Tag Archives: memoir

is it too much? wrangling with trauma memoir

stencil graffiti of a green butterflyGood morning! Bay Area folks, are you soaking up this amazing sunshine? You know how fickle our weather is here — get yourself out in it before it’s gone! Take a notebook, even better, and let the words flow while you sit somewhere outside; let the people, the growing things, the small birds around you be your prompts!

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(A bit of this morning’s post gets into some specific details around sexual trauma — just be easy with yourselves as you read, ok? xox, -Jen)

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Three calls for submissions: Butch/Femme and BDSM writings!

Get that writing in, and pass the word!

1) Daddy’s Little Girl: Butch/Femme Erotica

2) Lesbian BDSM Erotica Anthology

3) Chorus: The Writing of Femmes, Butches and Transpeople

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or some other gentleness

yellow nasturtium growing out of a hole in some wood, maybe out of the side of an old boat...For me, today, self-care looks like sleeping until 9 even though the alarm went off at 6.

It’s also about to look like drinking my chamomile-nettle-green tea and eating my oatmeal out in the backyard while reading a book, instead of at a computer.

Self-care today is also going to look like a trip to the beach and a short visit with the ocean between my first and second workshops today.

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what do I want to tell you in 10 minutes

060109

What do I want to tell you in ten minutes? That I was catapulted into shame-slavery and prosto-destitution is only one strand of this miner’s fabric. There’s the way I used to cuddle and curl under a yew bush (that still today I spell like “ewe,” like mama sheep, and so maybe she was a haven, too, in her funny fur curly like the dark green fronds of the bush)         anyway         how the yew bush grew like a cave up and around space, and I could sweep brush the dirt floor, bring books, shelter myself early from my mother’s storms.

Sheltering self in words, which were always a haven, as far back as I can remember, although I don’t think I can say they’re natural, at least they’re clean.

The details and rough sketch outline include three houses in and around middle-Eastern Nebraska by the age of 6, and about four more by the age of 10, and then there was only one even if that one didn’t include my father         he had his own home         and it was an hour southwest from The One         down the black ribbon of interstate 80 that cut through dark green cottonwood and oak and tall rushes living the sides of the highway, filled with red-winged blackbirds         cutting across the broad flat damp sandbar of the Platte River and all its attendant mosquitoes and the echoes of sandhill cranes that were never there on the river when we rushed by in Mom’s burgundy-red Mercury Monarch or dad’s too-dull-bright orange and white-capped Volkswagen Van         that road led back and forth to Dad’s house, not grandmother’s (over the river and through those woods)         but slowly the road began to disintegrate, disappear         for lack of use         they’re still rebuilding every time I go back         more construction, more hope

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National Assoc of Memoir Writers FREE teleconference tomorrow!

Visit the NAMW conference site to sign up for tomorrow’s telesummit and to get more information. It looks to be packed with amazing information and connections!

-Jen

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2009 Second NAMW Virtual Conference

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