Monthly Archives: January 2011

release and cleansing

graffiti of a flock of birds in silhouette, seeming to emerge from a curved stone stairwayGot to wake up with the birds today — up and out walking through the just-breaking dawn, and quiet neighborhoods suddenly clipped alive here, then there, then there, with bird calls. Coming home, a goldfinch couple landed on the fence just as I approached. Good morning!

Walked through some quiet downtown neighborhoods I hadn’t yet visited in our year here — where will we be at the end of this month? Where is the next home? Said hello to pups out for walks, to people visiting their cars and cats and kids. (What does that mean?) Said hello to the morning flowers and the thin, pale rose coloring the edge of the sky as the sun arose.

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small and gentle, every day

graffiti: I'm expressing myself!Up and ready to head to Sacramento for my first workshop there! Today’s workshop is  Reclaiming our Erotic Story: the Liberatory Potential of Writing DesireI woke up a bit before my alarm went off, ’cause I’m so excited about this one. It’s a full house for a full day of claiming and diving into the layers and complexities of our own erotic stories!

I get to connect with several of the Sutterwriters facilitators today, too — Sacramento folks, you’ve got an AWA goldmine up there, a whole networked community of writing workshops. John Crandall, of Crandall Writers, is hosting today’s event. Thank you, John!

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shifting wholeness

graphic of the movement of the continents from Pangea to the present daytoday’s tea is anise – nettle- dandelion – mint. Wake up and ease the belly and lungs.

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A gorgeous Erotic Reading Circle last night — stories read from cell phones and paper, blog posts and s/m and sex in long-term relationships and more! Carol and I both read our stories from her book, More 5 Minute Erotica. Next month’s Reading Circle meets on the fourth and last Wed, Feb 23!

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Book notes: Beyond Survival

cover for the book Beyond SurvivalI just recently discovered the book Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse by Maureen Brady, and I’m glad to be able to add it to the Writing Ourselves Whole library.

Published in 1992, this is a collection of 52 writing exercises specifically focusing on issues around healing from sexual trauma; the idea is that you give yourself a year to explore through writing your own healing: week 2: Breaking the silence; week 15: But who am I?; week 32: Sexuality; week 49: Trust.

The exercises are much more directive than I offer in the Write Whole workshops, in that they ask the writer to specifically consider different parts of our life and struggle after experiencing sexual trauma: write what you remember about the abuse, write what you lost by keeping secrets,  write what you’re afraid will happen if you trust people — each week’s exercise includes a page or so of discussion about that theme or issue. You could respond to these exercises for yourself or for your characters (if you’re working with a character who is a survivor of sexual violence, writing in response to some of these exercises could be an excellent way to learn more about them and their lives).

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uprooted

photo of uprooted tree, facing the light brown soil and roots

I want to give you something hopeful today, but I am not feeling hopeful at this moment. Sometimes it’s ok, isn’t it, not to paste on the mask and pretend like everything’s fine. Sometimes we’re not fine, we who have been through hard shit, we who work too much for too little, we who are aching and frightened and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are days like that. Yes, there’s a light there, maybe we’ve lived long enough to know it must be somewhere down there, but right now we’re in the dank middle, and it sucks.

I am at a low point — there are low points that happen every month, low energy points when I am bleeding and releasing, and I find it frustrating that I have to keep on going like everything’s normal during this time in my months, like I’m not releasing a part of my body back to the earth.

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this part

stencil graffiti of a young childShe said, This is what you survived for. This is the healing part.

Oh.

I’m alive with that today, opening to it, and I leave it for you, too, for all of your parts and selves to consider —

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still learning the muscles required

graffiti of silhouette standing beneath a raincloud, and another silhouette offering that person an umbrellaI’m just beginning the first of many re-reads of Annie G. Roger’s A Shining Affliction — I want to tell you about it, but I don’t know if my words are far enough away from the story to really get into the details yet this morning. I can’t do a book report or a review yet, although I’d like to. I do know that it’s re-sparked my curiosity about and interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis (which got fully opened when I first read another of her books, The Unsayable: The hidden language of trauma, a couple of years ago, and has been lingering and touching my terror of it ever since).

this morning I have story after story I want to tell you, and I am too scared and stuck to open my mouth

What are the languagings for that experience? I’m aware of being badly in need of help, and not knowing why anyone would help me, and, while I’m feeling all this, experiencing, too, that self above the self that watches and is curious about it all: where does that certainty of not being help-able, not being worth helping, come from?

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a loss of familiar and yes to change

one of the small altars in the workshop space, with an image of ganesha, sea shells and stones, dried flowers... and lots of hope

I wanted to talk about transition, how it’s exciting and difficult, simultaneously, in the same brea(d)th. But today the writing is coming hard. There are some times when you know that something big is happening for you underneath all of your surfaces and terrors, under your day-to-day-nesses and the funk of old drama that sits on your shoulders. I am getting ready to move out of two places that have held me and my work and those I love, and that doesn’t necessarily even feel like the biggest transition that this self is undergoing — I mean, I have the sense that more is working it way out from under where I’ve hidden it, where I hid it a long time ago.

Still, all transitions, no matter how small, deserve to be honored; and, too, I think about how I often feel sad during times of change, even if the change is of my calling, even if the change is exactly what I wanted. There’s loss in change, a moving away from what has been, a moving into new. There’s a loss of familiar, a release and a relenquishing.

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we’re ok / we’re not ok

graffiti of 2 blue and purple birds on a wireThere are days when this phrase flints itself against me, inside the emptiness, inside the loss, all through my body: I’m not ok, I’m not ok, I’m not ok. And what my conscious mind thinks is about how desperately I want to be able to be public with how I’m doing, how I’m sad or angry or lost, how much I miss my family, how broken I feel in that moment, how not put-together and fine.

And then there’s the other side of “I’m not ok,” which is, I’m not safe, I’m not a good person, I’m not someone you want to know or be around. Like something about the very essence of me is not all right. What if I let that feeling fly whenever it pushed through me? What if I let it out of my mouth and fingers?

When I don’t, what I get left with is the hangover from the stuffing down, the hangover from hiding (from) my not-okayness, my humanness. The stiffness and achiness in my shoulders, where I hold the rage, in my throat, where I swallow all my words.

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using doorways

woman in doorway, hair wrapped, holding bread in her hand, maybe chewingGood morning! Short short post today (since yesterday’s was so long!)– just a prompt and a question:

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Question: Where is the femme Stone Butch Blues?

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