Guest Blog |
How writing is healing a community of older adults in Pittsburgh
This first-person essay is part of a series on the importance of arts and culture as a strategy in health and wellness, published ahead of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council’s Policy and Action Roundtable focused on Social Prescribing on November 4.
The human need to be heard doesn’t disappear as we grow older. From the time we pull on our mother’s skirt or experience a meltdown as toddlers, we want someone to listen. Yet in today’s environment of isolation and wide-spread but impersonal social media, we often become unseen as we age. Still, the urge to tell our stories, to share our experiences, and to connect with others remains a vital part of being human.
I was 90 years old when I started Now or Never (NON) Writers Group, a community providing creative inspiration and social connection for members ranging in age from their early seventies to their nineties. A year later, I’ve learned that one of the most appreciated benefits of our writer’s group is that we now have a safe environment to tell our stories — happy stories, sad ones, even silly ones. Poetry, essays, and fiction become the vehicles for expressing our deep need to be heard.
After one of our members returned from an extended trip to New Mexico, she shared pages from her journal with the group, bringing to life not only her experiences but awakening in us all the magic of discovering new places. Another member is writing a novel based upon her family’s story on a Southern plantation before the Civil War, promoting a deeper understanding of our American history. One writer describes her childhood particularly well, bringing into the foreground not only her experiences but stirring our own memories as well.
Our stories are being shared, heard, and thereby strengthened.
In order not to become too inward-looking or complacent, the group also experiments with the more challenging forms of writing: a pantoum, for example, or haiku. Having given up the idea of achieving perfection early in our history, we even flirted with a villanelle once or twice. The heart of the endeavor, however, is that we are creating together, gratifying our desire to be seen and heard in whatever written form we choose.
When I think with gratitude about the laughter (and occasionally the tears) we experience together because of our writing, I realize that words are not the only way to communicate. Every creative action is a way to tell our stories. Someone once said (and I am paraphrasing) that a painting wasn’t finished until someone other than the artist had seen and reacted to it. Yes! And the music needs to be heard and internalized, and gardens tended and appreciated, and cookies baked and gratefully consumed.
So, you might ask, how is baking cookies connected with telling our stories? In blogs, books, and TV shows, professional bakers spin tales of their unending search for the ultimate cookie, the quintessential chocolate chip combination … or whatever other pastry has captured their imagination. They are indeed telling their stories. Mothers and grandmothers already know the value of their stories and their love expressed through cookie baking, and the “cookie tables” at important rituals hold the stories of whole communities.
I remember one time in the last years of the Great Depression (yes, I am very old) when my mother didn’t have all the ingredients to bake Christmas cookies. A neighbor came in with eggs, another with butter, and others with sugar and maraschino cherries. We had flour, I remember, and vanilla. The women baked cookies all afternoon and then divided them up equally. For me, this is a story that needs to be told again and again, not only because it is a cherished memory, but also because of what it says about sharing and connection and survival. It demonstrates so well that even baking cookies is a way to be creative, a way to be heard!
In short, we need to discover our own creativity, whatever form it takes, because the need for creativity and the urge to tell our stories cannot be separated. They are hard-wired into our beings and we must honor them in order to be fully human. Incidentally, those Christmas cookies the women baked that December afternoon so long ago were the among the best Christmas cookies I ever tasted!
About the Author
A native Pittsburgher, Mary Schinhofen was born and raised on the North Side. Mother of five children, seventeen years a teacher, and lover of bumblebees, she now lives in Bloomfield, where she paints, writes, participates in Osher courses, and sometimes bakes cookies.
Policy and Action Roundtable
Across the country, health systems, policymakers, and people-centric organizations are turning to social prescribing, connecting people to non-clinical, community-based resources, including the arts, as part of how we support health and well-being. Southwestern Pennsylvania has the ingredients to build something real here: a strong arts ecosystem, engaged health systems, and policymakers ready to listen. On November 4, we are convening a room where we hope to bring those pieces together.
We're bringing together leaders from the arts field, policy, philanthropy, and healthcare to move past the concept and into specifics:
- Where, and in what ways, can social prescribing deliver real impact in our region?
- What could social prescribing mean for our regional arts ecosystem?
- What policy and funding infrastructure needs to be built to support it?
This is the second in the Arts Council's Policy and Action Roundtable series, designed not just as a conversation but as a working session, panel insight, small-group discussion, and shared next steps, so that everyone in the room leaves as a thought partner rather than a spectator.
Policy and Action Roundtable: Social Prescribing in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Wednesday, November 4. 9-11:30 a.m. Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild - MCG Jazz Concert Hall, 1815 Metropolitan St., North Side. $15. Learn more at https://www.pittsburghartscouncil.org/events/social-prescribing.