Writing in Community: writing practice, writing rewards

I am a writer who chose to dive into life rather than attend college. I left my home on the East Coast to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My story after that decision is filled with an alternative lifestyle, travel, kids, multiple losses, moving again and again, surviving a partner's suicide, re-claiming my voice, becoming a performance poet, my youngest son's suicide, moving to Mexico and co-founding an art gallery, providing child-care for grandsons. And finally creating a writer's life. My work appears in over 40 literary journals, anthologies, and magazines, many of which you never heard of, and I have published a novel, a full length poetry collection and two chapbooks.

I always wanted to facilitate writing groups but it was after the loss of my son that I realized I had hard-earned wisdom as well as a desire to be of service. I created Writing Circles for Healing as a way to deepen my own healing. 

By receiving McKnight Community Art Program grants in 2008 and 2009, I was able to bring a performance-writing workshop to one high school and a writing-art installation project to another. One high school hired me as the after-school writing instructor.  I volunteered to facilitate writing workshops at non-profits: victims of domestic violence and clients who were HIV+. In 2012 a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board gave me the opportunity to teach in twelve non-profit human service and arts organizations, from a heart patient support group to Saint Paul Almanac. I connected with Mn Prison Writing Workshop. I continued to teach in community education programs and was an artist in residence through Patrick's Cabaret for The Aliveness Project, a resource center for those who are HIV positive.

This lengthy explanation is to provide a bit of background to what I do now: facilitate writing workshops in cafes, churches, women’s retreats, libraries, prisons, healing centers, yoga studios, bookstores, and community centers. I teach mostly memoir, personal essay or creative non-fiction, and poetry.

I love what I do. Sometimes tears indicate that someone has found her/his voice. Always there is laughter. Someone may have a break-through or transformation during class. A young woman who had never written before started writing daily. Participants type up poems for the first time since school days. People give feedback that they have started writing again or re-discovered writing. I was gratified to hear the resiliency expressed by participants at The Aliveness Project. The participants who attended my workshop continued on to performance workshops. Later, these participants got up to share their work in front of over a hundred people.

At Pathways Healing Center, a man’s brain tumor had returned after three years of remission; he attended my class before he passed away. At that point the tumor was impacting his ability to be coherent and so he copied the last lines of a poem I used as a jumpstart. That day it just happened to be a poem I wrote and I will never forget the chills I got as he read my words back to me. One participant wrote in columns—first his words marched down the right side, then his words marched down the left. To tell you the truth, I didn’t always understand what he was writing about but others in the circle complimented his “poetic style”. A woman whose husband was dying from ASL came for a break from care-giving. One woman had to sit on the floor because it was too painful to sit in a chair. Several people grieved spouses or parents. Cancer survivors wrote about feeling they are a burden on others. 

We used prompts such as: what I am praying for, my beloved body, the knot of the self that won’t untangle, and what brings me joy. Here’s a quote from someone who went through a nasty divorce, then breast cancer: “Be what you need and want to receive, even though you don't have it yet.” Often I am in awe of their resiliency as it finds expression on the page.

The thing is, I believe we all have stories to tell and some of us have important stories. Some of us are the story-bearers for those who can't quite yet tell their stories. I have heard stories of abuse, grief, fear, regret, addiction, depression, and shame. I have heard stories of the will to survive. I have heard stories of unremitting guilt and stories of enduring love. My goal, I tell my students, is to get you writing so that when this class ends, you are motivated to continue. 

"Writing is a practice. The more you practice, the more you will find your voice and the story you are compelled to tell."

I have dreams and visions for me, the writer. But there is a satisfaction in teaching that keeps me on the look-out for poems to use as jumpstarts, articles about craft, and ways to encourage those determined to share the story they have inside.

Writing to Heal Loss and Grief: possibilities

Writing has been a way for me to process and heal from loss and grief, betrayal and re-claiming my identity, dislocation and a yearning to belong. I write to articulate what is deepest within, what haunts me and won't let go, and what I am troubled by. That might range from the latest images of garbage floating in the ocean to the sidewalk shrine to mark where a teen-aged girl had been shot. It occurred ten years ago and it still comes up when I write.

Today I ruminate on the passing of both of my parents. I was able to be with my mother so she could die at home. Because of my father's psychological disorder, he was unable to stay home. He was moved to a residential care facility and once he heard the news of my mother's death, stopped eating. The facility took him to the hospital; from there he went into hospice's inpatient unit. Six weeks from my mother's death, he passed away.

These are not easy topics to write about. As I share the words here, I am reminded that I am skimming the surface, presenting the facts. My feelings are many layered and still changing. The relief that I no longer have to worry about something happening to my aging parents while I am not there is replaced by regret that their final years were difficult and I didn't visit more often. Yet, they were able to stay in their home where they had lived for 60 years; they had a comfortable lifestyle, enjoyed visits from my siblings and me; my mom was able to get out to restaurants, shopping, and Longwood Gardens and loved to read.

I want to write about the last weeks of my mother's life. I hope I can capture her grace, sense of humor and acceptance, as well as her disorientation from pain medication. I hope I can write about her disappointment and anger when she learned that I couldn't help her up and down the stairs. My mom hated being confined to her bedroom but we had no longer had a choice.

I want to imagine the last days of my father's life. He wanted to come home; he was upset that he couldn't; if he had been in his right mind, he might have understood why. I have to process that this was not the choice I wanted to make for him and yet there was no way I could deal with his erratic behavior and demanding paranoia.

Writing is like letting down the nets and see what you catch. Like opening your heart and reading a message written in your blood. Like stirring the pot so all the ingredients blend into something nourishing. Like pulling off a band-aid to see if the wound needs more antiseptic. Like a magic mirror that tells the truth. Like a warm hug that comforts you when you discover your heartbreak is just the human condition. Like a reminder that no matter what has happened to us or around us, we are a work in progress and at the same time, eternal and whole just the way we are.

I hope I get to have this journey soon, after the gifts are given, the volunteer roster settled, the anthology edited and ready for the printer, the next meeting, the next discussion, the next submission. For my new year intention, I am claiming time to delve deeper into my family story than ever before. The reasons I ran and kept running. The reasons I stayed in touch. The reasons I went home to be by my mom's side. The reasons I craft feelings into words.