Kerstin E. White: How I Found Healing Through Writing My Memoir

In 1963, at the age of three, Kerstin E. White contracted tuberculosis and spent 18 months in a Kinderklinik in southern Germany, separated from her family. As an adult, having never dealt with her childhood trauma, she discovered writing for healing. This led her on a journey of writing poetry and eventually her own creative memoir. She will discuss the therapeutic benefits of writing for healing from trauma. In addition, she will describe the treatment of tuberculosis in children in Germany, which often entailed long separations from parents, causing attachment wounds. Other key themes are the healing power of nature and art, the connection between past and present, and the search for wholeness.

Kerstin E. White was trained as a psychotherapist with a specialty in sandplay therapy and poetry therapy. She has master’s degrees in French literature and counseling psychology. She grew up in Germany and moved to the United States in her early twenties. She recently moved from New Jersey to New Hampshire and has started to work on her second book about her family’s story as refugees at the end of World War II.