The search for meaning: PROS creative writing class helps process traumas
Elaine Meyers, our 2024 Open Arms Award recipient, has been a dedicated volunteer with PROS for several months. This semester, she is leading a weekly creative writing class.
Drawing inspiration from Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Elaine uses the book’s themes to foster meaningful class discussions. Participants are encouraged to express themselves through poetry and prose, using writing as a tool to process complex emotions and trauma. Frankl’s philosophy highlights the importance of discovering personal meaning and motivation as pathways to healing, a concept Elaine integrates into group conversations.
Elaine promotes self-expression in all written forms during her sessions, guided by Frankl’s teachings.

Elaine Meyers leads a creative writing class at PROS, reading an excerpt from Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” Frankl wrote. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
In class, participants shared poems, personal stories, a Bible verse, pieces of philosophical wisdom, and more.
“You can only help those who need you,” Meyers said. “You can wish them well, but the person who is the receiver has to wish and consent to your help.”
PROS participant Shawn wrote the following poem:
Hope in Nature
So many times, I wanted a sign. A whisper, a spirit. But no matter how much I prayed, or wished, nothing came.
But, in my time, it showed in the wild animals. One was a cardinal that flew down while I was walking my dog.
It struck as weird at that moment, but I stopped and reflected.
For a moment, everyone who passed away—their faces and names flashing through my mind is seconds.
Was it them?
One of them? I wish I knew.