Volume XI, Issue 14
April 06, 2022
Word of the Week: amnesty
Dear ,
What a wonderful time my husband, Richard, and I had at Big Rock Nature Preserve on Monday with our grandson, Harry, who turns six this month! I make a point of spending individual time with each of our grandchildren, but it feels especially important for Harry, a middle child who can easily get lost in the family
shuffle.
Being with a six-year-old reminded me of a conversation at last week's "Writing Ourselves Whole" retreat on forgiveness, and how, so often, the person we're least likely to extend our forgiveness to is ourselves.
Earlier in the retreat, I'd shared a practice I learned in one of the free 21-day meditation series that Oprah and Deepak Chopra used to offer--to stop each time you pass a mirror, look oneself dead in the eye, and say, aloud, "I see you. I accept you. I love you." A powerful message to send, not only to oneself, but to everyone else in
your life. And oh, so difficult! One of the retreat participants shared that she had a similar practice, and that she found that taping a childhood photo of herself to the mirror really helped. It was much harder, she told us, to say the critical, even mean things she thought about her adult self to the innocent child she once was.
Looking at Harry celebrating his "peak of the rock" experience reminded me that we all have our inner child with us every day. How could I help smiling at this wide open pose?
Harry and his older brother, Rhys, play a lot of Monopoly with Richard these days, so this "throwback" Word-Zine from September 21, 2015 is a perfect
accompaniment to this reminder to keep loving and forgiving ourselves over and over—in this particular case, for NOT writing, or not writing as much as you'd like to. It happens to the best of us (and the rest of us, too 😄).
From time to time almost all of us writers need to grant ourselves—and each other—amnesty for the self-inflicted, cruel crime of not writing, despite our best intentions.
Yes, we wanted to, we meant to, we planned to...and we didn't. For whatever ironclad or flimsy reason, we just aren't, weren't, haven't been writing. The days, weeks, months, or maybe even years have gone by, and we are disheartened, defeated, demoralized.
It's time to leave those bars behind and step out into the sunshiny experience of fresh words on a page. And while no one can really spring you from "Not-Writing Jail" but yourself, I am more than happy to be the one to sanction and expedite the process! Just print this zine, clip out the above card, and mosey on down to the prompt
below to restart your writing life. Three-quarters of 2022 stretches ahead! Here's to seeing, accepting, and loving yourself every step of the way.
Love, light, and happy writing,
Highlights of CPCC's Literary Events at NEXT WEEK'S Sensoria
April 11, Reception 6PM, Reading 7PM,
Tate Hall, Central Campus
Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy Award Winners
The Bechtler Ensemble
Re-imagining Our Place on This Earth
through Poetry and Music
This iconic team has cultivated their talents and desire to cross boundaries, reaching out through poetry and music to inspire audiences in difficult times. Elevating mind, body and spirit, their spoken words and music arrangements move us deeper into gratitude, transporting listeners to another realm.
What emerges is the theme of healing and hope, light in darkness. Be it Sorkin, the Beatles, Rilke or Rumi. Be it the husband-wife team “Tanja and Bob.” Be there to hear it!
Larry Sorkin is a poet-in-residence at the Airy Knoll Arts Project. His poetry book Uncomfortable Minds was published in 2021.
Tanja Bechtler, cellist and adjunct instructor at Central Piedmont, is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Bechtler
Ensemble.
Robert Teixeira, currently on the faculty at Queens University and Central Piedmont Community College, has collaborated with award-winning guitarist, Mary
Akerman, in concert appearances.
Learn more about The Bechtler Ensemble here.
April 14, 11AM & 7:30PM Halton Theater, Central Campus
Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lecturer
Juan Felipe Herrera
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-2016) and the first Latino to hold the position. Herrera is the author of thirty books, including collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children. He'll be reading and signing books both in the morning and in the evening.
Learn more about Juan Felipe Herrera here.
Featured WordPlay Offering
After I spent months wondering if Covid had put Spinning Words into Gold out of print for good, my publisher was finally able to deliver
two boxes of beautiful, brand new copies with thicker, sturdier paper, than the originals!
