Marianela Medrano-Marra

Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.
-Rumi
As a new director of counseling at the community college level, I am greeted by a pressing need to think creatively and proactively to counterbalance the myriad students’ needs on the rise while the resources to address those needs decline. The severity of psychological and academic problems among college students disrupts the balance they need to achieve academic success. Counselors in community colleges need to wield kaleidoscopes with ample lenses that embrace the multiplicity of issues.

Since its beginning in the 1950s, community college counseling has been characterized by ever-changing currents. With currently decreasing financial support for community colleges, a more general economic recession, increasing campus violence, the pressing need to ensure retention, and other common occurrences in collegiate life (test anxiety, depression, alcohol and substance abuse, etc.) we are called to redefine the models we use to address these needs.

Ordinarily, community college students are conceptualized as ethnic minorities, adult female learners, part-time students and displaced workers. In reality though, the typical community college student has become difficult to stereotype, and radical changes in the community college population is noteworthy in the last ten years. More parents are sending their youngsters to receive the benefits of a more affordable community college education for their first two years, drastically changing the demographics of the student population. Community colleges are thriving, multifaceted entities, calling for a reassessment of what counseling is all about.

In the same sense, counseling in the community college arena is very difficult to stereotype. We now know that it goes beyond reduction of student attrition, advocacy, or academic guidance. In the beginning, the main focus of community college counseling was primarily testing and placement, probation and suspension policies, general education requirements, and transfer programs. The changing nature of the population calls for a focus on an expanded, integrative design where counselors can address the different dimensions that impact students’ lives.

In addition to a developmental perspective, the kind of counseling that is needed now should leave no angle of a student’s life untouched. The priority now is the creation of contextual means to honor the diversity of the growing population. It is imperative that we create sustainable means to track the changes and to identify best practices before we venture to give birth to any initiative. It is imperative that when designing appropriate programs we keep in mind how students exist within a series of overlapping contexts of influence, such as economics, culture, demographics, etc. and that such overlaps should inform the scope of service.

While I am still at the stage of contemplation, and won’t force my way into action until I feel that I truly understand the complexity of the population for which I will recreate a counseling center, I remain open to the wisdom of colleagues who are invested in the community college philosophy. What I am saying is that I am embracing my new responsibilities with a beginner’s mind, a mind that is willing to stop and listen to the blessings dropping their blossoms around me. Each of us is a petal of the blossom, and I invite you to dialogue with me about the future of community college counseling.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

“We must all face the fact that we are very precariously suspended in life: we have a very slender foothold on the planet.” – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

As I sit down and prepare to write this entry, a hawk circles outside against the blue sky. I marvel as it moves slowly, precisely, graciously cruising calmly in the waves of the wind. Unlike us, who stand precariously suspended amid chaos, change, and paradox, the hawk hovers and rides the wind. I get the message. I know that my entry today has something to do with standing still amid chaos, with transforming sorrow into hope and possibility.

I rarely write about a topic while under the influence of strong emotions around it, for fear of losing objectivity, but it is necessary for me to overcome how saddened I am by the tragedy that has embraced the Haitian nation, and to write about our roles as counselors in responding to catastrophic events. Most importantly, I want to retake the focus of last week’s posting and continue talking about spirituality and counseling. The tragedy of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, brings me to reflect on the level of preparedness counselors need to have when tragedy strikes. When faced with issues of great enormity, we ought to pause and question how well prepared we are. How can we promote balance in a time of absolute chaos? How do we reposition our feet so to stand still on the earth as the hawk hovers above it?

As I navigate my way through a tragedy that feels almost insurmountable, I realize that if I can hold on to compassionate understanding, if I can grasp the concept of acceptance, I will attain the gracefulness of the hawk as the opposing forces of nature tear Haiti apart. The indigenous people of the island of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) believed in multiple gods and goddesses before they were Christianized. One of the divinities of their cosmology is Guabancex, a goddess of great wrath. She is the goddess of destruction and renewal, goddess of the hurricane and other natural phenomenon that bring about destruction. If this is all her doing, then there is hope, as it indicates a major shift for the island, because Guabancex only destroys to create new life. Her doings illuminate the idea of rising from sorrow to embrace the possibilities that change brings.

