| This study focuses on the importance of healing connections and explores the ways people in psychotherapy and in folk tales, myths, real-life narratives, and literature move from disconnection into connection. Theories of healing connection in the field of psychotherapy are applied to literature and the writing process as a form of life story repair; the relationship between life story repair and women's issues is considered, in particular.;The method of presentation is experimental and integral to the content, so as to illustrate the co-creative nature of healing connections and the usefulness of life stories and a polyphony of voices in fostering healing connection. The story of healing connection is unfolded by telling and discussing stories, and by exploring the relationship of writing and healing connection. To create the effect of polyphony, these retellings, and reflections incorporate the words and thoughts of a variety of authors.;The primary text in psychology is Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver's The Healing Connection, while the primary works in literature are Arthur Miller's After the Fall, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Morrison's Beloved, and C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces.;The story of Stone Soup functions as a focal structure and a generative metaphor for learning about healing connection. Stone Soup's inclusiveness is discussed as a form of cultural story repair, illustrating both the telling of people's stories and their mutual empowerment of one another to bring about their physical and emotional well-being. Similarly, writing in interactive ways is suggested as a means in educational communities to allow all students to share their voices and to co-create an environment that fosters healing connection.;The underlying assumption for this interdisciplinary study is a relational one: what makes life human is its essential interconnectedness. Since all relationships have direction, that is, emotional charge, it is important that these relationships be healing connections, not harming ones. Relationships can never be healed connections, for then they would be static and unchanging, in short dead. But they can be healing connections . |
