Where do you go to in your mind, or in real life, when you want respite? Is it a busy, bustling place, or a calm, tranquil setting? Is it urban or rural? Real or imagined? What is it about this place that draws you?
The Maggie’s Centre, where I run Creative Writing sessions for people affected by cancer, was designed to be a healing place. A safe space to express and process emotion, to work through the difficult, distressing and often overwhelming feelings that come with a cancer diagnosis.
The building, set in the grounds of Nottingham’s City Hospital campus, is light, airy and stylish (Paul Smith did the interior design). It’s also quirky – it looks a bit like a treehouse. In stark contrast to the clinical spaces that surround it. Passing by, you can’t help but notice it, and wonder – what goes on there?
It is one of a network of Maggie’s centres built from the vision of Maggie Jencks, who – when faced with her own terminal cancer journey – believed ‘people with cancer need places like these.’
Judging by feedback from those that use the Nottingham centre, it succeeds in its therapeutic aims. One of my group described it as ‘a big house full of friends,’ another said ‘it’s like the building itself gives you a hug.’
The concept of safe, healing spaces is one of the themes of my novel, Blue Tide Rising. At the start, Amy is very much not in a safe space. Running away from her past, she’s washed up in a grim, run down part of Manchester where she hits rock bottom. She’s lost and she’s run out of options.
Acting on a suggestion from her new friend Jay, she takes a leap into the unknown, winding up at Môr Tawel, an off-grid eco farm on the Anglesey coast. This place, and the people in it, give her space to heal. Here’s a short extract from her first day there.
I sit with a supersized mug of tea on the thick stone steps, looking out to sea. Although the breeze is chilling, I’m sheltered by the walls, sitting in a patch of sunlight trapped on the step. The spring tide is high, the edge of the water about ten feet from where I sit. A line of fresh seaweed marks the point it has reached. The tide is just on the turn.
Excerpt from Blue Tide Rising
The rhythmic roar of the waves enchanted me last night. Now I watch, mesmorised, the ebb and flow, the highs and lows. Whatever happens to me, I muse, doesn’t matter to the sea. The tide will keep coming in and going out, twice a day, every single day, as it has since time began. As long as I can sit here, looking out across the strait at the dark mountains on the other side, everything will somehow work out right.
I shut my eyes, and my world fills with colour. The colour of mango. I bask as it permeates the dark corners of my mind, as, cell by cell, I come alive again.
This week’s exercise explores the concept of a safe space. Here’s what you do:
Part 1: Finding your place
- Shut your eyes for a few moments and go to your healing place in your mind
- Conjour up the sounds, sights and smells of the place
- Notice who or what is around you
- Note how do you feel in this place
- Now free write for 10-15 minutes about this place, focusing on the senses and bringing in the emotions.
- (If you can actually go to this place to write – even better!)
Part 2: Homecoming
- Think of a time when you arrived somewhere that felt like home
- It could be your actual home, or a place you’re familiar with
- It could be somewhere you’d never been to before
- It doesn’t actually have to be a place, it could be a situation or a meeting with a person that gave you that feeling of homecoming.
- What was it about this place or situation that made you feel at home?
- Describe the sights and sounds that greeted you as you walked in, and how you felt
If you’ve had a go at the exercise, I’d love to hear how you got on! You can post feedback – or your writing – in the comments below.
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