Hello! There is a new article on the Neuromuscular Disease site.

Often, it becomes difficult to find the meaning behind the difficulties we go through. Experiencing a neuromuscular disease can leave one wondering how to make sense of it all. Many people find writing to be cathartic. The technique called clustering can help you to find meaning in your situation.

After you read Writing for Meaning, please come back here to let us know about your experiences with writing for meaning and catharsis.

Jori I really enjoyed your article. A great poem and a wonderful photograph.

I just used a mindmap programme I downloaded for free to do a "cluster" - seems similar to mindmaps/spider diagrams. Started wtih dreams and went in 2 directions - the fact that people who find physical movement difficult in real life can often move freely in their dreams and the sense of being frozen/terrified in dreams. Links for me included the films Avatar and Inception. I haven't written any poetry in a while and I liked this - wrote the below quickly and straight on to the post. I may come back to it in a few days with a fresh eye to polish/edit. Thank you.

This is the result:

Dream yourself well.
Dream a new body
A new being.

Avatar
Dreams can set you free.
Look at the world that surrounds you.
Touch the body you own.
Taste the music of dreamland.
Hear the newness of movement.
Smell the wind in your hair.

Inception.
Build your own world.
When all is lost
Dig deeper.
Find another level
Of existence
Of meaning
Of knowing what matters.

Frozen.
I see you.
Trapped by what could be
What may be
What has always been.
Long ago
You learned
To turnaround
To face your fears.
The memory
Is in your muscle
In your bone.
Move infiniteisimally.
Change happens.

Good morning, Asha.

Thanks for your encouraging comments regarding my article. I enjoyed your poem, as well. I particularly liked the first five lines of your final stanza, as it reflects on emotions that I have experienced (an, dare I say it, everyone will recognize). As you work on revision, let us read it again!

I have read about mind-mapping, and do believe it works much like clustering. The version I read about included little drawings, which frightened me away because even my stick figures need help!

I keep turning back to clustering - it seems to work well with the way that I think and helps me get to my emotions. I can see that mind-mapping would also be very helpful. Any technique that can help us break through our "internal editor" can be useful to writing from our hearts.

Hi Jori and Asha, loved both your poems. I love it when I can write a poem right off the top of my head.

I use the balloon method when I need to write a letter to someone and I want to get all the details down. I read Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping a long time ago and clustering was on thing he used a lot.

Peace

Thanks, Linda.

I also like to use clustering when I have a big idea or project that I'm trying to figure out and organize. My cluster helps me to brainstorm, and then afterwards the ideas fall right into a working outline.

Jori and Linda

I think a lot of these methods (and please correct me if you think I am wrong!) use the same basic concepts to help you free your imagination.

I have often used mind maps when working with people who have a lot of ideas/thoughts in careers guidance (in the US I think you call it career counselling). It's a really helpful way to gather different strands of a discussion. Once I've produced the mind map, making links that seem to make sense to me based on what the client is saying I ask them to look, revise and prioritise (writing priorities wherever I have space and/or getting them to number different stems/branches of the map in order of importance).

I've also used them for project management Jori - I find they help me capture the things which don't fit in a linear form or seem to have a logical place.

Linda I like the idea of using them for letters. My current work, for the first time in years, involves writing a lot of letters and I find myself relearning the art of effetive letter writing. I have found Tony Buzan's ideas useful for study, work and in my personal life (eg looking at goals, priorities and time management when I have so much to do I can't see where to start).

Asha, I always find that after I cluster my ideas for a project, they then go quite well into an outline, but that I include ideas I wouldn't have thought of if I had started with a more formal outline. So, often I outline after I cluster. Clustering and mind-mapping do seem to use very similar ways of freeing up creativity and capturing ideas in a non-linear fashion.

Hi Jori and Asha I really like both of your poems. I learned about clustering in a writing class as a way of overcoming writer's block. It's a great way to get started. Now, if I could only find more time to write. Facilitating a CMT support group, attempting to find guest speakers and spreading awareness of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease has been taking up a lot of my time lately. I need to focus less on my CMT and more on what I enjoy doing.

Hello, Melinda and welcome to our forum. Thanks for your kind comments.

I lead a CMT support group as well. I do admit that sometimes it is difficult to find time to write with family, work, and CMTA and support group obligations. Somehow, we must find ways to balance everything and still maintain our creative lives.

For me, writing about CMT for BellaOnline has kept me writing. As they say, write what you know (or, I'll add, what you want to learn more about, and I'm learning more about CMT and neuromuscular disease all of the time).

By the way, I know that Pat from the CMTA is always looking for articles for the CMTA newsletter. You can also always feel free to write about your experiences with living with CMT in this forum.

Welcome to our forum - I'm so glad you're here!

Hi Jori, Thanks for reminding me that Pat from the CMTA is always looking for articles for their newsletter. I just emailed her what I wrote about my experience speaking with future physical therapists at a local college. The students were great and very interested in learning about CMT. I also, was invited back to participate in a lab as a pretend patient. Melinda