Sutterwriters

Sometimes people ask if they can visit a Sutterwriters session and observe. Some say they just can't write but want to see what it's like. I'm adamant: If you come, you write. It's rare as Halley's Comet for me to insist on anything. Yet that's my bottom line. I tell the would-be observer, "Even if you've never written anything more than a grocery list, or if you were so deeply scarred by your third grade teacher that you tremble every time you pick up a pen-you come, you write." No one ever needs to read what he or she has written out loud, but if you come, plan to move your pen. The safety of the group is at stake. Everyone is a participant, no spectators.

In reading Blood on the Page, you get to break that rule.

As Sutterwriters grew, we saw so much growth in each other that we wanted to preserve some of the writing in a book. Consequently, these pieces, originally written in longhand, quickly scribbled, torn out of notebooks, and transposed to type, are as close as it gets to hearing the writing in the group. The title, Blood on the Page, reflects that immediacy, that authenticity. The title came spontaneously in a conversation with Jeff Kane, a compassionate physician who facilitates cancer support groups. I told him that listening to these stories firsthand was often like hearing blood spurt from a torn artery, like blood on the page. He said, "There's your title."

A book like this starts in the belly. Fear is in the belly. Words that shrink into dark passages, in entrails, that have found homes in dark passages, all desiring escape-these are the words in the silent places, where the body holds them unspoken, the places that are left when we want to scream but don't. These are the places where we find only silence, and silence finds us wanting and waiting. Cancer, heart disease, crippling arthritis, depression, suicide, love lost, mourning, the death of a child-there is no way through. Or is there?

Sutterwriters is composed of a variety of people who have chosen to write as a way of healing. Everyone is welcome, regardless of health conditions or physical limitations. You don't need to be affiliated with Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, or be a writer to join. You don't need to worry about health insurance.

It is amazing how many people have been willing to share for publication what they wrote in the privacy of the group, although several asked me to explain to the reader the circumstances under which the writing occurred, since for the most part these are first drafts. We meet in small groups for two hours a week over six weeks. We write to a timed prompt for 5 to 20 minutes. The prompt might consist of a poem or a passage or may involve an activity such as watching a video or listening to music. These prompts act as door-openers for the writing. Some of the quotes that are used for these prompts can be found on the inside covers of this book. The session is devoted to writing, reading what we write, and sharing comments. We follow the principles of Amherst Writers and Artists founder Pat Schneider (Writing Alone and with Others, Oxford 2003). Everything is treated as fiction. Only positive comments are allowed, and discussion is limited to the third person (the speaker is discussed as "the narrator"). The emphasis is always on the writing.

The most intriguing part is that people are always surprised by what they write. As 74-year-old Bob Sheffield said, "I sit down and read some of this stuff that comes out of me, and I can't believe it took all these years." For me, sometimes after a group, I have a weird feeling in my chest and stomach, like the way I've felt after an intimate conversation with a stranger on an airplane. I've just spilled my guts. I may never see this person again. I'm raw and exposed-uncomfortable yet energized.

Sutterwriters is not a support group, but it is supportive. We delve into the depth of the imagination and let it go wild. Two hours a week is reserved for that imaginative part of ourselves to go wherever it wants to go. Rather than shunning it, we go deeper into it and into whatever resistance it puts up.

Most people originally come to Sutterwriters because of illness or loss or a diagnosis. The diagnosis often becomes part of the disease. Once it is named, the individual accepts a certain course. Yet it is obvious that the same disease visits each person quite differently. Where do people go once the pronouncement is made, and they are lumped into a disease group? A good example is someone with multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease of the central nervous system that is difficult to diagnose because it manifests itself so differently in each person. As you will find in reading Sutterwriter Elaine Feller's entries, writing helps define her multiple sclerosis, as well as maintain her individuality. Literature dignifies suffering, makes it more bearable and comprehensible. It raises compassion and empathy in both writer and reader. The best writing, as in Feller's, is heartfelt and full of personal details, something never found in medical textbooks.

The human condition is such that we are constantly evolving, seeking new levels of existence. When we write, we witness movement across those levels. It is a changeling, a metamorphosis, a wanting that needs to be fulfilled.

I entered medicine because I wanted to be engaged with people who were living close to the life vein. Over 20 years as a physician assistant, I found it happened less and less. Quietly the drudgery beat me down, and I was forced to accept superficial relationships with patients-me in a white coat, them sitting in a chair. In my emptiness I wondered if meaningful experiences in medicine existed at all. Or were they like unicorns or snow leopards, something of my own fantasy, something exotic and rare? Through Sutterwriters I found that these experiences are as prevalent as wildflowers and equally abundant in each of us. A number of nurses, doctors, and caregivers have joined us. Writing together-exchanging raw, unfiltered, uncensored stories-mediates the great disconnect between patients and practitioners. Clearly, we are much healthier when we are allowed to write openly about our problems. Only by admitting our own suffering and shame do we become fully human. It is always the half-truths and lies that get in the way. And it's harder to lie to ourselves when we write it down.

Most people don't know how powerful literature can be in their lives. Stopped in their tracks by so many formal rules for expressing language on paper, most people are neither participants nor spectators. I have a friend who surveyed 150 students entering his community college and found that 80% had never read a book of literature. Literature remains primarily the province of the affluent and well-educated. With the exception of the occasional sociopath, all of us have a primary need to love and to be loved. Creating literature, writing alone and with others, as Pat Schneider suggests, is a way to find ourselves unpreempted in expression and unconditionally loved. In these groups we are accepted and not judged as writers. Best of all: No previous writing experience required.

So if you join a group like Sutterwriters, these are the kinds of stories you'll hear. Take any 111 people, like the ones in this book, ask them to write honestly, and you'll hear things they might never talk about. As one of the Sutterwriters told me, "I can't talk to my husband about my disease because it's too terrifying for him." Others have remained silent because they thought they were whining or were met with refusal to be heard. We've found, as you'll discover in this book, that it's essential to get it out so the healing process can begin.

I thank everyone in Blood on the Page for allowing you, the reader, to enter into their stories so that their stories might resonate with your own.

Lawrence (Chip) Spann, PA-C, Ph.D., Director
Literature, Arts, and Medicine Program (LAMP)