On a cold and grey November morning, a small group of people gathered over Zoom, copies of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese in hand. The group’s facilitator reads the poem aloud:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
After a few seconds of silence, the facilitator says, “hmm, there is a fair bit to take in here, isn’t there … let’s read it again.” She reads the poem once more, slowly. After another short silence someone says, “your place in the family of things” – that’s about right, I think, how I feel about being here, in this group from week to week. A place of family to make sense of things.” Another person remarks how, in the group, they feel comfortable enough and encouraged to ‘expose their soft animals.’ Across the Zoom boxes on the screen there are nods and a few more comments about the strong sense of shared community and connection. The discussion then shifts into wondering whether it might be true that we do not have to be good.
This vignette illustrates how, for many, shared reading is a site of belonging, an environment of trust in which they feel unjudged, significant, understood, capable, and valued. Across multiple evaluations and studies about shared reading, group members talk about how participation builds their sense of confidence, reduces feelings of stress and loneliness, and nurtures their curiosity, self-acceptance, and self-understanding. In an act of creative cooperation, group members discuss elements of the text that resonate for them and then collaborate to build meaning from their emergent inner thoughts and ideas. Shared reading provides a rare opportunity to collectively and safely explore, test, and consider new (and differing) perspectives, motivations, approaches, and ways of interacting. Participants also enjoy being on the giving and receiving end of advice, support, resources, and new friendship. The set of practices involved in shared reading seem to be intrinsic to the experience of relational wellbeing. In next month’s blog, we’ll look at how particular groups (e.g., people with depression, those with dementia, chronic pain patients, women experiencing incarceration, retired men) have benefited from participation in shared reading.
