Tag Archives: online workshops

the body stories that rupture, fray and enumerate

(click on the image for a translation of the poem — beautiful)

Good morning this morning — how is your heart today? How are your lungs? How is that good belly? This morning I have the green-and-mint tea, I have the quiet, sleeping puppy, the low candle, the songs resonating a heavy thrum in my chest. This morning I’m thinking about the ways we write our bodies, and the ways we don’t — the stories we tell repeatedly, and the stories that live underneath those, quiet, longing, hidden.

What are the body stories you’re telling yourself this morning? What are the stories still waiting to be told?

Continue reading

I believe in the topology of regeneration

This is a new day. My body is sleepy, thick with desire for the covers. The candle blossoms new color into the dark room, and I am here with these early words. Fit me into the couch cushions, cover me with my mother-knitted afghan, hand me my tea cup and my novel. What do these words want from me today? What do your words want from you?

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

I have two survivors workshops going right now, one in person (Write Whole) and one online. Last night was the third meeting of the spring Write Whole session, and got to be amazed at how deep the writing went, and how fast. We wrote hard about memory and grief, and in-between writes, we talked and connected and laughed. We wrote anguish and struggle last night, and after the workshop was over, I felt energized, lighter, and so grateful. It was a big one last night.

Sometimes people say, when I share with them about the work that I do, “Oh, that must be so hard.” I don’t know how to convey to them how much it’s not hard. How grateful I am every time I’m in the presence of a story that was never supposed to be told, how I appreciate the effort and risk involved in sharing brand new words, how honored I am to get to be in circle, over and over, with writers who are willing to language what we are trained never to be able to say. That’s not hard, I want to tell people; that’s a gift! Continue reading

Body Heat, Fierce Hunger, and spring…

graffiti of a butterfly hovering a branch that contains two nests of heartsGood grey morning to you. Outside, the sky is clouded with mist and the daffodils have begun to show their yellow faces. I wonder if I will ever get used to California. Where I’m from, February, late winter, is the time of near despair: when will it ever end? It’s the time of seed catalogs and beginning to dream of spring. Punxsutawney Phil had some real news to deliver — please, please say it’s going to be an early spring, Mr. Groundhog. I don’t know how much more of this cold I can stand. But here out west, the bulbs start shooting up in January, and as the light begins to change, it feels like spring already even in these early months. How does the body learn to acclimate to a new way of being?

There’s quite a bit going on around here: Body Heat, Fierce Hunger, and a whole lot of workshops! Continue reading