Meet the Faculty

Kathleen Adams
Founder/CEO
Center for Journal Therapy, Inc.

Welcome to the page devoted to our outstanding TWI faculty!

We choose faculty based on three major criteria: Do they teach from the highest place of ethics and standards-based practice? Are they innovative and groundbreaking in their therapeutic writing work? Are they effective teachers, mentors and professional practice role models?

Nearly all of our faculty holds licenses in therapy or (and) credentials in therapeutic writing. Many are alumnae of the TWI program or the credentials program of the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. All are esteemed and valued colleagues who represent the solid core of competence and confidence that we foster at the Therapeutic Writing Institute and who advocate for the power of writing for healing, growth and change.

Linda Barnes, MS, CJF, CAPF

A Certified Journal Facilitator, Linda joined the TWI faculty in 2010. A prize-winning poet, she has taught numerous college classes and writing workshops in poetry, memoir, journal writing, and related topics. She is a co-founder of the Rogue Valley Chapter of the Oregon Poetry Association and a member of the National Association for Poetry Therapy. She sends her Poem of the Week free to subscribers via her website www.featherstonewriting.com.

Additional Licensure, Certifications:
Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator, International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, Certified Journal Facilitator, Center for Journal Therapy

Books:
Engaging the Reluctant Writer in the book Expressive Writing, Foundations of Practice

Contributing author of Animal Wisdom, Journal Therapy for Overcoming Burnout,Kathleen Adams. Sterling Publishing, 2022.

Elaine Brooks, M.A., RN – BC, PTR* CAPF, M/S – Core Faculty

Elaine is a board certified psychiatric/mental health nurse, integrative nurse coach, certified applied poetry facilitator, poetry therapy mentor supervisor and transition writing specialist. She was certified as a registered poetry therapist in 2002 and has incorporated poetry and journal therapy in her work with clinical and developmental populations. After a long career working with individuals in an intensive outpatient mental health program, she now enjoys utilizing journaling and poetry in her coaching practice with people in transition. Her main focus is health transitions, women in transition and people in retirement. She is a member of the board of the International Federation for BiblioPoetry Therapy and currently serves as co-president. She lives in Northeastern CT and can be contacted at elaine@mypathtochange.com

Additional Licensure, Certifications:
Transition Writing Specialist, The Center for Transition Coaching and Writing

Anjana Deshpande, MBA, LCSW, CPT

Anjana is a therapist, published author and workshop facilitator. Her early career was spent in market research and she later changed tracks to become a therapist. Anjana is founder of Writethought, a company that helps “Educate, Empower and Enrich” lives through the written word. She works with both clients and clinicians who wish to get acquainted with the power of therapeutic writing, and presents workshops regularly. She serves on the board of the NFBPT and can be contacted through www.writethought.org or anjanawrite@gmail.com.

Additional Licensure, Certifications:
Certified Journal Therapist; Certified Poetry Therapist

Publications:
Effectiveness of Poetry Therapy as an Adjunct to Self Psychology in Clinical Work with Older Adults – A Single Case Study – published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy, March 2010

Recon Mission: Familiarizing Veterans with their changed emotional landscape through Poetry – published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy, November 2010

Leia Francisco, M.A., CJF, CCE Board Certified Coach – Emeritus

Leia Francisco is an author and coach trained in applied poetry facilitation and journal facilitation. For over 25 years she has coached people in making important life and work transitions. In 2015, she published Writing Through Transitions: A Guide to Transforming Life Changes, revised edition, combining transition processes and the power of writing strategies. Leia was one of the first faculty members for the Therapeutic Writing Institute and for ten years has taught her signature class, Writing Through Transitions. She often presents and writes about transitions for venues around the world. She is a member of the International Association for Journal Writing. In 2017, Leia developed a unique, self-paced program to certify individuals as Transition Writing Specialists, guiding the design of their own workshops or coaching programs to help people in transition. Another self-paced program is Coaching Fundamentals for individuals interested in coaching tools in their transition work.

You can reach Leia at www.leiafrancisco.com or lfrancisco@stx.rr.com.

Additional Licensure, Certifications:
William Bridges, Personal and Organizational Transitions, Frederic Hudson, Mid-Career Development Institute, Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator, National Association for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, Certification in Military Transitions and Reintegration, Hawkeye Coaching Program, Trained in: Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Richard Bolles career change methods, Self-Directed Search, Passion Revealer, Strengths Finder, BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory, and Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential

Books:
Writing Through Transitions: A Guide for Transforming Life Changes, revised edition, 2015.

Contributing author of Transitions, Journal Therapy for Overcoming Burnout, Kathleen Adams. Sterling Publishing, 2022.