While acceptance cannot, will not, bring back to life those who perished in the tragedy, it can bring solace to those left extremely vulnerable. Part of how we can help clients and ourselves in the phase of destruction is by coming to terms with what is. Acceptance is about grasping, coming to terms with the depth and width of what has happened and the willingness to examine what is left for us to do. The people of Haiti are giving us a lesson impossible to ignore. As I get in touch with those who have been immediately impacted by the physical manifestation of the earthquake, I invariable hear the voice of resilience, rising like the Phoenix from the ashes. The notion that, when faced with tragedy, we have the choice to stand proud and tall, to not succumb to the sorrow, is life-altering.

Technology is doing away with the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, as it brings feedback loops to which we have no choice but to respond. Turning the TV off is no longer an option because the images are present wherever we go. I could not help but notice that every place I have gone since the earthquake shook Haiti, the images of destruction are broadcast widely. At first I took it as a frantic “media hunger” for sensationalism. Then I reflected. The images on TV are holding all of us responsible for what is happening. The moment we become conscious of the magnitude of this tragedy, we are automatically bound to take action. The media is inviting a type of “cosmic consciousness,” the kind of consciousness that makes us one with everything. Cosmic consciousness allows us to see ourselves in the eyes of the other, therefore making both “self” and “other” disappear into unity—a pillar in spiritual counseling.

Haiti is going by what St. John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul. I want to believe that the disruptive forces of nature are just at work in building a better Haiti. I want to experience this tragedy as part of a radical change that will transform our consciousness. The gruesome images on TV are humanizing what happened in Haiti; these images are holding us responsible and inviting us to act. This is no different than what we do in counseling, especially counseling that is spiritually minded. We create sympathetic resonance between what is difficult to see and hear and the person who is directly impacted by it so he or she can make the necessary changes. When individuals align their perspective with their actions, we start to see progress.

Becoming conscious of the depth of a tragedy induces empathy. There is something in the tragedy of the “other” that resembles ours and propels us to respond. This does not change the fact that we are “precariously suspended in life,” but like the hawk we will have learned to glide gracefully.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep. -Rumi
My approach to counseling is heavily informed by the transpersonal nature of my training. My interest in transpersonal psychology began less than ten years ago when I found myself immersed in the process of recreating my life. Or I should said, it began in the early nineties when I decided to make the USA my home. As an immigrant I have gone through the process of adjustment and adaptation and have felt myself greatly changed by the experience, accentuated by my divorce in the early 90s and subsequent step into single parenting and all that came with it, and subsequent remarriage. How was I changed? Finding the answer stirred up my curiosity. Had I lost a part of me, or had I gained something big in the process? I was intrigued. My life, despite my adaptation, felt like a puzzle with missing pieces. My personal interest in finding the answers extended into my professional life. The idea of living a balanced, congruent life that is implicit in the transpersonal approach struck a chord with me. I have made it my intention and purpose in life. This new year I am renewing my commitment to it.

Reading poetry has always been a comforting experience for me, and encountering the poetry of Rumi has changed my life drastically. The above poem with its invitation to stay awake through thick and thin, through darkness or light, through joy or pain, always awake to see what the new experience brings, has guided me through the darkest times.

Having the transpersonal frame in which to hang my reflections has made a difference in my counseling work. In the words of James Fadiman and Kathleen Speeth, the transpersonal practice includes the full range of behavioral, emotional and intellectual disorders we commonly see, but also the desire and commitment to strive for full self-actualization, a striving that surpasses the day-to-day nuances of egoic issues ( defenses, projections, beliefs, etc.) to face us with those aspects of our lives that are beyond the personal (bliss, ecstasy, mystical experiences, being, essence, wonder, self-transcendence, sacralization of everyday life, oneness, or species-wide synergy, just to name a few). The transpersonal approach has an optimistic perspective. It is sustenance for the spirit. The transpersonal practitioner does not abandon traditional approaches, but he or she combines the two. In other words, a transpersonal counselor will first guide a client in building a robust ego to then move into surpassing that ego and entering into what waits beyond it, a more integrative view of the person’s world.

In transpersonal counseling, whether an individual is building an ego or transcending it, the person is seen as healthy, in the sense that every experience we live through is a part of the wholeness we are. Pain, insecurity and sorrow are as much a part of life’s synergy as comfort, security, and happiness are. In transpersonal counseling, a disorder (usually it is a disorder of some sort that brings people to counseling) is seen as an opportunity to come back into order.

