Connecting to Resilience, Hope, and Spirituality through a Narrative Therapy and Narrative Medicine Creative Writing Group for People Affected by Cancer

Abstract

In this article, the authors will describe a creative writing therapeutic group program they developed based on narrative therapy and narrative medicine principles. This was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council—Partnership Engagement Grant funded project, the aim of which was to develop a facilitator’s manual for people interested in offering this group, titled “Journey through Words”. The link to the agency partner’s website, where the manual is available, is provided. The group program is structured over 6 weeks and includes a writing prompt each week, focusing on the storyline of resilience rather than the storyline of diagnosis or disease. Using a narrative inquiry approach, the facilitators kept brief field notes following group meetings. These field notes indicate that although spirituality was not planned as an identified focus of the program, due to the space narrative therapy provides for people to describe their values, preferences, and hopes during hardship, the experience of the group was that members shared reflections which were deeply spiritual in nature.

Keywords

• spirituality
• hope
• resilience
• narrative therapy
• narrative medicine
• creative writing