There’s a line towards the end of Elizabeth’s Stroud’s book, Olive Kitteridge, when Olive comes to realise something important about her own life: ‘it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.’
Its so easy to squander time, not pay attention to what is going on, not fully appreciate the moments in our lives. The aim of expressive writing is to heighten our own awareness, to pay attention to what is going on, to be more fully present to our life.
In thisshort translated ted talk by Cristina Domenech, she gives a sense of how the prisoners with whom she meets in a long term poetry writing group, have awakened to the joy of expressing themselves, to see themselves more clearly through the poems they write. (one such poem is read here by one of the prisoners).