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Write to Explore and Express the Wild Beauty of Your Heart
Meredith Heller invites you to write as a path toward self-understanding and as a lifelong refuge of steadfast friendship with yourself. She used the power of writing to heal and save her own life, and now she teaches others to do the same. In this book, Meredith shares the techniques she developed to help people from all walks of life explore their emotions, find their voice, and better navigate life’s challenges. Filled with potent exercises and inspiring poems from the author and her students, Writing by Heart is a must-read for anyone, from seasoned writer to novice, who wants to discover the transformative power of writing.
Meredith Heller invites you to write as a path toward self-understanding and as a lifelong refuge of steadfast friendship with yourself. She used the power of writing to heal and save her own life, and now she teaches others to do the same. In this book, Meredith shares the techniques she developed to help people from all walks of life explore their emotions, find their voice, and better navigate life’s challenges. Filled with potent exercises and inspiring poems from the author and her students, Writing by Heart is a must-read for anyone, from seasoned writer to novice, who wants to discover the transformative power of writing.
Price: $21.95
Pages: 336
Publisher: New World Library
Imprint: New World Library
Publication Date:
27 February 2024
Trim Size: 8.00 X 5.25 in
ISBN: 9781608689101
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Poetry, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Nonfiction (incl. Memoirs), SELF-HELP / Journaling, SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Happiness
“Pick up your pen and lock your doors — you’ll be excited to write! Meredith Heller gathers and provides vibrantly playful, innovative, effective tools for applied creativity as somatic healing agent. Drawing from her vast interdisciplinary training, experience, and courage, her accessible, fiercely nurturing guidance provides relentless dynamic support and hums through these pages — caressing, alchemizing, liberating our psyches.”
— April Heaslip, PhD, mythologist, educator, and author of Regenerating the Feminine (forthcoming, 2024)
“Meredith Heller invites us on a wild-hearted adventure to express our full-bodied truths. Weaving together powerful themes and playful practices, Writing by Heart catalyzes our creativity and calls us to befriend ourselves and share our treasures. This important and beautifully written book turns writing into a feast for the senses and the wild imagination.”
— Rebecca Wildbear, author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth
“An early writing prompt encapsulates the splendor, creativity, and power of Meredith Heller’s new book: riffing on a Black spiritual, ‘Dem Bones,’ Meredith has us envision a ‘sacred wound,’ in which the heart bone is connected to the wound bone, the joy bone connected to the truth bone, the truth bone connected to the wisdom bone, etc. Through her masterful exercises and suggestions, Meredith guides us in making our wounds into sources of strength and connection, opportunities for peace, personal insight, and emotional growth. Writing by Heart expands our ‘hearts,’ as well as our ‘writings,’ through poetic mastery and a sense of belonging.”
— Stephen Rojcewicz, MD, PhD, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and past president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy
“What a glowing gift! Writing by Heart is a luminous lamp lighting your writing way inward and forward. This is a captivating and wonder-filled book, overflowing with wild wisdom for your words to become known to you, and find holy homes in other eyes, ears, hearts, and souls.”
— SARK, artist, author, inspirationalist, PlanetSARK.com
“This book is a soft, sweet hand that will guide you to rest in the place where possibility is born.”
— Dawna Markova, author of Spot of Grace
“Meredith Heller has written another exciting and inclusive soul-speak book. Writing by Heart provides a loving and passionate invitation to connect to our own life experience as if our stories, longings, dreams, and heartfelt, handwritten words matter not to just ourselves but to each other. Her generous sharing of everyday people’s poetry allows us to feel connected and inspired to engage with our feeling self and write what we know from heart to hand to communal voice. As a spiritual psychotherapist and life coach, I bring Meredith’s books into my practice as a tool to help us uncover our truth through the sacred act of writing.”
— Deborah Meints-Pierson, LMFT, coauthor of Love Tools for Everyday Heroes, author of Shelter in Place, and cohost of the Soul Path Sessions podcast
“The words thank you cannot capture the enormity of the gratitude I feel for this book. Meredith Heller’s loving wisdom and encouragement leap from the page. Her students’ poems call out like an incantation, a summoning of creative magic: Join us with your voice, your words, your poems. You can do this! When Meredith offers her prompts to ‘Write Now!’ my heart sings back, Yes, yes, yes!”
