Sonnet Therapy

Just to touch on last week's (or the week before..?) discussion on sonnet therapy or sonnet "radiation", I didn't really think much of it because I didn't need a therapeutic source to put any energy towards at the time. Sure, writing is a good way to express your feelings and get troubling thoughts off your chest and onto paper, but sonnets do something that just plain writing cannot. If I were to just write how I feel, what I wrote would appear just as jumbled as what I'm thinking. Needless to say, I'm not very good at explaining myself or anything else. At least not without some structure and organization. You follow the sonnet format (iambic pentameter, 3 quatrains, 1 couplet, etc.) and get frustrated because the word you want to use doesn't fit, or the perfect adjective doesn't fit the rhyme scheme and so and and so forth, but once you find something that fits, you're ten times more proud of what you wrote because you accomplished something you didn't think you could do (or at least something I didn't think I could do).

Over spring break, my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. She had been having a few episodes over the course of a couple weeks and when my family made an appointment with a neurologist, it was confirmed. Some times everything is ok, and I can talk to my grandmother about school and life and everything else and it's as if nothing has changed - as if there is no reason for her to be in the hospital. And then other times she is a completely different person. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a relative who has dementia or Alzheimer's, so it's understandable to those people when I say she's not even herself anymore sometimes. My way of coping is doing exactly what we had been discussing in class: sonnet therapy. I only wrote a few but they seem to be helping me. There mostly nostalgic, recalling the wonderful memories my sisters and I have practically growing up and my grandmother's house, but they also discuss that despite the changes, she is still our Grandma Rose and this new condition does not affect the love she has for her family. Writing about something like this is very difficult, but once I completed it in sonnet-form, it really did feel like the end of what I would imagine to be a very good therapy session. The pen and paper do not judge, do not charge a fee, and are readily available whenever your are ready (sounds like a pretty good therapist, no?). I initially wouldn't have guessed that I could find some much peace of mind in my own writing, but the framework of sonnets provided me with a tool that is probably the best coping mechanism I've ever experienced.