We are at the threshold of a new year, a new beginning. As many of you, I too examine ways to embrace new paths, new ways of living my life. The first new year’s resolution I uttered right after midnight was to do everything in my power to further harmonize all the angles of my life (writer, counselor, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and educator). I was summoning synergy—the bridging of all my roles so they can unite in a result greater than the sum of each individual role. What I realize now after writing this is that what I really long for is being at peace while chaos does its thing. We live in an uncertain world, and aspiring to live in certainty sets us up for failure. In reality, the synergy will manifest in my ability to remain equanimous even amid uncertainty. If I must ask for what I really want, as the poet Rumi invites us to do, I want to come to terms with uncertainty. In the same manner, this is what guides my approach to clients’ uncertainties. My new year’s resolution is to keep myself firm in the belief that what matters is not so much that we eliminate problems, but that we learn to coexist with them. Life is difficult, full of uncertainty, and if we want to live fully, we need to learn to accept its forever changing, uncertain nature, and that when the breeze at dawn brings news (good or bad) we owe it to ourselves to not go back to sleep—to remain awake, in order to fully live life.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

People don’t get along because they fear each other. People fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In my work with individuals from other cultures, I always start the conversation around our differences and how these differences can improve the quality of the counseling relationship. There is so much we can learn about ourselves, and then so much we can expand if we put our differences to work. If we start the conversation about what makes us different, as opposed to pretending that “we are all the same under the skin,” we expand the periphery of our visions and enrich the texture and depth of our own cultural identity.

When we adopt something from one culture, we are adding depth to, and changing, our cultural identity. This subtle process of change refers me back to Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis or “self production.” The theory of autopoiesis is concerned with the active self-maintenance of living systems whose identities remain constant while their components continually change, and I would add that in that change there is also expansion. If we allow it, that is. The autopoiesis, in the context of cultural identity, needs the nourishment of an open mind and heart.

I forget from whom I heard the term “diasporic people,” but regardless of its source I will adapt it to illustrate part of my point around the importance of understanding the cultural identity of those we counsel. The term “diasporic people” is used to define people such as those who leave their countries to embrace the culture and way of living of another country, implying that these people have poly-identities. They may adopt a political identity, a civic citizenship, let’s say for instance, an American citizenship, but their ethnic identity cannot be traded. They cannot escape their ethnic identity, since it is biologically tattooed on the bodies. I, for instance, cannot change the fact that I am a brown-curly-haired-brown-eyed-woman, my freedom to attempt to alter it notwithstanding. We cannot say the same thing about cultural identity, which is a mutant identity with ample space to be modified and expand.

Diasporic people are cultural hybrids who can maintain their inherited cultures while contributing to the expansion and transformation of other cultures. This makes it crucial for us to foster an atmosphere of acceptance and embrace when clients from other cultures gift us with their cultural uniqueness, immediately impacting ours. Cultures are not fixed, still waters, they are living, and therefore constantly changing and evolving. We learn as much from our clients as they learn from us, if we remain open and willing. In our work and interactions with clients we can celebrate difference, help them shine in their unique colors so they can harmonize with the dominant culture, without losing their essence. I have found this to be crucial in working with individuals from other cultures. If we don’t recognize the cultural spirit of those we come in contact with, we are bound to fail in building genuine relationships with them. Our culture of origin is essence, and in understanding people, we need to get close to that essence.

For instance, in understanding individuals who come from the Spanish Caribbean, we need to focus on how culture was transmitted and shaped by the different cultures that have passed through our lands (Indigenous, African and European). Because Caribbeans have poly-identities we should look at them also with polyoccular lenses. The cultural identity of those who have undergone colonization is also a matter that we ought to take into account. Colonization is a brutal, imposition that taints the spirit of a people. I believe in the impact of a collective unconscious in the formation of a person’s self-perception. I cannot imagine that the atrocities, for instance, that colonizers brought upon Caribbean ancestors do not somehow impact the self-perception of their offspring. Asking individuals how they view themselves as a people is not going out on a limb, but an acknowledgement of individuals being more than what meets the eye.

