Professional Documents
Culture Documents
WP 2
WP 2
Maddie Roepe
Writing 2
07 December 2023
In my 3 years of studying the field of psychology at this institution, I have found myself
hopelessly encapsulated with how the brain works, and why it does the things it does. One of
these corners of study includes one of my favorite academic subjects, writing. I have always
been curious about how the two mesh, as writing was always one of my favorite subjects in high
All research aside, I would be willing to argue that a fair amount of folk would view a
link between the study of writing and psychology, and how the two go hand in hand. I would
even venture to say that plenty of people have a tangible relationship between writing and
therapy. After all, we are all familiar with the concept of keeping a diary, and that right there is a
prime example of how the two can mesh. With that said, I chose to dive more into the scholastic
side of this subject, hoping to get a solid grasp on how and in which ways writing has a role in
the process of effective therapy and psychological dialogue. In the case of this essay I wanted to
join the conversation of trauma addressing and writing. Through this research, I found credible
information linking the study of writing with the concepts of effective therapy throughout
multiple genres of writing, including the instruction of writing within both the upper and lower
education levels, memoir writing and its close knit relationship to personal trauma, and
multimodal composition . Each of these sources explained different approaches not only to how
therapeutic responses can be embedded within writing, but even how writing can be embedded
within a therapeutic response, and how the presence of trauma can result in powerful writing.
A few of these sources contradict each other slightly, but offer similar approaches to the
subject of healing within writing. Catheryn Maloy suggested replacing narrative writing with
multimodal composition (2016), while Tara DaPra voiced her support for the memoir to address
trauma (2013). I feel that this contrast actually strengthens the conversation as a whole. It allows
for a diverse set of ideas, instead of four sources that make the exact same claim. The two also
don’t necessarily disprove each other, but rather offer two different possible approaches to a
common issue, and help to support my stance that there is tangible evidence of therapeutic
SECTION 2
It had only been a week since the accident, and at that point rolling out of bed had turned
into a chore comparable to repainting the house. As my alarm chimed for what felt like the 100th
time that morning, I planted my feet on the cold hardwood, and lifted up what felt like 400
pounds off of the mattress, shuffling toward the sink. I turned on the sink, splashed some icy
Jesus, I thought. I genuinely looked a decade older than my actual age, and the bags of
my eyes acted as an indicator that sleep had been a luxury in the last few days.
In case you haven't quite put it together with what limited information I have given, in the
last week I had lost one of the most important people in my life. My uncle, taken from me at the
young age of 40, was hit and killed by a drunk driver over the past weekend, and needless to say
We were close. I remember him picking me up from school on Thursdays, and driving his
rusty old Ford down to the levee, where we would toss in our hooks and waste the afternoon
away until the sun began to kiss the mouth of the river. He would always pack two salami and
cheese sandwiches, and if my grades were good that week, a cold Pacifico for each of us. He
never, ever missed a Thursday fishing trip. In fact, that was the last thing we did before the
accident. To put it lightly, the last week had been hard. Not because I was sad, or angry, or upset.
Rather, because I was numb. It was as if I was conscious of the whirlwind going on in my head,
but articulating and expressing these feelings was a feeling all of its own
I stepped over to the desk I had set up by the corner window, overlooking the treeline and
the icy river outside. On it sat my beloved typewriter, my prized possession, albeit now
blanketed by an ever so thin layer of dust. By trade, I was a writer, dabbling in narratives, short
stories, and fantasies, mostly electing to write about great adventures and the outdoors. This
being the reason why I had purchased my cabin, as it offered ample surroundings to be used as
fuel for my writings. My uncle had always been extraordinarily supportive of my work, even
when the rest of my family had felt different. Sure, the bills had started to roll in steadily in the
last few years, but my uncle was probably the only reason I had kept writing when finances were
not quite as good, and I had only him to thank for where I was now. However, given the last
week, my motivation to write had been stifled, and thus my typewriter sat unused and dusty.
Today, though, I decided to plant myself in the old leather chair that sat in front of the
typewriter, and began to type away. Not about adventures. Not about the wilderness, or about
In my time as a writer, I had naturally gained the acquaintance and occasional friendship
of other writers, through seminars, conventions, and sometimes by old fashioned chance. Some
of these folks were more specifically involved in writing study, a field that I had much respect
for, but by and large exceeded the scope of my understanding. This more or less included the
practice of writing on a “molecular” level, in which they would break down certain aspects of
writing in a much more scholarly manner. Like I said, far beyond the reach of my talents.
