Writing for Wellbeing – Emotional Healing Through Expressive Writing
With Peter Yaremko
April 8, 2025, 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
$85 including lunch (inquire about partial scholarships)
The Mercy For All Scholarship provides support for those experiencing financial challenges.
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About this offering
Academic research has shown significant benefits in Expressive Writing, a form of writing unlike journaling. Poetry, in particular, has exceptional healing power over emotional trauma, with general enhancement of immune system function, physical health, pain symptoms, sleep, and overall functioning. In the long term, trauma victims report feeling happier and less negative than before practicing Expressive Writing.
In this one-day program, participants will learn how easy-to-understand poems can be beautiful, uplifting, spiritual and healing. Discussions will center on what poetry is all about, and how to read and write healing poems. They will see how famous writers have created poems to address their own personal issues. Participants will be shown how to write poems to help themselves better manage the stresses of grief, illness, care-giving, rupture of a relationship, or the loss of purpose and hope for oneself, others and/or Creation. The day will also include periods of writing and sharing poems.
About the presenter
Peter W. Yaremko is a former journalist, corporate communications executive, and owner of a corporate communications agency. He’s the author of five non-fiction books and a novel, writes poetry that appears in numerous literary magazines, and publishes a weekly blog. In conjunction with the American Cancer Society in Manhattan, he teaches patients and caregivers to write poetry to relieve the trauma of a cancer diagnosis. He blogs at www.pametriverbooks.com.