A good and respectful counseling relationship starts with getting along with our clients— with not fearing our differences, but seeing differences as strengths. To paraphrase Dr. King, when both counselors and clients properly communicate their beliefs and their underlying philosophies, they have taken a significant step toward eliminating their fears of the “other.” It falls to us, as counselors, to take the lead in manifesting this behavior.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

The virtues, then, come neither by nature nor against nature, but nature gives the capacity for acquiring them, and this is developed by training. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics

As our profession continues to solidify, California recently became the 50th state to grant licensure to professional counselors. I echo the claim of many, in that we ought to pause and reassess our approach to the practice of counseling. Virtue and ethics should be at the core of examining our profession, as they are the pillars upon which we can build and sustain our professional personhood.

The Aristotelian idea that moral virtues are not innate, but acquired, rings true to me. We are equipped by nature with what is needed to be moral, but it is upbringing and social influence that helps us create meaning and moral codes to guide us. We become ethical professionals by practicing moral virtues (i.e. committing courageous, just, caring acts to benefit clients). There are many layers of ethical consideration in the character formation of an integral counselor. By integral counselor I mean a professional whose decisions are informed by a wide variety of moral virtues, and the moral conviction of “above all, do no harm.” Our moral virtues (honesty, duty, good, honor, justice, liberty, love, prudence, temperance, wisdom, just to name a few) get tested on a regular basis as we interact with the world at large, and more specifically as we interact with the mechanisms of managed care.

The challenges have many faces. For instance, the bureaucratic demands of complying with managed care is one face, which can at times be insurmountable for counselors, but it is at the time of despair that we have to remember the principles of ethics and virtue that guide our profession and let them direct our way through the overwhelm. Some managed care companies seem to be in a rush to discourage requests for services. The number of forms, phone calls, and other logistics involved not only takes time away from focusing on treatment, but also drains the energy of even the most competent among us. I do acknowledge that managed care became as guarded as it is due at least in part to the practice of beating the system, in which organizations retain patients until their insurance runs out. The bureaucracy we experience today exists for a variety of reasons, including both past and present abuse.

Another aspect of this conundrum is how managed care’s monitoring of mental health services births several ethical dilemmas, such as those that emerge around record keeping, length of services and maintaining confidentiality according to managed care’s requirements. The need to pay close attention to these ethical problems is imperative. I could venture to say that a good solution to ethical issues related to managed care would be for counselors not to be part of it, but such a decision confronts us with a new ethical dilemma: we would be abandoning a great number of individuals who otherwise could not afford the services as private pay is not affordable to them. The ideal setting will be one in which licensed professional counselors can establish a working relationship with managed care where appropriate. Such a working relationship will only be established if we strategically demand and advocate for it.

Among the moral virtues that should guide our personhood is honesty. One way to enhance each counselor’s contribution to the appropriate resolution of ethical dilemmas is to make every effort to ensure the provision of honest services. First of all, we must properly discuss and ensure clients understanding of informed consent. The discussion of informed consent and subsequent clarification of the information, such as the purpose of treatment, goals, counselor’s orientation and background, limitations of the therapeutic encounter, as well as potential risks and benefits of the services are just a few examples of honesty, manifested through love and great care for our clients.

Along the same lines, prudence calls for helping clients understand diagnosis and alternatives to treatment so they can make informed decisions about the trajectory of their counseling experiences. It is our duty to keep clients involved in the counseling plan, making them integral voices in the design of treatment and subsequent revisions, to ensure we are addressing their needs and not just justifying services for the sake of reimbursement.

Learning about the different cultures that surround us, making ourselves versed, to the extent possible, in our clients’ cultures and societal practices are just as important as writing accurate progress notes or designing appropriate treatment plans. We ought to honor clients’ individuality and cultural backgrounds, while also honoring who we are by making it part of the conversation—letting clients know where our observations stem from. It is important to remind clients that our input is filtered by our own cultural lenses, to help them understand how crucial their feedback is.

Last but not least, as counselors we have an ethical responsibility to use our knowledge and wisdom to discern appropriate affiliations and memberships with organizations. We ought to be on the watch for inappropriate policies and practices in our surroundings, attempting to effect changes in such policies as our code of ethics calls for. By denouncing improper actions and hindering practices we demonstrate care, and our commitment to justice. My license plate is framed by the words, “Work for peace and social justice,” as a reminder of my duty. Again, nature has given us everything we need to be moral and to practice virtue. Wisdom calls for our ongoing revision of how it is that we sustain the responsibility bestowed on us when we are granted the professional identity of Licensed Professional Counselor, and a corresponding examination of the moral codes that guide and inform our professional personhood.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

