Poets, including Theodore Roethke, often use their craft to find a safe place of healing from their trauma. Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley has experienced tragedy and trauma, from cancer to the sudden loss of her mother, siblings, and relatives during the Liberian Civil War. She has used writing for more than thirty years as a tool in finding healing.
Join Dr. Jabbeh Wesley to explore how recovery from illness comes first with diagnosis, which leads to a feeling of power, and then to a connection to healing through the power of admission. Like illness, the pain of grief, loss, and disaster, when buried, may threaten to destroy our lives. How do we navigate painful times in our lives?
In this workshop, we will explore these deep places in our hearts, read poetry together, and write poems that heal and restore.
To register for this event:
Click Add to Cart
Fill out Form
Click on your cart in the bottom right corner.
Complete the checkout process.
Once you’ve completed check out, you will receive a confirmation email for the event. If you do not receive this email, please contact us at info@friendsofroethke.org.
In this workshop Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley demonstrates how its common knowledge that recovery from any sort of illness comes first with DIAGNOSIS.
Just as diagnosis empowers us with knowledge about our illness, however painful that discovery
is, knowing is good. Writing down a traumatic experience is similar to diagnosis, and gives one a
feeling of not only power, but also a connection to HEALING because of the power of
ADMISSION
How is healing connected to the admission of something?
Like illness, the pain of GRIEF, LOSS, DISASTER, or the Pain of losing a family member in a
pandemic as we are currently still experiencing, can be traumatic. There are other kinds of
traumas, like rape, (for those who have experienced rape, or sexual exploitation, etc.) that when
buried can destroy one’s life. How do we navigate such painful times in our lives? As one who
has experienced all kinds of tragedies, traumas, including war, cancer, the sudden loss of my
mother, siblings, relatives, due to the war, I have used writing for more than thirty years as a tool
in finding healing.
In this workshop, you will explore those deep places in your hearts, in your lives, revisit those
often invisible and painful places, those buried feelings which often pop up unexpectedly to ruin
our lives, read some poems about pain, and write poems that heal and restore.
About Dr. Patricia Jebbeh Wesley
Professor of English & Creative Writing, Penn State University- Altoona College
Poet, Author of six volumes of Poetry
2022 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize Winner for her Book, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems