountered it through a National Writing Project Summer Institute earlier that year, and I was overjoyed to sit in the audience watching this expansive, engaging soul delight all of us with his funny and wise stories about students and writing. From his book, I developed countless mini-lessons on revision, helping students explode moments, shrink centuries, develop snapshots and capture thoughtshots in writing.
Lane is no stranger to thousands of American teachers who have read his work and attended his sessions at conferences, but it is his work in classrooms with students that sets him apart from many of the edu-celebrity writers of the last two decades. Lane loves working with children by connecting with them through music, art, and writing to spread the good news of kindness.
His Force Field for Good and His Heart Pledge are just two examples of his belief that social emotional learning begins and ends with kindness. The Heart Pledge, written by Norma Castillo’s 6th grade class at Uvalde Dual Language Academy in September of 2022, is a pledge that teachers can use as a companion with the Pledge of Allegiance each morning to help students reflect on their own personal path to living with greater kindness. His TED talks “Teaching Children the Power of Kindness” and “Vigor, Not Rigor: Schools Should Be Dream-Driven, not Data-Driven” demonstrate Lane’s mission: that self-awareness and kindness are the most important qualities a child can learn in school.
Lane’s mission extends beyond the public school classroom to adult learners as well. When I pitched the idea of a podcast around Writing as Healing to Heinemann, I knew I wanted to interview Lane about his work with writing as a way to reframe memories as an act of self-kindness.
From his work with individuals in the federal prison system, Lane published The Healing Pen: Writing Your Way to Inner Peace and Outer Transformation as a self-help guide using writing as a reflecting, healing tool. The book is divided into three sections - remembering, reframing and re-experiencing - that ask the reader to bring the past into the present and reframe it from a position of self-love and wisdom.
Lane writes, “You could say that self-discovery is the process of reframing our past. And, because writing creates dialogue between the present and the past, the conscious and the unconscious, it can be a powerful tool for doing this important work.”
How Can I Practice Writing As Healing In My Classroom? (from the Healing Pen by Barry Lane)
Try this. Write about a lost friendship and try to discover the truth about that friendship in your writing. Remember that a lost friendship has a beginning, a middle and an end. Let your pen remember the whole friendship. Use some of these questions to probe your memory. Pay particular attention not only to how your friend changed, but how you changed and how the context of your relationship changed. Lost friendships are often caused by shifting context. For example: You met your friend in high school but then you both went to college and you drifted apart.
What attracted me to this person?
What kept the friendship going?
Was there a moment of betrayal?
When did the friendship begin to end?
Was the ending mutual?
How did this person influence you?
Why did you choose to write about this friendship and not others?
What was the happiest moment?
What was the saddest moment?
You may want to begin with writing or making a graph of the friendship. Find the big moments and explode one. Write several snapshots of you and your friend: some from the beginning, some from the middle, and some from the end.
Spend several weeks doing this exercise if you want. Give your pen time to remember and delight in your ability to peel back the layers and reframe the past. Tune your ears to the memories that take you by surprise and make you want to write more. Ask questions that help you to dig deeper into the heart of those memories. Find the questions you still ask yourself when you think about this person.