Writing for Wellness in Community Settings: How to Facilitate a Writing for Wellness Class

This easy-to-follow guide is designed to assist community services professionals, teachers, and other volunteers as they establish and lead Writing for Wellness classes in community settings.

Writing for Wellness classes provide community, caring, and sharing for people with emotional and physical health issues, their loved ones, and their caretakers. Participants in the classes learn writing techniques to help them relieve grief, learn to forgive, address anger and frustrations, and examine their spiritual lives.

Participants focus on specific themes. Anger, frustration, and fear are expressed in prose and poetry. There will also be laughter, healing tears, and new understandings about life.

The class leader will need to have a copy of the Writing for Wellness book. Each topic in that book provides Healing Words from more than 60 participants who were in Julie Davey’s original classes. These are followed by prompts so members of the group can express their own feelings in the It’s Your Turn section. Suggestions for leading a series of classes give program support so that volunteers unfamiliar with Writing for Wellness will succeed from their first class.