Elisa Friedlander, LPCC, LMFT, CJT

Elisa Friedlander is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC), Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), Certified Journal Therapist (CJT), writer, and journaling coach. She facilitates her six-week curriculum, “Pain Meets Pen: Quieting Chronic Pain with Therapeutic Writing™,” internationally online. Elisa brings her extensive clinical expertise and lived experience to her groups, supporting those navigating life with chronic pain, illness, and disability. She also teaches continuing education courses and provides clinical consultation to help psychotherapists and other healthcare providers work ethically and more effectively with these populations. Elisa delights in designing and facilitating creative journaling and poetry groups that foster self-exploration and discovery through themes such as nature, joy, life transitions, music, spirituality, and more. She works with diverse communities, including LGBTQ+, Jewish, Deaf (she is fluent in American Sign Language), neurodivergent individuals, older adults, and people with hearing loss, among others.

Elisa is the owner of Ink To Insight, LLC. You can learn more and connect at www.inktoinsight.com or Elisa@inktoinsight.com

Carolyn Koehnline, LMHC, CJT – Core Faculty

Carolyn is a psychotherapist, coach, author, artist, certified journal therapist and lifelong keeper of journals. She is the creator of Gentle Approach Coaching (formerly Confronting Clutter) which draws on her belief in little gestures, accessible tools, and simple practices to facilitate change. She incorporates writing processes into all she does. Carolyn has a special interest in helping people to clear physical, mental, emotional, and schedule clutter to navigate transitions and make room for what is emerging. She has written and illustrated three books: Confronting Your Clutter, The Bear’s Gift, and her most recent book, Clearing Clutter as a Sacred Act. She can be contacted through www.ConfrontingClutter.com or www.GentleApproachCoaching.com

Books:

Clearing Clutter as a Sacred Act (will be available late fall 2018)

The Bear’s Gift (2001, 2011)

Confronting Clutter: Releasing the excess baggage from your home, head, heart, and schedule (2009)

Contributing author of Simplicity, Journal Therapy for Overcoming Burnout, Kathleen Adams. Sterling Publishing, 2022.

Evie Lindemann, ATR-BC, ATCS, LMFT

Evie Lindemann, ATR-BC, ATCS, LMFT, is a board-certified art therapist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and certified archetypal pattern analyst. She is associate professor emerita at Albertus Magnus College and has taught at Yale University’s Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute of Bioethics. She serves on the faculties of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and the Center for Journal Therapy. Evie has worked internationally, implementing humanitarian art therapy projects in India, Jamaica, and the US. She is active in hospice care and teaches courses on mortality, visual arts as a tool for self-exploration, and trauma recovery for combat veterans. As a printmaker, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has authored six book chapters and journal articles on art therapy, grief, hospice, and spirituality, with work published in The Arts in Psychotherapy, Nursing Research, and the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. She receives personal guidance from her spiritual teacher, Meher Baba, an Indian mystic who maintained silence for 43 years.

Sharon McLeay, M.A., CJF

Sharon is an award winning writer, journalist and author and certified journal writing facilitator. She attended Journalism at Ryerson University, and obtained her BA (with distinction) and a Masters degree in English Literature with a Life Writing Specialty at the University of Calgary. She has written three memoirs and teaches and coaches writers and others using journal writing techniques. Her work has been widely published in public, trade and academic media. Sharon lives in Cochrane, a small western town just outside of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Hanna Merin, MSc, CJF

Hanna Merin is an educator, storyteller, and the owner of “Write Your Tail”, a company that offers expressive writing workshops, in person and online. She specializes in positive psychology, a field that she incorporates in the workshops offered to a variation of audiences. Since 2017, Hanna has been teaching at the Therapeutic Writing Institute, in which she combines folk tales, techniques she developed, and the principles of positive psychology, Zen, and mindfulness.

Deborah Ross, M.A., LPC, CJT – Core Faculty, Supervisor

Deborah is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Certified Journal Therapist who has retired from private practice in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. in order to teach Expressive Writing. Fascinated by the healing power of telling one’s story along with the current wave of research on how our brain changes by experience, she completed the three-year program in Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dr. Dan Siegel, founder of the Mindsight Institute. Using those learnings, as well as her studies of journaling and journal therapy, she has created Your Brain on Ink: Journaling for Positive Brain Change. A Certified Journal to the Self Instructor, she regularly offers the JTTS workshop in her community. She also teaches journaling in meditation programs and in healthcare settings that serve cancer patients and those with traumatic brain injury.

Books:
Your Brain on Ink: Journaling for Positive Brain Change

Contributing author of Neuroplasticity, Journal Therapy for Overcoming Burnout, Kathleen Adams. Sterling Publishing, 2022.

