A while back, Virginia Woolf was my therapist. At least I thought it was Woolf. But maybe it was really Ilana Simons.
My confusion came from the fact that I was immersed in the Woolfian therapy found in Simons’ A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living Through the Wit and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf.
Thanks to kind friends who know what I like, I had two copies. That meant I was able to sneak in a dose of therapy whether I was upstairs or down, reading in bed or ensconced in my favorite chair.
And I found myself applying the wise words contained within — whether they were Woolf’s own or Simons’ interpretation of them — to my daily life.
When I felt annoyed by my husband, I remembered Simons’ discussion of the wisdom of Mrs. Ramsay, for example.
Now Simons has an interesting post on the Psychology Today blog about the benefits storytelling has for therapy. As she puts it, both literature and psychology must “try to organize the mess of human emotion and motivation into a narrative” and both “[w]riters and therapists need to be good storytellers, because they have to build stories that organize emotion.”
In her piece, she credits several writers, including Woolf, for giving her “new images or narratives to live by.” In the case of Woolf, Simons says the author helped reframe her feminist thinking and stand her ground as a strong woman.
Perhaps it is this ability to help us think differently about some aspect of our daily lives that has helped Woolf earn her iconic status.
[…] books that do a wonderful job of invoking Woolf to give advice about writing and about life. A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living Through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf by Ilana Simons and The Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great […]
I just saw this post. huge thanks for the mention, Paula. I’m feeling especially brooding today, and now feel buoyed.
Yes, even though ‘fiction’ is fiction, a good story teller has to be drawing from experience effectively impressing the reader of a
different world that might not otherwise be considered as a possibility for oneself. Sometimes the read is so effective it can inspire a change from accustomed ways of living and thinking.
When I was very young and shy, Reporter in Petticoats, by
Enid Blyton, long before I found Virginia Woolf, led me to become just that and more, later in life!
Thanks for your comments — and for the recommendation of the Proust book, Valentina. I have always thought of reading fiction as a sort of therapy, so it’s fun to see that others agree.
Talking about writers and therapy, have you ever read “How Proust can change your life” by Alain de Botton?
It’s a wonderful book. A friend of mine who had never read Proust found it helpful all the same!
Yes, it is an AMAZING book by Ms. Simon, and I had the same experience when I was reading it… with the interiority and continual reaching out Woolf depicts helping to, kind of, re-start my personal hard drive and gain new inspiration and clarity. (At the time I was also immersed in a re-read of To The Lighthouse and the fabulous dinner scene was uppermost in my mind, so it was a perfect convergence!)