Shifting from the laptop screen my eyes glance at the family of cardinals landing on the deck, one after the other, forming a red line, to then disperse in a disorderly manner. Their perky crests sticking up proudly, chests open, confidently pecking the seeds stuck between the boards, while a few finches dance their way around the openings in the hanging feeder. I push the computer aside to give the birds my undivided attention. A family of blue jays, five of them, arrives, and the cardinals fly away. The blue jays establish supremacy, and the finches too depart. One blue jay ventures so close to the glass door that I can see how the blue darkens in a circle around the neck, the wings and tail spotted with white and light blue. In the distance, I hear other jays singing out their dominant call. The visiting jay finds its way around, hopping from one end of the deck to the other, until a red-bellied woodpecker bullies it away. Not content with pecking at the suet feeder hanging to the left, the woodpecker flits to the cylinder feeder, and once again chases away the finches, who had ever so stubbornly returned. I look in ecstasy at the gleaming red cap, the slender body and the long beak and feast on the privilege of my seat.

The birds return, mingle, fly away, only to immediately come back. They form a colorful tapestry, and a vision of ongoing adjustment and adaptation, and I can’t help but reflect on the similarities between the complexity of their exchange and that of our human relationships. Despite the difficulties, they seem to make up their minds, or their instincts, I should say, and to be okay with each other. The scene repeats over and over, from one group of birds to another— from cardinals, to blue jays, finches, woodpeckers, orioles, and warblers. From my seat, I witness the complex simplicity of their interactions, and the similarities to ours—our need to find connection, and our tendency to disconnect. We too push each other, cuddle, tolerate, change our minds, share spaces in this dance we call relationship.

I think about the many stories we hear from our clients, stories of disconnection, of longing for connections, and also stories of profound connections they have with others. Like the birds, we too go through the dance, connecting and disconnecting, but unlike the birds we have the additive of emotions encoded in our cognition. Emotions make human interactions more complex. Observation provides the blueprint to understanding our clients’ emotional messages encoded in their overt and covert expressive manifestations; it births understanding and knowledge.

In order to discern patterns of actions and the principles behind them, we need to fine-tune the lenses through which we look at what we are trying to understand. Being mindful of how we observe and why can preclude us from unskillful interventions. Like the birds, we too can chase our clients away if we don’t remain attentive to the messages encoded in their interactions with us, and their interactions or ways of being in their environments. We must learn to decipher their scripts so we can deliver relevant and genuine interventions.

Observation is the foundation of creative thinking, an essential part of good counseling. We must look at clients’ ecologies with fresh eyes, unbiased by pre-conceived knowledge, be curious and purposeful observers. In the language of Philip Cushman, it is not about “reading our clients as texts, but more like standing behind them and reading over their shoulders the cultural text from which they themselves are reading.” The key is to remember that we observe in order to contextualize our clients’ stories and to become familiar with their landscapes

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a counselor and Dominican writer living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays, and creative non-fiction; with publications including essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

As psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi puts it, creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. It is “a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed. New songs, new ideas, new machines are what creativity is about.” Everything in our surroundings is the result of inventiveness, of creativity. Csikszentmihalyi’s idea is that the creative process emerges in five steps: preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation and elaboration.

When we take a close look at what we do in counseling, we find the above five steps also, and we see the interfaith of creativity and the counseling process. At the core of the preparation step is awareness —becoming immersed, consciously or not, in a set of problematic issues that are interesting, that arouse curiosity, and that are usually the impetus that moves clients to seek us out. Most counselors strive to bring to clients’ awareness what is happening in their surroundings and how they are impacting what is happening. In the interaction of our observations and their awareness, incubation begins. We want to awaken clients’ sensitivity to the ways they interact with their environment, or to use Thich Nah Hanh’s language, how they are “interbeing” with the world.

During incubation clients begin to see how different situations and events impact them, and even how their actions impact others. Only then can they start conceptualizing change. The moment of insight touches on the spiritual realm, on what brings meaning to the person’s life, as they move, however slowly or quickly, toward an increasing sense of wholeness. Evaluation is related to how values and beliefs inform the client’s decisions, and how the world around them impacts their circumstances and vice versa. The elaboration step, or the step into action, culminates in the transformative movement, or creative peak.