Jon Sayers, AGSMD, Existential Coach

Jon is a London-based poet, transformational coach and journal facilitator with a particular interest in the ideas of Carl Jung. His poems have been published in leading UK journals and anthologies, and his radio play, A World Full of Weeping, whose plot revolves around a poem by WB Yeats, was twice broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He qualified as a life coach with Animas (accredited by ICF), has trained extensively with TWI and has delivered workshops on Jungian psychology and poetry in the US, UK, Hungary and Spain. He has facilitated writing for wellbeing sessions for diverse populations, ranging from inmates of His Majesty’s Prisons to members of local church congregations, from older women caregivers to looked-after teenagers leaving the care system. Jon enjoyed a long first career as a copywriter and creative director in advertising and branding. His expressive writing course ‘Because You’re Worth It’ explores the persuasive tricks and techniques of advertising in relation to the self, aiming to boost self-awareness and confidence. He can be contacted through jon@everypencil.com

Additional trainings

Jon has a Foundation Certificate in Jungian Psychology (Guild of Analytical Psychologists), an Advanced Diploma in Jungian Psychology (C.G. Jung Centre, Dublin), and a Certificate in Existential Coaching (Monica Hanaway, Oxford).

Books:

Contributing author of ‘Poetry and the Science of Surprise’ Writing for Wellbeing: Theory, Research, and Practice(Routledge, 2023) edited by Katrin Den Elzen & Reinekke Lengelle.

Nancy Scherlong, LCSW-R, CHHC, SEP, PTR/CJT-CM
Change Your Narrative LCSW PLLC

Nancy is a writer and a licensed clinical social worker in the states of NY and CT and a Registered Poetry Therapist, Certified Journal Therapist and Certified Mentor as well as certified in psychodrama, somatic experiencing and coaching. She is past president for the International Federation of Biblio-Poetry Therapy (IFBPT), former VP of Membership for the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) and has been in the field of poetry and writing therapy for over 30 years. She currently serves on the board of The Good Listening Project and on the advisory council of Narrative Mindworks and The Association of Business Poets. In her consulting practice she integrates the creative arts (namely expressive writing and psychodrama) into her seminars as a stress management consultant, as a holistic psychotherapist specializing in nervous system regulation, mindfulness techniques and trauma recovery and serves as a principal corporate trainer for several employee assistance programs in wellness education. Nancy is a senior adjunct professor in Adelphi University’s graduate social work programs teaching beginning and advanced counseling skills (as well as a former clinical supervisor providing internship oversight for over 15 years). She is also the founder of the school’s continuing education certificate program AEAC – Applied Expressive Arts in Counseling and a former online campus advisor and faculty member of Columbia University’s online social work program as well as serves on the core faculty of Kint Institute. Nancy enjoys the roles of teacher and learner and is an on-going student of life! She can be contacted through www.wellnessmetaphors.com or NScherlonglcsw@gmail.com.

Additional Licensure, Certifications:

Certified in Mentor Coach Foundations Life Coaching, Institute for Integrative Nutrition Certified Holistic Health Counselor, EMDR Levels I and II, Somatic Experiencing Levels I, II and III, Internal Family Systems Levels I and II, Certified Psychodrama Practitioner, Mindfulness Mentor (Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach), Columbia University Narrative Medicine program

Publications:

Embodied Metaphors – Deepening the Power of Poetry and Journal Therapies with Psychodrama. In Afee, M., Auslander, T. and Weidknecht, J. (Eds.), Treatment Planning, Writing, and Documentation in Creative and Expressive Arts Therapies, Routledge. (anticipated 2026)

Contributor. In Journal therapy for overcoming burnout: 366 prompts for renewal and stress management. Sterling Publishers, Inc. (Barnes & Noble subsidiary).

Group poetry and writing therapy with adolescents. In C. Haen & N. B. Webb (Eds.), Creative arts-based group therapy with adolescents: Theory and practice (pp. 149–170). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Kate Thompson, MA, MA, CJT – Supervisor

Kate is a BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) senior accredited Supervisor& Counsellor and a registered psychotherapist in the state of Colorado. She works with individuals and groups in her private practice in Boulder and online. She trained in London and at The Center for Journal Therapy, Denver, Colorado. Now she lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains above Boulder, Colorado, where the landscape provides inspiration for her writing and teaching. Her first degree was in English Literature and she later trained as a counsellor in London. These two strands are brought together in her work with journal therapy and therapeutic writing. In addition to teaching core classes, she is a supervisor for trainees at TWI.

Books:
Thompson K & Adams, K. (eds), 2015 Expressive Writing: Counseling and Healthcare, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield

Thompson K. 2010 Therapeutic Journal Writing: A Guide for Professionals. London: Jessica Kingsley Publisher.

Bolton, G., Field, V. & Thompson K. (eds) 2006)Writing Routes: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Bolton, G.,Field, V. & Thompson K. (eds) 2006 Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.