— Heather Clague, MD, coleader of the Feeling Great Book Club
— April Heaslip, PhD, mythologist, educator, and author of Regenerating the Feminine (forthcoming, 2024)
“Meredith Heller invites us on a wild-hearted adventure to express our full-bodied truths. Weaving together powerful themes and playful practices, Writing by Heart catalyzes our creativity and calls us to befriend ourselves and share our treasures. This important and beautifully written book turns writing into a feast for the senses and the wild imagination.”
— Rebecca Wildbear, author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth
“An early writing prompt encapsulates the splendor, creativity, and power of Meredith Heller’s new book: riffing on a Black spiritual, ‘Dem Bones,’ Meredith has us envision a ‘sacred wound,’ in which the heart bone is connected to the wound bone, the joy bone connected to the truth bone, the truth bone connected to the wisdom bone, etc. Through her masterful exercises and suggestions, Meredith guides us in making our wounds into sources of strength and connection, opportunities for peace, personal insight, and emotional growth. Writing by Heart expands our ‘hearts,’ as well as our ‘writings,’ through poetic mastery and a sense of belonging.”
— Stephen Rojcewicz, MD, PhD, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and past president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy
“What a glowing gift! Writing by Heart is a luminous lamp lighting your writing way inward and forward. This is a captivating and wonder-filled book, overflowing with wild wisdom for your words to become known to you, and find holy homes in other eyes, ears, hearts, and souls.”
— SARK, artist, author, inspirationalist, PlanetSARK.com
“This book is a soft, sweet hand that will guide you to rest in the place where possibility is born.”
— Dawna Markova, author of Spot of Grace
“Meredith Heller has written another exciting and inclusive soul-speak book. Writing by Heart provides a loving and passionate invitation to connect to our own life experience as if our stories, longings, dreams, and heartfelt, handwritten words matter not to just ourselves but to each other. Her generous sharing of everyday people’s poetry allows us to feel connected and inspired to engage with our feeling self and write what we know from heart to hand to communal voice. As a spiritual psychotherapist and life coach, I bring Meredith’s books into my practice as a tool to help us uncover our truth through the sacred act of writing.”
— Deborah Meints-Pierson, LMFT, coauthor of Love Tools for Everyday Heroes, author of Shelter in Place, and cohost of the Soul Path Sessions podcast
“The words thank you cannot capture the enormity of the gratitude I feel for this book. Meredith Heller’s loving wisdom and encouragement leap from the page. Her students’ poems call out like an incantation, a summoning of creative magic: Join us with your voice, your words, your poems. You can do this! When Meredith offers her prompts to ‘Write Now!’ my heart sings back, Yes, yes, yes!”
— Heather Clague, MD, coleader of the Feeling Great Book Club
Meredith Heller is a poet, singer-songwriter, avid nature lover, and educator with degrees in writing and education. She leads workshops at schools, women’s prisons, the Institute for Poetic Medicine, creativity summits, wellness retreats, and online. She lives with a gentle footprint in Northern California. John Fox is the founder of the Institute for Poetic Medicine and author of Finding What You Didn’t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity with Poem-Making.
MeredithHeller.com
MeredithHeller.com
Foreword by John Fox
Introduction
Chapter 1: Get Your Poetry Groove On
Gather the essentials for your poet’s toolbox.
Chapter 2: Elemental Wisdom
Harness the power of the elements to fuel your life.
Chapter 3: Body Language
Let your body speak!
Chapter 4: Sensorium
Awaken your senses!
Chapter 5: Wild Heart
Cultivate the courage to be true to your wild heart.
Chapter 6: Sanctuary
Create inner peace in a crazy world.
Chapter 7: Belonging
Weave the abandoned parts of yourself back into belonging.
Chapter 8: Fertile Darkness
Journey into the heart of the inward cycle.
Chapter 9: Desire
Allow desire to be the compass pointing you home.
Chapter 10: Bloom
Explore your life cycles, from seed to bloom and back again.
Chapter 11: Zen Bones
Boil your poems down to the essence.
Chapter 12: Heartbeat
Attune with your heartbeat.
Chapter 13: Moon Dance
Follow the lunar phases to inhabit your cycles, your shadow, your shine.
Chapter 14: Metamorphosis
Embody the poetry of change.
Conclusion
Love and Gratitude
Poems by Chapter
Index of Poets
About the Author