Writing Circle

 

This week I started a 5-week writing workshop at a local cancer center. The flier for the workshop includes the following information:

 

Writing is a valuable tool for tapping into our memories, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Writing relieves stress, improves communication skills, and provides clarity, perspective, and potential solutions to life’s ongoing challenges.  

Writing is also a meaningful way to celebrate and record our experiences and life lessons for our children, grandchildren, and future generations to come.   

The Pen in Hand Writing Circle provides an opportunity for you to write in a safe, comfortable atmosphere. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are on vacation while you write. This is not a therapy group though painful topics may arise in your writing. That’s okay. Release, clarity, and insight are often found while writing through the discomfort.  

Our time together will include guided writing exercises that invite reflection and discovery. Elements of nature, scraps of poetry, literature and music, art, photographs, dreams, and letters will inspire us. We may share our writing with the group if we wish though sharing isn’t required. We’ll write and discover what our souls are longing to tell us. 

If I write what my soul thinks,

It will be visible, and the words

Will be its body.

n  Helen Keller

Writing Muscles

I'm blessed to be a member of a writing group that has been meeting for ten years. We meet twice a month and provide each other with honest, constructive feedback on our creative projects. Writing exercises flex and tone our writing muscles. Recently, we responded to the following prompt: "I Am From . . ."

Here is my response:

I am from ancestors
who braved the sea,
waves of hope rolling
beneath their feet
and salting their prayers.

I am from a mother's dream
of love and redemption,
her breath and blood
spinning the alchemy
of time into the breath
and blood of my body.

I am from silence
before language
was found. I am from
words strung across
a landscape of years
spotted with laughter
and tears.

I am from a morning birth,
snow outside the window
singing a song of mystery.

The prompt was chosen from Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider, a valuable resource for writers, writing groups, and those who wish to begin one.

Nature Note

PammieSue Beak is always searching for good eats in the grass.