Heal Your Self with Writing in Kuwait, Feb 2014

      Heal Your Self with Writing in Kuwait  with Catherine Ann Jones   

          Kuwait,  Feb 2014

Human nature is amazingly the same yet totally diverse at the same time. I am never bored with teaching and grateful to my many students all over the world and writing consultant clients over the decades who allow me to learn while teaching them.

I began my working life as an actor and playwright in New York then Hollywood screenwriter, now author of books with a parallel career teaching writing and self-healing for over thirty years. After two decades teaching graduate school (The New School in New York and later U.S.C in Los Angeles), I opted to hit the road teaching The Way of Story and Heal Your Self with Writing workshops. The workshop life began at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur allowing me not to be restrained by academic restraints but to pioneer new experiential approaches to learning writing and using creativity as a powerful tool in self-healing and spiritual discovery.

After India, Singapore, Greece, England, Spain, and Mexico, I have just returned from a week in Kuwait. When first invited, I assumed they wanted The Way of Story writing workshop, but they said, “Oh, no, we want the healing one.” So, Heal Your Self with Writing was the workshop we did last week in Kuwait.

I harbored some concern as my contract included a promise not to offend the Muslim faith, and to agree not to discuss reincarnation or angels. (My bio lists several Hollywood films I had written such as a Disney movie starring Dolly Parton, Unlikely Angel and the popular television series, Touched by an Angel.) I asked if there was a dress code, imagining myself teaching in a birka! The response was no excerpt no mini-skirts or sleeveless blouses. OK, this was to be a new adventure.

After twenty hours in the air and eight hours in airports, I arrived zombie- like in Kuwait City, population of four million, wedged between Iraq to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south. The Arabian name “Kuwait” means fortress.  After the first World War, Kuwait emerged as an independent sheikdom under the protection of the British Empire until they gained their independence in 1961. In 1990, Kuwait was invaded and annexed by neighboring Iraq. The seven month-long Iraqi occupation came to an end after direct military-lead intervention by the United States. 773 Kuwaiti oil wells were set ablaze by the retreating Iraqi army, resulting in a major environmental and economic catastrophe.  Twelve years later, Kuwait saw another massive foreign military presence as it served as a springboard for the U.S.-led campaign in 2003 to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government.  Today, Kuwait is the eighth richest country in the world per capita with the fifth largest oil reserves.

As I entered Kuwait City, it seemed like a Hollywood set for a futuristic sci-fi movie. Stunning, pristine clean, and no lack of Lexus or Jaguars rushing here and there.

Cell phones are everywhere and used more than here. Imagine almost invisible women fully clad in birkas with modern cell phones continuously in use, a portal to a wider world.

       Heal Your Self with Writing training lasted only three days for ten women and one man. The response was enthusiastic and moving. “It was an inspirational life changing workshop” said one birka clad woman. All but two of the women wore full birka though their faces were visible. Yet most had graduate degrees and had attended private schools and spoke English well. Surprised to learn that the divorce rate in Kuwait is 60%!

Bill Moyers once commented that he understood what community was when in East Africa, he had sat around a campfire with natives sharing their life stories. I felt the same with these strong women and one sensitive man who allowed feeling through old wounds and collective patriarchal censorship to blossom into transformative understanding. In his  own words:

Love is the word that explains the feeling I have towards you and your course. You have brought up the bottled up emotions within me, and you, your book and course is a treasure that I will forever hold on to.Thank you!                                                                           – Abdulrazzq Al Musallan

Focus Journaling in Heal Your Self with Writing offers tools to self-heal grief and trauma as well a deeper self-inquiry. In this way, global healing takes place one individual, one tribe at a time.

For upcoming workshops in Malibu (April 26-27), Tuscany (May 24-31), Esalen in Big Sur (Aug 17-22) visit www.wayofstory.com