Essentially, I am arguing that creativity is at the core of counseling because clients come to us seeking ways to transform aspects, or the entirety, of their lives through the counseling experience. They entrust us with the task of accompanying them through the process of changing aspects of their lives that they view as problematic. Creating new ways of being is the optimum outcome of counseling. My point is not that counseling is about manifesting artistic endeavor, although that’s not a bad idea, but that we should utilize the power of creativity to change the way individuals can view and approach challenging situations. The creative counselor offers different mirrors so that clients can look at themselves from various angles. As I illustrated in last week’s blog, poetry is a transformative tool for clients, as are theater, music, and painting. Learning to transform undesirable behaviors is also a creative act.

Counseling in general is an invitation to embody change, both in awareness and behavior. As Joseph Zinker asserts, creativity is a changing process, where “changing” means transformative. Counseling and creativity converge at the point of transformation. As counselors we use imagination to help individuals design new shapes for their lives. We create in the first encounter with a client: we start right then and there to create a relationship, and as the counseling progresses, we mold new shapes, and play with hues to create the right ambiance, thus living creativity to its fullest.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a Dominican writer and counselor living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays and creative non-fiction. Her publications include essays and four books of poetry.

Marianela Medrano-Marra

After morning yoga I walk to my car, conscious of every step. I look down at the muddy path, my clogs stepping firmly, yet gently, on the soft ground, knowing that the moment is precious and feeling the interconnection of breath and step. The rain falls discretely on my curls, and the scent of lavender rising from my wet hair awakens me even more. I take a deep breath, and direct my attention towards the softness beneath my feet, the fresh air on my face, and the warm fleece against my skin. A blue jay lands two trees ahead of me and flies away before I invade its space, but the blue remains inscribed in my mind. The memory of a therapeutic writing group I led a few years ago for elders rushes into my awareness, perhaps because of our frequent writing about the wonders of nature.

I bring poetry as an ancillary to my work as a counselor, and have made it my most faithful ally in helping others give voice to their emotions. I offer poems like fresh bread, to feed my clients’ souls, to lift their spirits as they discover that creativity is an essential part of healing. As Joseph Zinker says, “the creative process is therapeutic in itself, because it allows us to express and examine the content and dimensions of our internal lives.”

What I do has been called Poetry Therapy. As Arleen McCarty and others depict it, Poetry Therapy aims at improving a person’s capacity to voice feelings, to increase self-knowledge and value his or her personhood, to increase awareness of interpersonal relations, and to improve reality orientation.
We all understand Catharsis, a Greek word that means “cleansing.” In the therapeutic perspective it refers to the release of suppressed thoughts and feelings. Catharsis is at the very core of Poetry Therapy; the poem awakens suppressed feelings, bringing them to surface so they can be explored. The following poem was written by a former client, who was 80 years old when he wrote it. I will call him “Mark.” The poem describes his coming out of a deep depression:

Out of the Dark

I walk out of the dark room
through and out of a door
and to the light
All of a sudden
everything seemed beautiful
the aroma was sweet
I suddenly realized I was living
in a wonderful world
I looked closely at all the beautiful things in it
The sound of cattle, horses, a rooster crowing
I wanted to walk to the countryside
and to the woods
and smell the air
I saw the squirrels
and chipmunks and listened to the crows
I wanted to live
No more dark rooms
I wanted to live again.

Writing this poem, Mark gave himself permission to entertain ways of being besides being depressed. Most importantly, he was able to give voice to positive feelings. Mark was a veteran of war and has battled acute depression since the 1950s, living a rather isolated life. His isolation diminished a great deal after he joined the poetry group. While his depression did not miraculously go away, his interpersonal skills improved considerably, as well as his ability to both identify depressed moods and to counterbalance them by engaging in activities such as writing, walking, or simply looking at the garden from his bedroom window. In this next poem he articulates how crucial relationships are for him:

Tunnel

I was in a mental health hospital
very depressed
I think of this wonderful nurse
who came to my bedside every night
She had seven children
She told me all about her family
She did more good than all the medications.

With this poem Mark captures what should be a counselor’s mantra—being present, listening and responding empathically. The awakening of his poetic imagination positively impacted his health and personal growth. As for me, I can still hear his trembling yet potent voice reciting his poems, and like the blue jay this morning, Mark left his voice inscribed in my mind, reminding me of the power of poetry to heal and restore hope.

Marianela Medrano-Marra is a Dominican writer and counselor living and practicing in Naugatuck, CT. She writes poetry, essays and creative non-fiction. Her publications include essays and four books of poetry.