The Things They Wrote
by Kerry L. Malawista
Sharing our stories helps us to understand our experiences and begin to move forward in our lives. One year after the devastating COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed the world’s healthcare system, the Things They Carry Project was launched, offering free online writing workshops (co-led by a therapist and writer) for frontline workers. TTC workshops offered our nation’s nurses, doctors, and other frontline workers a safe space to write about all they endured–from exhaustion to terror to hopelessness–and a supportive group to hear their stories. Writing groups connected these brave workers, and now we, too, can listen to their voices. This collection offers a selection of the powerful and moving stories shared by the group participants, giving us all the chance to witness and empathize with their experience and its aftermath.
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Kerry L. Malawista, PhD, is a writer and psychoanalyst, a co-chair of New Directions in Writing, and the founder of the Things They Carry Project, offering virtual writing workshops for groups in need of healing. Her essays have appeared nationally, including in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, and Delmarva Review, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. She is the coauthor of When the Garden Isn’t Eden (2022) and Wearing My Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories (2011) and co-editor of The Therapist in Mourning: From the Faraway Nearby (2013) and Who’s Behind the Couch (2017). Her novel Meet the Moon was released in September 2022.
- Email: kmalawista@gmail.com
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