Writing Heals
Sep 29, 2023 09:31AM ● By Lottie Sass
Melissa
Greene is a full-time writer and founder in 2001 of Write From the Heart
creative writing workshops. Her philosophy of life is that writing heals. After
the Twin Towers terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, she was moved to create
a writing program designed to share her belief that the act of writing without
stress has the power to console, illuminate and heal.
She teaches adults, children and teens, collaborates with schools and
therapists, and leads workshops for cancer patients at the Ann B. Barshinger
Cancer Institute at Penn Medicine/Lancaster General Health; the McGlinn Cancer
Institute at Reading Hospital; and the Penn State Cancer Institute at the
Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
Greene relates, “I grew up in Los Angeles. My mother was a film actress and
my father wrote songs for the movies in the 1930s and ‘40s. Creativity was in
my blood. At age 3, I would sit on my father’s lap at the piano while he
composed and sang, savoring how the words rested on the music. I could see he
was at his happiest, and I wanted to connect with that place inside myself,
too. I began to write short stories and poetry. In my 20s, I took a sharp
detour to follow in my mother’s footsteps and became an actress. I appeared in The
Six Million Dollar Man and The Rockford Files TV series, though I
knew writing was the art that would see me through my life.”
She then married, left her acting career and lived in Williamstown,
Massachusetts, for 13 years. “I was fortunate to work with a Williams College
writing professor who helped me overcome my tendency toward perfectionism. I
learned to see beyond the academics of writing into the heart of the work—the
heart of myself, really,” she shares. “I learned to value my passion for
writing over publication and fame; I discovered that it’s all about the longing
to express, and that humor and self-compassion can be more important than
grammar. I saw that my responsibility as a future mentor would be to hold a
student’s deepest thoughts and feelings sacred. I became fascinated by the
psychology of creating and how I sensed it could heal me, and the lives of
others. This led me to expand my work into health care, supporting cancer
patients with creative writing for the past nine years.”
Greene explains that her mission is inspiring, supporting and protecting
the creative spirit, especially in those that have longed to write, but thought
they couldn’t, and to share the belief that writing can help us feel happy,
vital and whole in a fractured world.
For more information,
visit WriteFromTheHeart.us, call 717 393-4713 or email [email protected].
