| Sharon Bray is the director of Wellspring
Writers and a member of the Amherst Writers and Artists board
of directors. She teaches and leads a number of writing groups in
the San Francisco Bay area. She has written and published a children's
book, professional articles, poetry and memoir. Her work has appeared
in Moxie Magazine, Women’s Forum, Pat Schneiders's Writing
Alone & With Others and the accompanying DVD (Oxford
University Press & Florentine
Films/Hott Productions, 2003) and most recently, in the anthology,
Looking Back: Stories of our Mothers and Fathers in Retrospect
(New
Brighton Books, 2003). A long time educator, Sharon has many years
of professional experience in educational, business and nonprofit
settings in the U.S. and Canada, counseling adults in life transition,
and training counselors, teachers, and writing group leaders. She
holds a doctorate in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto. |
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"Sharon Bray's A Healing Journey is a moving
account of a program designed to help women with breast cancer express
their humanity through writing about their cancer experiences in groups.
By putting into words the wrenching, sad, scary and even funny aspects
of having cancer, reasserting their common humanity. Like planting a garden,
the seeds of rationale and methods are clearly described, and then the
reader is rewarded with a bouquet of reflections on the cancer experience
as the book progresses. A Healing Journey provides compelling evidence
that if you have cancer, it is right to write." -- David Spiegel,
M.D., Medical Director, Integrative Medicine and Associate Chair, Psychiatry
& Behavioral Sciences, Stanford School of Medicine.
"Writing, Sharon Bray tells us, is a kind of prayer.
A prayer in which we don't ask for anything, except to know our own experience
and to make meaning of it. As the great poet, Muriel Rukeyser said, 'The
universe is made of stories, not atoms.' Sharon's work with women with
cancer makes it possible for those necessary stories to be shared -- and
we are all the richer for it. Thank you for this wise and useful book."
-- Ellen Bass, award-winning poet and author of Courage to Heal: A
Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
"Translating emotional upheavals into words can
help the body, mind, and soul. Sharon Bray's masterful book is the perfect
example. Part autobiographical, part educational, A Healing Journey
describes Bray's profound experiences with an amazing group of women dealing
with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Through their journey,
Bray helps to explain how and why writing has been such a powerful medicine.
Anyone touched by cancer will cherish the insights from this book."
– James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D., author of Opening Up: The Healing
Power of Expressing Emotions
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