“A Black Woman’s Blog Posts: Writing for Personal and Social Empowerment and Healing is a book chapter in Writing for Wellbeing: Theory, Research and Practice by Katrin Den Elzen (Editor), Reinekke Lengelle (Editor), forthcoming in 2023. An overview is below:
Writing can support our wellbeing under the most difficult of life circumstances, helping us to adapt to significant change and to make sense of loss. Numerous Expressive Writing studies have confirmed this and methodologies for practice underpin its effectiveness. However, few detailed accounts have previously offered explanations of how and why putting pen to paper can be so beneficial. This book of 14 chapters enters the landscape of Writing-for-wellbeing: it demonstrates the transformative power of writing in a wide range of contexts. Topics include how two young widows used writing to foster post-traumatic growth, the empowerment and healing potential of Black women’s blogs, playwriting exploring LGBTQ identities and queer belonging, how writing helps the newly literate give voice to their trauma in the Australian outback, and how the smuggled writing of Behrouz Boochani gave the world access to the voice of refugees held in offshore detention. This resource discusses the theory and research at the foundation of writing and poetry as a therapeutic and reconstructive practice. It aims to make the topic accessible and affirms its key place alongside visual arts and music-based therapies. This book contains individual and global perspectives, addressing at its core the ubiquitous nature of trauma in our culture and the potential for its reshaping. This volume is a holistic and inspiring resource for those who would use or teach Writing-for-wellbeing.
“overview” https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/writing-for-wellbeing-katrin-den-elzen/1142754070
In the book chapter, several previously posted blogs are referenced. One blog post was entitled, “Last Night, I Watched Myself Cry” and included a poem called, “Last Night I Watched Myself Cry.” An excerpt is below:
Last night I watched myself cry,
Not some self-pitying cry, though there is plenty of space for that.
It was another cry.
A cry for the suffering of the universe.
…
The cry from the depth of my soul.
A sound soulful with sorrow.
Black women’s suffering has its own cry.
It is a cry that reaches back and brings forth centuries of cries
From the Middle Passage,
From the cotton fields,
From the factories
From the beatings
From the dehumanization of womanhood
From the genetic transmission of trauma
It is a cry that combines the past and the present
It is, at its core, a revolutionary cry,
A gut wrenching cry for righteousness and justice to prevail
For burdens to be lifted
…
For Black Lives to Matter
…
Though, we who are women warriors will not wilt,
We can and must,
Properly
Cry.
Another blog post referenced is “An Alternative Curriculum: A Revised Syllabus.” It was written on March 30, 2020, when the reality of the global pandemic resulted in isolation and seclusion. Excerpts are below:
We have to begin to think of an alternative curriculum for our lives. …
What is an alternative curriculum? It could be, perhaps a curriculum about energy and how it manifests differently in the world. Not a physics class, per se, but a spirit class. A class about the spiritual energy in the world and its power. The energy of emotions and how they work. The energy of love, sacrifice, and kindness contrasted against the energy of greed, hate, and selfishness. We could talk about the energy of the forest and the air and of breath and flowers. We could talk about life-giving energy of birth and renewal. We could talk about seasons and times of change; of leaves changing the fall, dying in the winter, and then being born again in the spring and dancing in the summer. We could teach about how caterpillars have to become silent to shift and transform to butterflies. We — most of us — would have to teach ourselves, first, to teach others. We — most of us — became very comfortable — rushing, running, texting, emailing, technologing, dropping kids off here and there, exhausted, without a sense of purpose or meaning. We, the teachers, cannot teach what we do not know. Perhaps it is we, not the children, that need a new syllabus for our lives.
…
We could teach our children that political parties, donkeys and elephants—don’t really matter, that there are core values that we should always vote for and they never change. Core values of love, kindness, generosity of spirit, gentleness, loyalty, self-control, forbearance.
