Stories have held humanity together for 50,000 years (at least). They cohere groups. They connect different groups. They soothe in times of stress and heal us in times of sickness. They organize our unprocessed experiences, revealing connections within that we otherwise don’t see. Because writing and telling our stories releases oxytocin, the “love molecule,” we feel the benefits immediately. As we engage our stories more frequently in these open, critique-free settings, we feel more alive, more awake, more self-aware, and more free. These all create happiness and well-being. Yes, happiness.
Anybody familiar with Native American and other First Nation healing practices knows that Storytelling is central to individual and communal health. Laura Hope-Gill explores this connection in her forth-coming book due out Fall of 2026, presenting storytelling as the human version of fermenting food for longevity and levity. Just as fruits and grains can ferment into alcohol and medicine, we humans can ferment into happiness and health. The mechanisms of the creative process here proves not only useful but vital.
Today, Narrative Medicine is a newly recognized evidence-based modality within clinical medical practice in which an individuals’ own creative expression is proven to yield not only emotional well-being but to alleviate symptoms such as pain, fatigue, overwhelm, and loneliness. During the past three decades, Narrative Medicine and other Storytelling-based healing practices such as Expressive Writing and Poetry have transformed Western Medicine. Even though researchers cannot identify or explain the “how” of our stories’ curative properties, the evidence of emotional and even physiological healing with Storytelling is cause enough to embrace them. Doctors around the world are now creating their own story-methods for improving their own health and the health of patients.
Ultra-Creative Poet, Painter, Pianist, and Storyteller, Laura Hope-Gill launched the Narrative Healthcare Certificate Program at Lenoir-Rhyne University in 2013 after attending Narrative Medicine Training Workshops at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manhattan. She recognized it as Creative Alchemy reborn into the modern age. She tracked the data and development for a decade, paying close attention as the focus evolved from heady narrative theory to hearty reflective writing, where the healing, it is now proven, comes from.
To arrange a Narrative Medicine Creativity Clinic, email Laura.Hopegill@LR.EDU.
CONTENT FOR A POSTER TO PROMOTE A CLINIC:
Want to feel happy? Lighten up a little? Want to let go of some old thoughts? Heal the deep stuff drugs can’t reach? Want a way out of the everyday stress you know is making you sick? Got a strong hunch that there’s got be bea whole lot MORE to life THAT WE JUST AREN’T TALKING ABOUT?
Attend a Narrative Medicine Creativity Clinic in Community and open a whole world within you.
Narrative Medicine is a newly recognized, evidence-based field that draws upon Storytelling’s profound powers and gifts.
Narrative Medicine Creativity Clinics extend the proven health benefits of Narrative Medicine, Expressive Writing, and other Storytelling-based healing modalities to everyone. Participants engage in a reflective-writing experience in a no-judgment, no-critique community setting where everyone is invited to write a little life story for ten minutes to a simple prompt that invites memory and story to emerge. After we write, we will read our words out loud in a small group. After each story, members of this small group say what they heard or noticed, without any suggestions or other workshop things. We write from the heart and listen to one another from the heart in this purely encouraging and appreciation-based setting. Sessions are facilitated by trained facilitators from the Lenoir-Rhyne University Narrative Healthcare and MFA Program.
Each of us holds medicine inside our stories.
We need it, the world needs it, the earth needs it,
And the only way to access it is to tell.
Laura Hope-Gill, Natural Philosopher 