One of these friends, Rachel Spear, first sparked my interest in using my typewriter to
address my uncle’s death. Rachel was a scholar in the field of writing, and had in the last few
months been researching how college students dealt with trauma through their writing. I
remember her approaching me in the grocery store the day after the funeral. She was buying
carrots and I was stocking up on my bulk Campbell’s soup order. I remember her explaining her
take on the subject, as she told me in the store,”Trauma disrupts and alters one’s identity. Stories
arise not only in efforts to remember the past but also in hopes of creating meaning, putting
together the fragments, and reestablishing a sense of order to this psychological disorder.”(2023)
She went on to explain to me how trauma was a complex beast, and that remembering your
trauma was sometimes the hardest thing, that your brain likes to distort the truth in order to
protect you from yourself . But she believed that writing would help my scenario, and so I took
Another dear friend of mine stopped by the house just yesterday. Catheryn Maloy,
another writer I went to school with, offered me her condolences, and urged me to try to write
out my issues. She had also been studying the effects of multimodal composition to address
trauma. She suggested that I use a combination of sound, symbols, images, and writing to cope
with the pain I was going through. She added that I should maybe use these subjects in place of
creating a full blown narrative (2014). I looked out the window, and looked at the river, listened
to the sound of the water rushing over the rocks, and pictured my uncle casting out a line and
reeling in a record trout. The feeling that washed over me wasn’t necessarily happy or sad, but
As my fingers moved ferociously across the keys, I thought about what Rachel and
Catheryn had told me. My uncle’s passing had most definitely affected my identity, as I had been
away from my typewriter for what felt like an eternity before today. As I continued writing, I did
my best to focus on my most cherished memories of my uncle, to try to remember what I had felt
like before his passing. She was right; before today, I had found it hard to pick out memories of
the man that I knew, but getting it on to paper felt like the first real progress I had felt in a while.
She wasn’t the only one that had urged me to take another stab at writing during this
time. My good friends Tara Dapra and Wendy Bishop, both with whom I had attended my later
years of university, were also researchers in the field, and had been conducting studies similar to
the one that Rachel was. Wendy, a professor at an accredited university, shared to me her studies
on writing as a therapeutic practice within her own classrooms. She asserted that the teaching of
writing is inherently and in some ways accidentally therapeutic, and shared with me her
experiences with her students writing about topics such as their own suicidal thoughts, more
specifically in how these students used her writing class as an outlet to relieve pressure and
attach a voice to personal traumas that went unspoken. She brought up an important issue that
many students are already using their writings to express trauma, but most teachers do not have
Tara held a different stance, sharing with me her own endeavors within studying the
genre of memoir and how it addresses personal trauma. Her research supported the idea that
personal memoir can act as an outlet to address trauma. She instead argued to me that good
writing should contain a therapeutic element, and that the two can benefit from one another,
claiming that good memoir writing contained a little bit of catharsis., and that creating a good
memoir involves “cannibalizing your own life”, allowing you to put your trauma to use and
Her words,”cannibalizing your own life” really hit home as I continued to type. The
pages were beginning to stack up on the desk, and by now I really was cannibalizing my life in
this paper, talking about all the things I wish I had told my uncle while he was alive. It hurt,
writing all this out, but it was a good hurt. It felt as if I was finally letting go
As my fingers flew over the keys, the familiar clack-clack cutting through the stillness of
the home, I couldn’t help but feel as if they were all on to something. Sure, the hurt was still
there, the wound still very much fresh, but now it wasn’t stuck inside. It felt as if I could breathe
for the first time in nearly a month. The breath was pain, and it was anguish, but it was breath
nonetheless, and it felt like for the first time in a long time that there would come a day I would
be fine.
Works Cited
Bishop, Wendy. “Writing Is/And Therapy?: Raising Questions about Writing Classrooms and
Writing Program Administration.” Journal of Advanced Composition, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, pp.
DaPra, Tara. “Writing Memoir and Writing for Therapy: An Inquiry on the Functions of
Molloy, Cathryn. “Multimodal Composing as Healing: Toward a New Model for Writing as
Healing Courses.” Composition Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2016, pp. 134–52. JSTOR,
Spear, Rachel N. ; “Let Me Tell You a Story”: On Teaching Trauma Narratives, Writing, and
https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2348911