…
We could teach about how to hear…the whisper of the wind; the tears of pain and sorrow; the subtlety of oppression; the touch of love; the gentleness of a smile. Perhaps we could teach about how to listen, how to breathe, how to hear in the humility and humbleness of humanity. (Pratt-Clarke, March 30, 2020)
Another blog post was written on May 30, 2020, five days after the murder of George Floyd. It was called “Dear America.” Excerpts are below:
The existing institutional structures that perpetuate marginalization, inferior education, inferior housing, incarceration, and poverty must be re-imagined and redesigned.
Dear America,
It is this hope for a radical redesign of society for which I live and what I work for. The use of the power of education to empower those most marginalized and disenfranchised in society; the power of education to change minds and behavior; and the power of education to create equity.
In the post, I also reflect on Lorraine Hansberry’s commitment to social justice and her discussion of the tension between personal wellbeing and the sacrifice required to engage in social justice for the wellbeing of others and society. I explore the concepts of being revolutionary:
Dear America,
The question for all of us must be what steps are we willing to take?
As Lorraine asked herself: “Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually – without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts?…Comfort has come to be its own corruption.” In July of 1964, … she wrote that when she regained her health she might travel to the South “to find out what kind of revolutionary I am.” In the midst of our current reality and the killings and the pain and the hate, we all should answer one question:
What kind of revolutionary are we?
…
Dear America,
What should we do to promote the safety and happiness of all? Revolution is about a turning around; a looking at oneself; a looking inward. The illnesses of our current world are calling us all to a revolution — to an inward looking, to a rethinking, a reimagining, a revisioning of what and how our world should be.
What kind of revolutionary will we be?
…
And so, My Dear America, my country, my home: What kind of revolutionary will we be in today’s world, in today’s crisis, in today’s pain, in today’s hurt? What kind of radical healing revolutionary will we be? (Pratt-Clarke, May 30, 2020)
Another blog post is called “Radical Healing Revolutionary,” written shortly after the presidential election on November 8, 2020. Excerpts are below:
Almost 6 months later, I am working to answer this question for myself. Why radical healing revolutionary? Because the world is in need of revolutionary radical healing.
We have experienced large scale trauma and wounding. Wounding that goes deep, not just skimming the surface. Wounds that cannot be covered by a bandage, with a little Neosporin or aloe vera, the real salve my mama always told me to use. No, these wounds are too deep. These wounds with sinews snapped, and bones broken require multiple surgeries and reconstruction, reconstruction paralleling the reconstruction after the civil war, a radical reconstruction, not just plastic surgery. Replacement surgery, physical therapy, programming new ways of thinking, being, existing, living, and dying in the world, creating new “wiring,” synapsis, in our bodies, on the earth, in our relationships.
…
Once we acknowledge the trauma, we can start to heal. We often need guides to help us on our healing journeys. And so, healing, especially as part of radical revolutionary healing, is often led by unique and transformational leaders.
Another blog post was written in April 2021 blog post, inspired by the conviction of the officer for the murder of George Floyd, is entitled “Trying to Thrive Through Trials, Tears and Trauma: Revisiting Abolition.” Excerpts are below:
Can we get to thriving? That is a question I am reflecting on. As Black people (and people of color), can we thrive in America? This American journey as African-Americans is one wrought with trials, tears, and trauma. I have been crying what feels are never ending tears. … Tears. Buckets. Tears of Trauma. Tears from Trials. Trials, both of justice, and the trials of surviving, of living, of trying to get to thriving.
Another blog post referenced is called “Why I Write” (Pratt-Clarke, 2017). Excerpts are below:
My purpose in life is to empower myself to empower others. I write as a commitment to my connection with my own creative power and the belief that creative energy is transferable and thus can empower others. … My career path has been one focused on scholarship, activism, and leadership. I recognize, in particular, that because of the challenges that women of color experience in the world by virtue of both their race and gender and the way in which racism and sexism is operationalized in their lives, there is a societal imperative to work towards the elimination of barriers that impede the opportunity for women of color to manifest their full potential in society.
…
I believe that there is a responsibility in society to work towards the elimination of inequality, whatever the cause, for inequality lessens the humanity of us all. And…for what are we here…but to express and share our humanity… fully.