I still love this book years after its publication, in large part because it's full of writing wisdom, insight, and inspiration from so many writers, known and unknown, including Ray Bradbury, Mary Oliver, Naomi
Shihab Nye, William Stafford, and a number of Charlotte writers who have gone on to write their own books, including Cheryl Boyer (Counting Colors), Caroline Castle Hicks (Such Stuff As Stars Are Made Of) and Lisa Otter Rose (You've Got Verve, Jamie Ireland.)
For a limited time, even though my publisher's costs have gone up and he's passed them on to me, I'm selling them at the original price of $21.95 + tax and shipping until April, to celebrate this new shipment's
arrival! Things were looking very iffy for several months. You can learn more, order a copy, and/or even watch a rare video of me discussing it here on my website.
WordPlay Featured
Writing
For me, and perhaps for you, too, writing flows best when I allow whatever thoughts and emotions are between me and whatever piece or project I'm working on a place to land. This example from the "Why" chapter of Spinning Words into Gold, in which I discuss how to tap into the many benefits writing can provide, one of which is healing.
"All week, I have been wanting to write about..."
from Chapter 2
When I’m dealing with a tough time, writing helps me to move through the emotions and get to the proverbial other side. I wrote this journal entry in February of 2002, about three months before my mother, who was terminally ill, died. I’d just come back from a visit with her, and had been reading Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. Lynch is a poet as well as an undertaker, and the book is a lyrical examination of the way we as a culture face (or refuse to face) death. The book and the visit were roiling about in me, and it was a great comfort to me to spill out my thoughts and feelings:
All week I have been wanting to write about my mother in a color of lipstick she would never have worn, rouge on her cheeks, her hair styled in a trendy wisp of bangs—all for me, thanks to some well-intentioned staff member who knew “Pat” had a visiting daughter and “fixed her up,” my mother in a wheelchair with no use of her hands and it broke my heart, that lipstick, seeing my mother looking so unlike herself. She rarely wore makeup and never, never that color—she was a true red.
I wish I’d saved her lipsticks—the really nice ones in gold cases—I must call Dad today and ask. If it’s not too late. I don’t know what I’ll do with them. I don’t know what to do with this desire to take care of my mother. How could I handle the bathrooming, the feeding, the physical therapy? And my dad is happy in Erie, especially now that the Sisters of Saint Benedict have adopted him to do maintenance and repairs at the House of Healing. He’s so happy to have problems to tinker with—the passion in his voice as he spoke of finally sawing through a rusted old pipe! I never heard him talk of my mother in that way—she was a problem he couldn’t solve.
And what about my mother? I want to be there for her and I’m so far away. Reading in The Undertaking about social death and metabolic death, I see that my mother is not dead to me, as she is to many others. And that’s why I want to be with her when she dies. I want to hold her hand during that passage and I’m so scared it won’t go that way. This is what I really want, not that gold lipstick case. No, I want that, too, I want it all and some days I am not a big enough container for all I want. Enough. All week I have been wanting to write about the snow falling and what an inconvenience it felt like, worrying about my flight being delayed and a little voice inside crying You don’t even see how beautiful it is! Can you stop and look? But I didn’t.
Can I write to the other side of sadness? If I just take it all as life, this moment, I don’t have to. Sad is sad. “This room and everything in it”—that beautiful poem by Li-Young Lee
came floating into my morning pages today and that Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie—All of Me, why not take all of me—what if I didn’t care that my mother was wearing the wrong lipstick? What if it was exactly right—or better, if things weren’t wrong or
right, if they just were.
Writing this journal entry also spurred me into action. I called and told
my father how much it mattered to me to be present at my mother’s death. His father had died while my dad was at the Coast Guard Academy, and his mother had written him some weeks after the fact, so I was afraid he wouldn’t think to call me.
I was able to be with my mother at the end of her life, and articulating
these thoughts helped me to accept each moment of her life and death just as it was when the time came.
~ Maureen Ryan Griffin
Learn more about Spinning Words into Gold (or order a copy) here.
WordPlay Now! Writing Prompt
This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week,
it's "amnesty."
PROMPT:
Set a timer for ten minutes and begin with the words, "All ___ (day, week, month) I have been wanting to write about.... Keep your hand moving until the timer goes off. Here's the great thing—even if you have no idea what you've been wanting to write about, this exercise still works.
A challenge: Try this prompt every day for one week, and watch what happens to your relationship with writing...
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of
Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality
and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours!
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