Jane’s story: I don’t know what happens in this group but it’s magical

Jane was referred to us by her GP. She was approaching her 70th birthday, and lives with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and painful arthritis. She lives alone in social housing and is in remission from cancer. In the spring of that year she had experienced the death of her partner, who had had a long struggle with poor mental health including addiction. Even before his death, Jane was having a tough time dealing with his behaviour and health problems, and his death was left her with complex, unmanageable feelings of bereavement and loss.

By the time she engaged with us, Jane was in extreme isolation – her nearest family member was 200 miles away – and her own mental and physical health was declining fast.

She found attending her first in-person writing group nerve-wracking. She was quiet, withdrawn and mistrustful. But she did come back the next week, and the next. When the group had to go online during Covid, she was unsure, and using the technology made her feel extremely anxious. Still she came, and persevered till she got used to the screen.

As she had to shield from Covid, in some weeks the group was her only direct human contact. She spent an entire year on her own. And tentatively she started to write with the group, growing more willing to read out what she had written to others. Using the frame of creative forms like free verse, villanelles, short stories, journals and letters, she little-by-little found ways to process different aspects of her trauma. In so doing she also offered comfort and companionship to other members of the group.

Then, Jane was able to seek the support of her housing association to move the 200 miles needed to be near her daughter – still in lockdown and still online, she continued to come to the writing group. A willing, gentle, thoughtful and generous contributor, on initiative, she and other members have now decided to set up their own group on Whatsapp, so they they can stay in touch outside of the sessions, support each other, and continue to encourage each other’s creativity in the safe space the project made for them.

They were recently joined by a younger, very vulnerable woman, to whom Jane shows a kindness and compassion which is its own medicine. These two people have very different cultural backgrounds and lives yet share the experience of complex trauma. They have become friends and mutual supports in a way that could not have happened in the context of a purely clinical consultation. Jane says:

‘If you had seen me a year ago, I could barely function, barely speak. I don’t know what happens in this group but it is magical. It has saved me. I couldn’t have got this far without it. And the writing – I used to like writing and now I can do it again. I do it every week. It’s part of the air I breathe.’

Jane talks readily now about how she is feeling, and about the continuing impact of isolation. She explores openly and candidly where she is in her recovery, and is starting, slowly, to explore and imagine a future for herself.

To understand how this simple-but-complex process works, some elements can be seen to be borrowed from person-centred counselling – attentive listening, empathy, authenticity, being positive and non-judgemental. Some elements are derived from community development – respecting agency and the experiences of everyday life, creating the conditions for diverse people to collaborate and thrive in groups. But the keys are creativity and ‘safe space’ – unlocking thought processes and ‘giving permission’ for people (any people) to try new things, to encounter new ideas, to fail, and also, critically, to succeed and surprise themselves and each other.

We look to dismantle artistic stereotypes – who can be an artist – and demonstrate in practice what we genuinely believe, which is that the creative urge impulse is part of our fundamental humanity. Imaginative exercises that explore things like tone of voice, point of view, telling detail, memory, dialogue or the senses can offer a way to bypass frozen feelings, fear, inhibition. They give a route back to fragments of the self, and by a process of trial and error build courage and a route forward to remaking the oneself, reimagining a life, in society, that is actually liveable.

Read the full article and find out more about The Hera Project: Becoming a person - The Hera Project at Brighton & Hove Wellbeing Centre