Having Our Voice Heard: Writing Our Health and Care Stories
Event WebsiteA space to explore your health and care experience, on your terms, write freely in a way that feels authentic and individual to you. In these three workshops, there is no right or wrong approach.
Course outline:
– Three two-hour live zoom workshops with writer and coach, Andrew Kaye Kauffmann, including a combination of reading, discussion and writing exercises
– Reading material provided outside of the Zoom sessions
– Resources on telling your story within safe boundaries
– Content rooted in the social model of disability, open to people with health and care needs, and those who provide care
Each Live Online workshop will be designed so it is paced to be a comfortable writing experience, suited to writers of all levels. There will be a short comfort break. There is no expectation to be on camera, if you don’t feel comfortable appearing on camera.
Course timetable and content
Across the three zoom workshops, we will read (and begin writing about) the hardships and volatility of illness, the breakthroughs, the irony and humour that can inflect periods of illness, plus the downright drudgery, sadness, frustration, anger, and possibly grief too. How does illness feature in our work, if at all, and where is it silenced? Test what feels comfortable to write about and learn how writing about our health may itself bring benefits to our wellbeing.
What does it mean to live in good or bad health? If we write about illness or a care experience, what choices confront us as we reflect on our experience? We will explore these topics, plus the potential benefits to our wellbeing of writing about health or other challenging experiences
